Climate Cities

Using earth to save the earth

(Part of the No Sweat Solutions series.)

In my last post on material intensity, I mentioned green building as an example of how to indirectly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, before building one wind turbine or making one factory more efficient. Because green building is more familiar than most types of material intensity reduction, I'll use it for my first examples.

After all, building construction worldwide uses about 40% of mineral and metal products, and 25% of forest products*. And we have experts in green building on this blog who can comment on the examples that follow.

Let's start with "super-block" or "super-adobe" construction, invented by Nader Khalili, California architect/author and founder of the Hesperia, California-based Cal Earth Institute. It is similar to rammed earth: Wet soil under pressure (mixed with a little cement) turns into a sturdy and long-lasting building material. Khalili's innovation is to pump the soil into bags that are continuous coils and bind them with barbed wire.

A bullet train, that is

According to this article, Brazil's transport ministry is considering whether to tender bids for a high-speed train linking São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Once (OK, if) the bullet train goes into operation, travel time would be just under an hour and a half, compared with the five hours it currently takes to drive between the two cities.

Indirect greenhouse-gas savings

(Part of the No Sweat Solutions series.)

Previously I pointed out that efficiency, doing more with less, is a key to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. (A lot of people on Gristmill are fans of conservation, doing less with less. I have nothing against this, so long as it is a voluntary choice, but I won't be spending a lot of time on it.)

Normally, when people think of efficiency they think of direct savings -- insulating homes, electric cars, and so on. That is: make the same sort of goods we make now, but more cleverly, so they require fewer inputs to operate. And that is an extremely important kind of efficiency.

But Amory Lovins and Wolfgang Feist pointed out long ago that there is another kind of efficiency. Instead of looking at how to provide the same goods, look at what those goods do for us, and see if there is another way to provide the same service. For example, it remains essential to start making steel, cement, and mill timber more efficiently.

We Just Ran This Story So We Could Say “Chunnel”

Eurostar will reduce emissions, offset the rest Of trains, planes, and automobiles, locomotives already have the best rep for carbon emissions — but one operator is on track to boost […]

What would we do if bikers’ lives were worth as much as auto convenience?

Great idea for a new law: Spouses and children of all traffic engineers must travel on the streets planned by their loved ones using a bike at least 50 percent of the time.

What would happen then? Probably this.

Weird but true

Another blog that’s recently become required reading for me: Mode Shift, a blog on urban sustainability from Keith Schneider, founder of the Michigan Land Use Institute. Yesterday brought a somewhat […]

X Marks the Pot

X Prize Foundation offers $10 million prize for creator of eco-friendly car Wanna win a cool $10 million? Read on. The X Prize Foundation is launching a contest to see […]

Green building and architecture, all in one place

In one of his vintage ginormo-posts, Big Gav at Peak Energy rounds up seemingly every cool story on green building and green architecture published on the web in the last […]

We’re inside it

We all know buildings are part of the global warming problem, but many people don't recognize how central they are to the solution. A recent UNEP report -- "Buildings and Climate Change: Status, Challenges and Opportunities" -- shines light on how relevant and accessible building-related climate change solutions are. Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director, said:

By some conservative estimates, the building sector world-wide could deliver emission reductions of 1.8 billion tonnes of C02. A more aggressive energy efficiency policy might deliver over two billion tonnes or close to three times the amount scheduled to be reduced under the Kyoto Protocol.

The International Energy Agency estimates that a total global switch to compact fluorescent bulbs would in 2010 deliver C02 savings of 470 million tonnes or slightly over half of the Kyoto reductions. We have to ask what the hurdles are -- if any -- to achieving such positive low cost change and set about decisively and swiftly to overcome them, if they exist at all.

I realize Kyoto is not our final goal, but the point here is the potential for harvesting carbon reductions from buildings is immense, and most of solutions are 1) with us already and 2) relatively low-cost to deploy. The challenge is largely changing practices. But as Achim notes, the hurdles in the building sector, unlike some other sectors, may not be very substantial.

Ten things

I doubt we have many sprawl-lovers in the audience, but just in case you need the comprehensive case against sprawl in one convenient location, check out “Ten Things Wrong with […]