An international quote...

Greetings,

I have been asked to share a comment that I wrote to a senior official of an international group that is focusing on green building around the world. It is interesting to see how information is translated to other languages and cultures. I have held strong to my belief that we need to share information to create higher performance dwellings around the world. Even more than that, I have asked focus to be put upon the things that make the human race thrive: safe food, safe water, safe air quality, lower dependence on things like fossil fuels, etc.

Here is the quote...see what you think:

"...As with anything in life, there has to be someone who brings awareness that a problem exists. Once someone is aware of a problem or issue, they then can become more motivated to take action. Most people simply do not know, or worse yet, don't care that they or their dwellings are using extremely high amounts of energy! With the price of fuel sources going up, people from all over the world are now concerned about spending less on fuel. The 'green building craze' that is going on right now is a wonderful thing for prolonging our existence on this planet, but make no mistake, it is a very necessary thing for prolonging the time we have left using fossil fuel. We hope to leave for our future generations more than we took, but this is not possible at the current pace...

I have taught many classes on the history of building and in those classes, I talk about how civilizations built many thousands of years ago. They built on necessity and with what little resources they had back then. In the past 10 years, a city was discovered in Syria that is dated to over 6,000 years old and the buildings in the city were cited for passive solar (shading of the living areas during the hot months and allowing sun in during the cool months) and the buildings had cavity walls which helped to cool the dwellings during the hot days. That is simply amazing!! Why now are we applauded for using this technology that was used so many thousands of years ago? I believe that everything we need to know is written down somewhere, AND I believe that it is the responsibility of people like us to write down our findings and share those findings with future generations so that they can improve upon our findings. I take the primitive forms of these designs that archaeologists have found and use the technology of our age to improve upon the original ideas. Much like a song writer or musician will discover an ancient melody or ancient words and adapt those findings into a chart topping song! I believe it is detrimental to our world to hold onto information that can help our existence and livelihood as a specie. There should be no boundary such as competition, culture, etc. This applies only to Green Building, as what your topics are about. Everything else in this world needs to be handled by a higher power and is well beyond my knowledge or ability!!

Another great topic Ali, well done!

All the best!

Adam"

AB