Cool roofs save money, save energy, cut pollution and directly reduce warming!
What wildly underfunded climate solution can achieve all of these goals simultaneously:
- Slow global warming by increasing the reflectivity of the Earth (geo-engineering)
- Reduce local temperatures in the hottest cities (adaptation)
- Reduce fossil CO2 emissions (mitigation)
- Save U.S. consumers and businesses billions of dollars in energy costs
- Reduce urban smog and hence cardio-pulmonary disease
- Create more than 100,000 jobs in two years?
The answer is a major effort to make roofs (and pavements) whiter and/or more reflective, which should be coupled with a major urban tree-planting effort.
July 22, 2010