What
is “Sustainable Conservation”?
From an excerpt of the award-winning New
York Times writer Thomas L. Friedmann’s TV documentary:
“Green, the New Red, White & Blue”. In the
90 min. TV airing on the Discovery Channel, he offers convincing
arguments that not only do we have the tools to engage public
economic backing and financial incentives to bring about far-reaching
changes to the United States corporate sustainable environmental
measures in design and construction, but that this weaning
from our national oil addiction begins with each individual
contribution. Are you GREEN?
Categorically we can reduce in any pre-1970
constructed building Co2 emissions by more than 40%, solely
with design-specific LEED considerations. While our website
is geared toward residential projects and small commercial
ventures, this form of design-related environmentalism remains
a global concern for all involved. Some basic conservation
facts:
- Americans, with approximately five percent of the world’s
population, use over one quarter (25%) of the total world
energy resources every day.
- The full life cycle of every gallon of hi-octane gasoline,
from production, transport, to consumption, inserts over
22 lbs. of Co2 into our atmosphere.
- Our personal vehicles contribute over 25% of the total
US Co2 emissions.
- Our homes contribute to more than 20% of the total US
Co2 emissions.
- Coal-fired power plants are the single largest atmospheric
polluters worldwide.
- China will supplant the US as the single largest Co2
emitter nation by 2008.
- The greatest conservation measure with the most far-reaching
consequences is not new technological development, is not
in the legislative induced, industrial sector green approaches,
and is not with national corporate conservation measures.
- The largest sustainable conservation measure is through
individual contribution and behavioral modification to personal
activities.
- Measurable global climate changes are currently taking
place in every biosphere. Whether or not these observed
changes are reversible remains inconclusive scientifically,
and is an ongoing open political debate.
I’m not a fanatical tree hugger, however
if given the opportunity for a brief presentation I am very
convincing about far-reaching sustainability concepts in design.
As a trained architect with a long heritage from a conservationist
family that dates back to the early 1920s, my father is a
renown Floridian architect, Alfred Browning Parker, F.A.I.A.
and my grandfather John Clayton Gifford was one of the first
Doctors of Forestry in the USA and is listed among other achievements
as one of the founders of the Everglades National Park. I
carry this environmental consciousness with great pride and
extensive consideration. Exceptional design and specific environmental
concerns are inseparable to conservationist architectural
services. With degrees of Bachelor of Environmental Design
in Architecture, with high honors from North Carolina State
University, and the graduate degree Master of Architecture
from Harvard University in the late 1970’s we were educated
in an ever-growing conservation movement. For the E.P.R.O.M.
national environmental housing competition in 1972, one of
my projects was awarded the School of Design representation
entry.
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