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LA Weekly on green building
David Roberts, Gristmill
L.A. Weekly has a package of stories on green building that, in the words of editor Mark Mauer, “DOESN’T involve tear-downs, massive square footage homes and insane water-intensive landscaping.” Huzzah for that!
The lead piece is “Green Without Envy,” about the many ways existing homes can be added to, tweaked, or remodeled — instead of torn down — to increase their green-friendliness.
Also check out similarly sensible articles on lawns, floors, and individual rooms, as well as a piece on the shortcomings of LEED and another one on, er, re-using a Boeing 747 as a house.
(15 Sep 2006)
Related:
Builders adapt to demand for energy efficient homes (Montrose Daily Press)
Huston Eubank, director of the World Green Building Council, answers readers’ questions
(Grist)
Oil Depletion Mitigation Bill
Theresa Bratton, Relocalization Wiki
The following are suggestions for what such a “Oil Depletion Mitigation Bill” could include:
i. Funding Farmers Transitioning from Conventional to Organic/Sustainable Methods of Food Production
ii. A Federally Sponsored Program to Replace Incandescent Bulbs with Compact Fluorescents
iii. Funding for National Rail Projects ..
(17 Sept 2006)
Six items are proposed and discussed, and in a Wiki enabling easy addition and development – how hard can making public policy be? -LJ
Speed of the Spread of Flu Is Linked to Airline Travel
Nicholas Bakalar
Airline travel has a significant effect on the spread of influenza, a new study reports, raising the question of whether flight restrictions may be helpful in controlling a pandemic.
Although computer simulations have already suggested a link, this study, published online yesterday in PLoS Medicine, offers the first observations of the phenomenon.
The researchers compared the timing and number of influenza deaths in 122 American cities with the volume of airline travel during the same period for each of nine flu seasons, 1996 to 2005. They found that changes in the rate of spread and the timing of peak mortality each year correlated with yearly fluctuations in monthly airline passenger volume.
Domestic airline travel in November was the best predictor of the speed of influenza spread, the researchers found, although influenza infections and deaths usually peak in late February.
They suggest that travel during the Thanksgiving holiday may be the central event in determining the rapidity of transmission. The fewer domestic airline passengers there are, researchers found, the slower the flu moves across the country.
(12 Sept 2006)
Similar article at Reuters.
One of the unremarked features of the age of petroleum is that diseases and invasive organisms spread much more quickly. Human diseases spread via air travel, as described in this study. Invasive animal and plant species spread by car, airplane and freighter. -BA
Book Review: How We Can Save the Planet
Hana Loftus, WorldChanging
Mayer Hillman is a godfather, on this side of the pond, of radical environmental thinking. Trained as an architect and planner, he has worked for thirty years in social policy and was one of the first to propose legislative carbon rationing and emissions trading, now put into practice for EU businesses. How We Can Save the Planet, published a couple of years ago, puts out his arguments in a slim paperback written clearly and accessibly. I was pretty surprised to find still un-reviewed on WC and to find only one post back in 2003 discussing its core idea of “Contraction and Convergence” as the way to ‘solve’ climate change. About time to change this – although I am sure to soon stand corrected by WC readers eager to join the debate.
“How We Can Save the Planet” deliberately takes the reader from first principles – why climate change happens, how fast, and what its effects are. Evidence-based, clearly argued (worth reading for anyone who has to encounter sceptics on a daily basis) and illustrated with a few choice statistics that make the case watertight, he then proceeds step by step to make the case for why we – as individuals – do not have rational excuses for refusing to face the facts. Borrowing perhaps a little too much from the psychoanalyst, he even lists ten ‘common excuses’ – ranging from ‘I blame the government’ to ‘At least I am doing something’ and combats them with a somewhat Presbyterian tone of castigation for mental weakness that lays the ground for the proposals to come.
(13 Sept 2006)
