Global ecosystems are in crisis, and by many measures biodiversity is collapsing. For those seeking to build a more sustainable building sector, two obvious questions spring to mind: what role has the construction industry played in the crisis, and what can it do to help fix it? Read the article
Just exactly how much, and how quickly, can we reduce carbon emissions from heating England’s new and existing homes – and can we justify the embodied carbon emissions of the materials and products used? The AECB takes a deep dive into the figures using their simple PHPP-based building stock modeling tool as Andrew Simmonds and Lenny Antonelli chart the group’s recent work with Tim Martel and Green Party energy policy advisor Tony Firkins. Policymakers expect the building industry and home owners to make deep cuts in their energy use to dramatically lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions because perhaps, at least » Read More
Somewhat to his own surprise, Chris found himself participating in one of the largest ‘acts of peaceful civil disobedience in the UK in decades’ – the blocking of several London bridges with around 6,000 other Extinction Rebellion protestors seeking to use nonviolent protest to force policymakers and government institutions to accept that climate change is both an existential crisis – and an extinction threat. Chris suggests that we each need to reflect deeply on our response to the existential threat we clearly face. Getting involved in Extinction Rebellion could be a natural response. Another focus for protest could be to pressure local councils to » Read More
One of 2018’s most striking viral images was a side-by-side of two heat maps comparing this summer’s heatwave with that of the famously scorching British summer of 1976. On the 1976 map, Britain stands out as a red-hot island against continents coloured in cool shades of blue. Outside the UK, most of the planet experienced a cooler than average summer that year. On this year’s map, however, Britain is just one blob of red among continents ranging in tone from yellow and orange through to deep crimson. “The world’s on fire,” read the front page headline of The Sun, hardly » Read More
The recent flurry of alarming reports on the precarious state of the global environment seems to have re-focused many in the green movement on the need for radical and meaningful action to protect the planet. First, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported its finding that we have just 12 years to keep the world under 1.5C of global warming. Then the WWF’s Living Planet report concluded that global wildlife populations have decreased by 60% since the 1970s, threatening the ecological support systems that underpin human civilisation. But in this somewhat frightening context, what can those in the sustainable building » Read More