Todd of CleverChimp has a great post today about his reactions to “An Inconvenient Truth” and the grave we’ve dug for ourselves on this planet. I had much the same reaction while watching the movie (which is one of the reason I haven’t written about it) — but it certainly helped me decide to be as bike-centric as possible from here on out.
Unrelated to cars, but I wonder how many people not in the building industry are familiar with LEED – Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design? It’s a certification process that rates buildings based on a variety of different green measures, and was designed, amongst other things, to transform the market by creating a need for sustainable design and products.
It’s by no means a perfect system, and will not by itself save the planet, but it is amazing how it is really taking off. Many states, including California, now require LEED Silver certification for government buildings, and the interest in the industry is HUGE. Very soon, sustainable design is not going to be a specialty. I would say that already it no longer is, and before long it will be a pre-requisite, a given, the new industry standard. It is so heartening to me to see such wholesale cultural change, at least within this particular industry – but it is an important industry in the whole energy-consuming scheme of things.
There are a few LEED points related to automobile use (providing bicycle racks and changing facilities, locating close to public transportation etc), but probably not enough. It’s hard to change that on a building-by-building basis, but I think it’s something architects and urban planners are going to need to address more seriously – this country in particular has been designed around the car and that is going to take some undoing.
If anyone wants a layperson’s description of some of the sustainable approaches that can be taken in designing a building, feel free to e-mail me.