Looking Ahead: The Next 10 Years of Green Building
(Page 7 of 10)
May/June 2009
By Eric Corey Freed
MICHELLE KAUFMANN: Water. Definitely water. So many people refuse to believe that fresh water is going to become a scarce resource. It is important that we as designers, builders and homeowners start addressing solutions before it is too late and becomes a significant problem.
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GIL FRIEND: There's a problem in the question. The question presumes these are separate things. In the system we live within, these are not separate matters, there are no boundaries between them. In human economies, even in looking at water you've got to pump it, heat it, treat it...that accounts for 19 percent of electricity use in California. So the water issue is an energy issue.
Integrated approaches that look at these as aspects of a single system, rather than separate problems to be solved, consistently produce better results, better incentives, better designs. The problem that needs to be solved first is how do we find ways of integratingly solving what seems to be separate problems.
NH: How will sustainability play into the future of housing?
MICHELLE KAUFMANN: It is no longer a question if people want a green home or not. They do. They want lower energy bills, lower water bills and healthy environments for their families. But it is not easy to find the solutions. It needs to be easier and more accessible. That is what we are trying to address.
DAVID ORR: We'll have to become much more technically sophisticated, on one level, and much simpler and smaller at another level. We're not going to be able to afford homes of 3,000 or 4,000 square feet in the new climate-changed world of the 21st century. I think what is possible is to begin to build housing that is much more condensed, designed to be elegant, but not lavish, and powered by sunlight.
I think we need to give a lot of priority to housing clusters, taking the New Urbanism plan and putting it on speed, in effect. We've gone through this century of centrifugual expansion, and now I think the logic of climate change causes this centripetal contraction toward condensed communities, more vibrant downtowns and small town revision. The idea of a 5-acre estate and 4,000-square-foot house with riding lawnmowers is no longer affordable (as much as we probably never could afford it!).
That is why it is great to see a magazine like Natural Home, rather than replicating a green version of Better Homes and Gardens, discuss these issues, as that's no longer the world we live in. The magazine could represent a world in which we rebuild community, prosperity, sustainable economy and more localized economies.
The driver for this has got to be the economic crisis we're in, likely to affect things for at least a few years. It's clear markets are going to shift dramatically. Housing markets are going to play catch up to reality. Some of the most exciting developments I see are moving toward more high-performance housing.
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