Sustainable Building

Green building as a concept; as a movement has been riding high in the last year or so. It has been realised by the great and the good that to properly insulate and to sustainably supply energy to all buildings will achieve the Kyoto targets that we signed up to, all on its own. For this reason and because it is cheapish to properly insulate homes, (relative to new energy sources and the technology that supplies it) it is seen as a great way to cut back on carbon emissions. However, while the world gears up to this idea and as businesses sign up to the principles, and as newspapers and TV news and Mr Schwarzenegger et al put their weight behind the ideals of climate change, the world 'sustainable' has been kind of passed over without proper attention. In essence, as I am sure you all know, sustainability is about preserving the ability of future generations to have the means to survive at a reasonable rate of comfort in the future. What we do shouldn't destroy what future generations can do, in terms of resources and so on. But what sustainability, if we use the word in its full sense, really proposes is that we sustain human life, whatever it takes (within reason). It means that our lives as beings are as precious to us now as they will be in 1000 years time when we are all dead. There are some in medicine that claim we will soon unlock life expectancy and live for two hundred years onwards almost as long as we like. Or at least the technology and knowledge we have will be able to do this, whether we choose to or not. So not only does sustainable living involve us and what we do now, but it also involves the unborn future generations in the far off distance. It may also involve us with medical marvels leading to indefinite life expectancy as well. However, this all depends on what 'sustainability' really means . The ability to survive just about anything that is thrown at us by nature, or each other perhaps. To 'sustain' life, is often to save it from an array of disasters which may just hit one continent or just one town, or all of them. For example, the kind of disaster that we are creating now with climate change, is exactly what sustainability is alluding to. Not just to stop extreme weather and flooding from happening in the first place, but ensuring that when it does happen we can cope with it and we can survive it. And to do this, we need sustainable i.e. disaster resistant building: Hence the existence of Future Towns and this blog.