From the category archives:

environmental legislation

Green Neighborhoods: Culture Clash?

January 11, 2010

In thinking about a large scale refurbishment of an entire neighborhood, or even in ones that are planned from scratch, I wonder too about this culture clash phenomenon that I have noticed in traveling from my neighborhood (which more easily enables the car-less lifestyle on a number of fronts) to the one where my daughter lives.

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Happy World Green Building Day!

September 23, 2009

The movement toward globalizing green building practices seems to be moving farther and farther into the public eye with the first annual World Green Building Day. The day is observed as a series of events around the world for the promotion of green building practices, involving various green building councils in the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, Asia, and Western Europe.

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Green Building To Drive California Building Codes

August 18, 2009

One of the challenges in green building has been a greater upfront cost commitment. But it has been surmised that front end costs from more efficient building practices this year will mean savings in the next. After all, creating systems whereby less is used for equal or greater performance and savings makes for a lot of room to spend that money elsewhere.

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Canada’s Budget 2009: Housing and Energy Efficiency

January 27, 2009

I was happy to see Canada’s federal government followed my advice in their new budget today. What’s the point of having a blog if you can’t influence world events, eh?
As part of the stimulus spending of $64-billion to be spent over the next two years, ($34-billion in 2009-10; $30-billion in 2010-11), there are some sizable [...]

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2030 Challenge Stimulus Plan

January 23, 2009

I’ve been going on for some time about why there should be government spending in green building.
Here’s a intriguing plan by Architecture 2030, a U.S.-based non-profit organization that promotes integrated climate change action through the built environment. It connects a lot of dots in reducing CO2 emissions in the building sector while creating jobs and stimulating the [...]

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Green Built Environment: Political Will Needed

December 2, 2008

The Pew Center report on a Climate Friendly Built Environment – to which I referred in my previous posting – makes an emphatic assertion for the needed political will to act now in three policy areas. It correctly observes that the building industry’s fragmentation makes decision making almost impossible for comprehensive solutions to environmental problems. [...]

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A Climate Friendly Built Environment

November 27, 2008

In my previous post I referred to the PEW Centre on Global Climate Change.

In 2005 – shortly before the new world economic order began – the PEW Center published a most insightful, almost prophetic study entitled ”Towards a Climate Friendly Built Environment.”

Built Environment and GHG emissions

Here’s an excerpt from the Report’s introduction.

Buildings in the United States—homes, offices, and industrial [...]

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Canada’s Harper Proposes Environmental Pact to Obama

November 6, 2008

A brief note following my advice yesterday for US President-elect Barack Obama.

From the Canadian environmental perspective, the headline in today’s Globe and Mail (Toronto’s National Newspaper) reflects a major political statement by Prime Minster Stephen Harper to US President-elect Obama.

“Ottawa swoops in with climate-change offer.”

Canada’s Prime Minister Harper has been viewed as closely aligned [...]

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President Obama and a Global Green New Deal

November 5, 2008

Congratulations Mr. Obama!
You’ve been elected on the promise to change … uh … something about the way the United States is governed.
Pardon me. I must have missed exactly what that change is going to be. I guess it got downed out in the all the cheering every time you mentioned it.
Whatever… Here’s something for you [...]

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US Election Campaign and the Environment

November 4, 2008

Today the world is watching the US election. Little – if anything – has been said about the Environment by candidates Obama and McCain in the last weeks of the campaign. Ironic, in a tragic sort of way, is how important this issue was just one year ago.
Even the global economic breakdown that is [...]

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