GreenZebra

The GreenZebra coupon book was written up in the Chronicle last week. It is a nice story of how Anne and Sheryl began the company.

If you haven't heard of GreenZebra, think "Entertainment Book" like the ones your parents used to lug around when you were a kid to get bargains at places you never heard of. Unlike it's older preceedent, GreenZebra touts only green companies (including organicARCHITECT) and brings these sustainable options into the hands of consumers.

I admit, I was dubious about participating in the book, but it has brought us clients, new friends and nice people calling to thank us for our website.

To purchase the book for $25, visit their site.

Economic Activity

This is 3-D world map that depicts economic activity. It is interesting to think what you might assume this shows if you did not know that...
More info

American Dream: The Movie

organicARCHITECT is proud to be one of the sponsors of American Dream: The Movie.

We live surrounded by material wealth, technology and comfort. However, why is personal and collective happiness so elusive? What part of our aspirations corresponds to conditioning and advertisement and what part is genuinely our own?

These are the questions explored in this film.



Including a variety of engaging interviews with celebrities, luminaries and industry leaders such as Danny Glover, Howard Zinn, Vicki Robin, Ed Begley Jr. and others, American Dream helps shed light on our consumer culture, its causes and effects. With a combination of humor and insight, we discover an America we never knew we were a part of.

No word on a San Francisco screening yet, but I encourage you to donate some support.

Bush officials misled public on global warming

James Hansen, chief climate scientist for NASA reported over a year ago that the Bush administration tried to stop him from speaking out calling for prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming.

Hearing things like this shows the divide between politics and what is in the Public's best interest.

But now this story about the investigation into the deliberate attempts by the Bush Administration to create doubt about Global Warming just reminds me how much this is true.

Apparently, 40 percent of the 279 climate scientists who responded to a White House questionnaire complained that some of their scientific papers had been edited in a way that changed their meaning. Nearly half of the 279 said in response to another question that at some point they had been told to delete reference to "global warming" or "climate change" from a report.

Full Story at Associated Press

UK Global Warming Report

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change just released this report on the Climate Crisis. The byproduct of 2500 reviewers and six years of work, the report is by far the most scrutinzed analysis of Global Warming ever released.

The consensus: the world's leading experts says global warming will happen faster and be more devastating than previously thought. This is not the work of a lone crackpot, but the leading scientists in their field. Any disputed information was removed, leaving only the creamy goodness of scientific fact. Each paragraph of this report was therefore argued over and scrutinised intensely. Only points that were considered indisputable survived this process. This is a very conservative document - that's what makes it so scary,' said one senior UK climate expert.

A draft of the report is available online, with the final release due in Q4 2007.

We can expect the frequency of devastating storms - like Katrina - will increase dramatically. Sea levels will rise over the century by around 2 feet; snow will disappear from all but the highest mountains; deserts will spread; oceans become acidic, leading to the destruction of coral reefs and atolls; and deadly heatwaves will become more prevalent.

from the Guardian

Interactive Guide (Flash)

Why Gore Should Run...

Rolling Stone has a great piece on why Al Gore should run for President in 2008.

History in the making:
A stiff vice president campaigns on his administration's legacy of unprecedented prosperity.
Looks terrible on TV.
Bows out, following a disputed vote count.
Then, two terms later, with no incumbent in the race, he re-enters the fray.
Promises to change the course of a disastrous war founded on lies.
And charges to victory. I'm referring, of course, to the 1968 campaign of Richard Milhous Nixon.
But four decades later, history has a chance to repeat itself for Albert Arnold Gore.

After all, Gore was right about the War, right about Global Warming, and won the 2000 election. Will he run?

New York House Magazine (really a green building magazine...)

I met Jim Andrews at the recent Healthy Environment, Healthy Economy Conference in Albany. Jim publishes New York House Magazine and we sat on a panel together.

I read the issue on the flight back and it is really well done. You don't need to live in New York to enjoy it either.

If you hear of any other Green Happenings in New York, please let us know.

You can read Jim's version of our encounter here.

Urban Revision on TreeHugger

I am on the Advisory Board of a wonderfully innovative design competition, called Urban Revision that I mentioned here.

Today they were mentioned on TreeHugger, which in the nerdy green world is like being on CNN.

Robots building our homes?

The future of the profession of Architecture is in Rapid Prototyping and Contour Crafting. Imagine, robots building our buildings in a matter of days, not months.

Behrokh Khoshnevis pioneered Contour Crafting. The University of Southern California professor now has a machine ready for real-world use. His contour crafting machine is scheduled to erect its first house in California within the next few months. The two-story house will built in less than 24 hours out of only concrete and gypsum, and without the help of a single human hand.

The possibilities for housing the poor, for disaster relief housing and free form building shapes could revolutionize the entire industry.

“The architectural options will explode,” predicts Dr. Khoshnevis at USC in Los Angeles, “Right now, your shoes, clothes, and car are already made automatically, but your house is built by hand - and it doesn’t make sense.”

The typical American house generates nearly 4 tons of waste in its' six month construction. Robot building could bring that amount to nearly zero waste.

Watch a video of the robot in action here (YouTube).

From Wired
Times Online
and Inhabitat

COST BARRIERS: Rent your own solar panels

In our projects, there are now only three items where cost is still a barrier to greening the building:

1. Specifying FSC Certified Wood.
This important Certification (demonstrating wood to be sustainably harvested, still adds a 20% upcharge to the cost of your wood framing. This is a tough sell to most clients, but we try to do it anyway. TIP: save money in one area, say removing the need for air conditioning, and divert that money towards the purchase of FSC Certified Wood instead.

2. Carbon Neutrality.
Innovative Carbon Trading programs now exist for both your car and your home, such as the TerraPass and DriveNeutral. While these are great ways to make yourself Carbon Neutral, they represent a small, but additional, cost that is a tough sell for many.

AND 3. Solar Panels.
While everyone seems to understand the obvious benefits and uses of Solar Panels, the cost can often be prohibitive. Even with the great State Incentives that exist for solar, and an average payback of 5-7 years, the $20,000 average up front cost is too much.

But now, a rental program called REnU is removing this barrier to entry. Delaware-based Citizenre, a renewable energy development group, will rent solar panels to US residents on a per-kilowatt basis on a one, five, or twenty-five year contract. With a tiny $500 deposit, paid back at the end of the contract WITH interest, homeowners can easily and inexpensively make the switch from local utilities to solar power. What’s more, Citizenre acquires all necessary permits for residential installation, making the process simple. I have not tried it yet, but I have already begun the process.

New Islands Discovered Under Melting Global Ice

The upper reaches of the northern hemisphere are warming so much that new islands are being discovered, including those once thought to be peninsula. "A peninsula long thought to be part of Greenland's mainland turned out to be an island when a glacier retreated."

Long Beach Welcomes Eric Corey Freed?!

It is always strange when people write things about you using information they copy from our website. A friend found this press release and you can imagine the sarcastic comments he added...

The more important story is the HOMEX 2007 Conference in Long Beach in March. It looks like it will be a great event... with sessions on land planning, PR, sales and my session on green building with Brian Gitt of Build It Green.

Visionary Design Competitions Announced

I have been working with the amazing team at Archiventure to produce Re:Vision. A series of design competitions, Re:Vision seeks to encourage innovative, visionary and, most importantly, deployable solutions to the problems in our cities.

The first four competitions, found here, are themed based on energy, economy, transportation, and community. These are prelude to the large, final competition.

Entries for the first competition, Re:Volt, seeking visionary energy solutions are due April 1st.

Their wonderful tagline, "To ask big WHAT IFS..." says it all.

As a member of their Advisory Board, I am hoping this will foster in a wave of brilliant solutions.

Personal Wind Turbines

From TreeHugger, comes the Stormblade: a true personal wind turbine for residential use. The Stormblade Turbine can convert up to 70% of wind power into electricity, double the current average.

Note: also check out Eco-Living: The Best of TreeHugger.

In the personal wind turbine market, I also am interested in:
Sunforce Wind Generator
Use the wind to generate power and run your appliances and electronics. Great for cabins, 12V battery charging, remote power, backup power and hobbyists. Delivers up to 400 Watts.

Sunforce 400-Watt Wind Generator
Lightweight, weatherproof cast aluminum wind generator for powering buildings or pumps, or charging batteries for large power demands

Sunforce Wind Generator
Carbon fiber composite blades ensure low wind noise

Worldchanging Panel at The Commonwealth Club

In December, I hosted this panel for Worldchanging and their new, wonderful book.

The audio receording of the Panel is now up and available.

Bamboo: the perfect material?

If I told you there’s a building material that is up to 50 times stronger than oak but lighter than steel or concrete, that is flexible, aesthetically pleasing and highly rated for its green credentials, you might say it sounds too good to be true.

If I went on to explain that the material can be used not only to build bridges and cathedrals but also to create floors, walls, clothing, paper, vinegar, cosmetics, animal feed and as a vegetable for human consumption, you would probably dismiss it as some Utopian pipe dream.

But the product exists. It’s bamboo. Our friend (and bamboo expert & architect) Darrell DeBoer is interviewed in this great article...

Full Story

Trouble dealing with climate skeptics?

How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic
A great guide to answer those still in a state of denial about our climate crisis.

The Oil We Eat (Literally!)

The Oil We Eat
Following the food chain back to Iraq

NYT: Now Looking Green Is Looking Good

Great article in the NY Times essentially stating what we already know:
there is money to be saved, made and earned in going green.

New York Times

Why water is so fascinating...

Water is one of the few substances on Earth that expands when it freezes. Most materials contract. (This is why you should not put a can of soda in the freezer...)

A simple but environmentally important and unusual property of water is that its common solid form, ice, floats on its liquid form. As a solid, water is less dense that as a liquid, thus why it floats. This is due to how the molecules arrange themselves when freezing. What is even stranger about this is that colder water is more dense than warmer water, until it becomes ice.

The Mpemba effect is the observation that, in some specific circumstances, hotter water freezes faster than colder water. Crazy, huh?!

The effect of dams have altered the rotation and speed of the Earth.

In Hong Kong, sea water is extensively used for flushing toilets citywide in order to conserve fresh water resources.

There is a misconception that a toilet flushes (or a tub drains) in a different direction when south of the equator. In reality, the Coriolis Effect is much too small compared to other influences on drain direction, such as the geometry of the tank; and the direction in which water was initially added to it.

Erosion formed the Grand Canyon.

It takes 23 gallons of water to produce a pound of tomatoes, it takes 5,214 gallons of water to produce a pound of beef.

Check out Dame Anita Roddick's wonderful book on water.

In Architecture, we are always fighting gravity and water. Perhaps this is why I am so interested in them.

More on water...