We have to tackle carbon emmisions if we want to avoid more flooding, argues Tony Juniper on his Comment is Free blog
Dealing with the effects of heavy rain is one thing but, if recent climate change research proves correct, how will we cope with what lies ahead?
From the Communities and Local Government website:
The Code measures the sustainability of a new home. It went live in England as a voluntary standard in April 2007. This consultation document follows on from the positive response received to Building a Greener Future: Towards Zero Carbon Development, where we asked if rating against the Code should be mandatory.
Consultation is aimed at Housing development industry, architects, construction companies, planners, energy efficiency specialists, environmental stakeholders and academics.
Zero Champion blog has been re-branded and given a face lift, as Zero Hero ** says
It’s part of the development I’m working on which will see this space being integrated more closely to the websites my company publishes – Building, Building Design, Property Week and Building Services Journal
check out the new look at Sustainability Blog
** (sorry couldn’t resist that)
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The smoking ban has occasioned much debate from both the pro- and anti- camps, but now it seems that the new law could also lead to an unexpected environmental backlash.
A recent survey by British Gas asserts that the average gas-fired patio heater emits more CO2 per year than a Range Rover and the sudden upsurge in patio heaters, used to warm determined smokers who flock outside pubs for their much-needed cigarette breaks, could be drastically harming the environment.
Based on the usage of patio heaters in Scotland post its smoking ban in March 2006, British Gas estimates that now the whole of the UK is smoke-free patio heaters in pubs will emit up to 160,000 tonnes of CO2 per year.
According to Darren Johnson – Green Party member of the London assembly “each patio heater generates 2.2 tonnes of carbon dioxide on average per year – the equivalent to driving a car for over 6,000 miles”. In layman’s terms, some claim that patio heaters installed in pubs could produce as much carbon dioxide as a small city.
So what’s the alternative? Should the hardened smoker simply have to reach for another jumper, as the Lib Dem environmental spokesman Normal Baker has suggested? Or are these figures just a massive case of over-inflated scaremongering?
“my philosophy is to treat everybody in this industry as a crook, a cheat or a liar. Don’t trust anybody.”
This was the subheading for The Guardian’s Working Life article on Saturday.
Built to order profiled one of Banner Homes ‘specialist’ project managers, who wears a number one on his hard hat as “it winds some of them up”
It is a reminder that the shout and order, adversarial and aggressive approach to construction project management still exists. But in an environment of collaborative working, integrated working and building trust does this approach have a place in our industry today?
Even Banner Homes on their website do not think so, recognising on their customer care page
…that continued success comes not only from the expertise of the team itself, but from the importance it places on the relationships it has with contractors …
As a CE collaborative working champion and some one very much involved in the progress towards a collaborative, trust based sector, it saddens me to read articles like this.
I would urge readers of this to write to the Guardian (and even Banner Homes) pointing out the totally unrepresentative nature of this site manager, and lets hope the Guardian can balance this article with a profile that is representative of today’s progressive collaborative industry.
Noted on the CE (Constructing Excellence) web news pages (why is there no RSS feed here?) the responses that CE have made to the number of sustainability consultation documents around at the moment. Of interest is the CE response to legislation on waste management plans.
(you may have to register to get access to these pages)
Noted in the latest copy of insITe, the publication from the constructing excellence IT Construction Forum, that their membership scheme is now free. More details on registering on their website
the recently launched civil engineering sustainability strategy can be downloaded from the CIRIA news site. (Can’t locate it on the ICE site which seems the obvious place!)
Well worth a read, I particularly like the aims:
Aim 1 Promote strong leadership for sustainable development within civil engineering There is a need for strong commitment and leadership at all levels, including clients, to tap into the enormous potential of civil engineering to protect the environment and promote sustainable development.
leadership is vital and it will interesting to watch how leaders in this sector become role models
But equally as interesting is Aim 3
Build capacity for sustainable development in civil engineering building capacity for sustainable development is about equipping organisations and individuals with the understanding, skills and access to independent information, knowledge and training that enables them to perform effectively.
It will again be interesting to see how this emerges, and whether an open source approach to knowledge share and education is adopted (open source sustainability)
I noted no mention of measuring the ecological (or carbon) footprint of civil engineering activities.
Recent comments from the team at i-think – what do yu think? Join the debate at i-think
Sustainable development or jobs for the boys?
The Communities and Local Government department says the Government’s ‘Planning for a Sustainable Future: White Paper’ “proposes reforms on how we take decisions on nationally significant infrastructure projects – including energy, waste, waste-water and transport – responding to the challenges of economic globalisation and climate change. It also proposes further reforms to the Town and Country Planning system, building on the recent improvements to make it more efficient and more responsive.”
Friends of the Earth say that “sustainable development is being stripped apart to benefit big business. These proposals are bad for people, bad for democracy and bad for the environment … They will leave affected communities with no meaningful say in how their area is developed.”
What do you think? Click here to comment on i-Think.com.
Climate Change for the Masses
The plethora of recent events designed to tackle climate change culminated last week in Live Earth, Al Gore’s much publicised 24-hour, 7-continent concert series. With the aim of triggering a mass global movement in response to the climate change agenda, more than 100 musical acts were united in order to reach a worldwide audience of an estimated 2 billion people.
So do these essentially ‘consumer’ events help or hinder the cause? Live Earth has been criticised for being little more than a middle-of-the-road publicity stunt and, with many of the acts arriving via international air travel, could be seen as making a mockery of the entire underlying message.
And yet maybe that’s the point. Live Earth may not have had any measurable effect in terms of tackling global warming, but at least we all know what the point of the event was. As Environment Secretary Hilary Benn pointed out, “Events like Live Earth can help to bring people together to encourage them to take action locally, nationally, and internationally and with more than 40% of the UK’s carbon dioxide emissions coming from people’s homes and travel, inspiring people to act is increasingly urgent.”
Perhaps the message that we should take away from Live Earth is one of inclusiveness. Clearly business organisations need to play their part in reducing carbon emissions, but corporates should not be expected to shoulder the full weight of responsibility.
Research commissioned by DEFRA found that although 94% of British people think that the world’s climate is changing, only 66% say that they are personally taking action to limit this change. So what about the other 28%?
Using low energy lightbulbs, less of a reliance on air-conditioning and/or heating, switching off electrical appliances rather than merely leaving them on stand-by and a careful consideration of transport options are among the easiest changes that we can all make right across our every day lives.
Climate change is a big deal, but living and working sustainably, even at a personal level, need not be.
Log on to i-think to comment.
Further to the recent post here, the effectiveness of the new Construction Minister is slowly being revealed:
From today’s Building web news:
In a newly-published list of ministerial responsibilities Timms, who is officially minister of state for competitiveness, will look after e-commerce, communications, information, bioscience, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, shipbuilding, automotive, manufacturing, creative industries, retail, steel and construction as part of his brief.
He is also responsible for enterprise, growth and business investment, regional economies, business support simplification, corporate governance and corporate social responsibility, as well as overseeing the Small Business Service, Companies House, the Shareholder Executive and the Industrial Development Unit.
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