Sustainable Building Archives - Page 4 of 8

Hempcrete: The Building Block for a Hempier Future

April 6, 2012June 11, 2009 by David Mark Brown

hempcrete Sustainable building is an albatross for a world stranded in the sea of global warming. So many of our resources are tied up in the construction, maintenance and operation of dwellings. And all too often these dwellings have been seen as our combative ways to keep the outside world at bay. Nature, a pox on thee!

The good news is that there are more and more people out there bringing the inside world into closer harmony with the outside world. Ooam. Ooam. No, I don’t mean by focusing your chi or by feng shui or anything hocus pocus. I simply mean it is time to start making homes out of our surroundings instead of trying to separate our homes from our surroundings. It is so much more considerate and less huffy.

Earth 2100 Got me Thinking… Oh Crap

June 5, 2009 by David Mark Brown

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Can we get there? Within the last 15 minutes of ABC’s show, Earth 2100, a positive picture of our potential future was painted. (How is that for alliteration?) The interviewed experts posed that it would be possible to perform the heavy lifting of global clean-up by 2050, with only the peripheries to remain after that. Really?

Now, many bloggers and commentators have spoken out that the first 100 minutes of the show were simply too devastatingly depressing. I don’t know. I thought the bulk of the show was pretty entertaining. Instead, it was the end that brought me crashing down into middle of the afternoon, bathrobe shuffling, bacon eating depression. If the bright, hopeful version of our future requires us to bond together globally in loving harmony in order to completely revolutionize our cultures, values and worldviews… I think I just peed a little.

Earth 2100, Flibbertigibbet?

June 4, 2009 by David Mark Brown

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I by chance stumbled upon the last half of ABC’s show Earth 2100 a couple nights ago. Now understand, I just returned from a trip to Texas, the land of my birth. And Texas, with the exception of Austin, is not the land of environmental sensitivity. And so my frame of mind was stemming from what some other bloggers on the topic of Earth 2100 have been referring to as “the lowest common denominator.” Imagine my reverse culture shock when I found myself watching an acid trip induced, enviro-documentary/graphic novel about the end of humanity on prime time television.

Break out the shisha and tea. I need to relax. Now for the last couple of days most of the reviews on the show have been critical, but personally I think everyone needs to take a few puffs from the hookah. After you feel a little light headed you should keep reading.