[Greenbuilding] Power Plants Don't Kill People; People Kill People

[MKL]

      SAID:     Why hasn't any member of this
Greenbuilding Forum commented in
 support 
of Al Gore's charge?


This is just a guess but perhaps it is because this
list is essentially about building and is mostly
populated by builders that are aware of the
compromises inherent in the act of creating warm/cool
shelter in an environment which  prior to mechanical
fuel sucking installations was largely incapable of
supporting nicely dressed habitation. 

If it cannot be understood that as populations grow
that the likelihood of producing an environment
through legislation able to be described as of equal
quality for  all diminishes in equal proportion to the
state/media created expectations of the new population
then what hope can there be for any reversal of
degradation?

Politics and its bedfellow religion  might give us a
clue as to what the future of the United States might
look like but to believe that the promise of "the
house on the hill" (or the off grid/survivalist
/pioneer enclave facing south)  ethos can be changed
to that of a truly green non private transport life in
a clustered small apartment collective within walking
distance of a food retailer is to believe that
"success" can be in the minds of consumers associated
with smallness. This seems at present to run counter
to "free enterprise"and is as difficult as the idea 
that the "productivity" of an individual has in our
technologically controlled universe any significant
contribution to make (save for academia) to change
whatsoever.

"Greenbuilding" may be a verb or a noun but what it
isnt in North America is a recognition of  lifestyle
environmental consequence, as a North American
architect once said to me in justification of building
a 4000 square foot straw bale house "my clients are
ready to live in a mud hut yet". I surmised from this
comment that energy saving residential construction in
America might have more to do with maintaining the
norm for the American "dream" but paying less for it
in energy costs. This is a far cry from accepting the
excesses of ones lifestyle and the requirement of an
individual to participate thoughtfully in a global 
rationalisation as to just how much space  a two
legged mammal really needs for shelter. 

 
May Horus have mercy on us.
 
Michael K Lough


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