One of our readers, Kumiko, messaged me last night with a great tip from the Vancouver Convention Centre, an extremely cool new sustainable commercial building in the Northlands. It reminds me a bit of the new California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.
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Electrical power can be a true mystery. Where does that power you are using right now actually come from? If you don’t generate it yourself, its’ hard to know if it is coal, nuclear, geothermal, wind, natural gas… Were all so tied into the grid, and yet what’s the origin, what’s “the source” as Neo might ask. One tool you can use comes from www.ilovemountains.org Just your average run of the mill activists getting the word out, and in this case its about the power your PC is using to read this. If you click on the link, you can enter your zip code and they can show you if any coal is used to power your home (Probably, we are in North America); where that coal is coming from, and a little about the environmental damage that is done to get it; in the case of coal typically small things, like blowing mountain tops clean off to gouge the coal straight out of the earth.
You know, little stuff.
So if you still have an incandescent light bulb in your house, honestly, at this point, what the “F” is wrong with you?
It always strikes me how dissassociated our homes can be from the environemental damage done to feed them with power, water and building material. If you have ben to this site before you probably know that water consumption is a serious topic with me. I honestly do not care if it is a gallon or an acre foot, it is all on you, me, all of us, to really address our run away use of water. A typical 3rd world citizen uses 3 gallons of water a day. You flush that much every time you use the toilet. And it is not just some “person” living in Africa, Latin America, Asia or wherever that sees the effects of water shortages, though their effects are more profound. California Schinook Salmon Runs Suspended Again read the headline for yesterday’s paper. There is a direct line from the decline of our fisheries to your tap. I do not have a website like Ilovemountians for our fisheries, but maybe one of you will make one. We need to be real about our water use, because as population increases, and water supplies remain, at best, constant, something has to give. And that something must, must be consumption.
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Some easy tips for your garden:
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Richard Moe, President of the National Trust for Historic Preservation wrote an Op Ed in the times yesterday that really resonated with me. I quote,
“Before demolishing an old building to make way for a new one, consider the amount of energy required to manufacture, transport and assemble the pieces of that building. With the destruction of the building, all that energy is utterly wasted. Then think about the additional energy required for the demolition itself, not to mention for new construction. Preserving a building is the ultimate act of recycling.”
I could not possibly agree more. I think of my project on 2139 39th Ave as one giant recycling bin – there were items that had to go of course, like the infamous red shag disco fever carpet, but so much was saved; the structural framing and timbers, the perimeter foundation, much of the front exterior. It is the essence of sustainable building, to find new life in what is already there. Why stop at recycling aluminum cans, recycle whole buildings!!
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