How the IT Sector Can Become a Legitimate Climate Solutions Provider The IT industry has long enjoyed a reputation as a "clean" industry, representing significant GDP growth relative to its greenhouse gas footprint (for example, see "Earth Calling: The Environmental Impacts of the Mobile Telecommunications Industry" report). And it has demonstrated phenomenal leaps in efficiency that would make Moore proud. Yet with the current policy discourse centered on climate change, the industry's success may become a liability.
Posted Wed Oct 28, 2009
Natural Capitalism We stand at the cusp of a significant paradigm shift.
We have been building towards a transformational tipping point, where natural capital will eventually be valued alongside financial capital. While progress has been steady and promising for the last ten years, the widespread fundamental change we've been hoping for still lies ahead.
Posted Tue Oct 20, 2009
Good Intention and Rounding Errors: Occupational Hazards of Sustainable Design An occupational hazard of working in sustainable design is the constant reminder that everything has impact. For everything in your field of view, materials and energy were wrestled from the ground and shipped around the earth in impossibly complex ways. Human intention versus human consequence. Sigh. Some decision-makers are self-described designers, but many more are engineers and businesspeople, whose priorities are more pragmatic than lyrical: How can we use far fewer materials and get the same results?
Posted Wed Oct 7, 2009
Why Architecture Needs to Take Advantage of Natural Resources Environmentally conscious vernacular architecture is making a comeback, says Autodesk's John F. Kennedy--and there are hundreds of millions of existing buildings on the planet that need to become energy- and resource-efficient.
Posted Tue Oct 6, 2009
The True Sustainability Potential of Cloud Computing: Smarter Design To hear experts tell it, cloud computing is “the new dot-com,” the “biggest shift computing shift in two decades” or even technology era’s “Cambrian explosion.” But it's also a way to address the enormous need for energy efficiency in computing.
Posted Thu Oct 1, 2009
Why Are the Majority of Things We Consume Inherently Unsustainable? Although we've made great strides in sustainability--Wal-Mart, for example, has taken a huge step forward by setting a new standard for green manufacturing with its Sustainable Product Index--the majority of products, buildings, and infrastructure designed today still consume excessive energy. They also exhaust and pollute precious water resources and introduce toxic substances into our daily lives.
Posted Mon Sep 28, 2009
