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November 20, 2006
2006 Greenbuild conference
I spent last week in Denver, attending the Greenbuild conference. The opening plenary address was delivered by Bill McDonough http://www.mcdonough.com/full.htm. It set the tone for the conference.
McDonough offered a rejoinder to the question we hear often: "So if you don't want to burn fossil fuel, how do you feel about nuclear power?" His response: he is all for nuclear power, produced by fusion. The reactor is at a good distance from where we live. 93 million miles distant.
McDonough wants us to resist the concept of waste; to use all waste products as food for another process. Or change the process to avoid creating the waste.
This is where we need to go if we are to avoid exhausting the earth's resources. McDonough tells us that we are not going to succeed simply by finding energy to replace the fossil-derived energy we use today. We must decrease our energy use, and our resource use in general.
One of the session speakers used globes to define the world's and the US's consumption. He suggested that the world has an ecofootprint of about 3 globes (the world's population consumes resources at about 3x the sustainable rate). A pretty daunting picture. But he suggests the US consumes at a 5-globe rate.
That fits my general impression: we Americans have to reduce our consumption by something like 5 or 10-fold.
Posted by aquacura.com at November 20, 2006 07:53 PM