] That year, the U.S. Green Building Council launched a program to
] accredit building professionals in environmental design. Interest in
] the program, called LEED, for Leadership in Energy and Environmental
] Design, has skyrocketed. Since 2000, about 19,000 people have been
] accredited, 9,000 in the last month alone.

My dad was recently accredited as LEED instructor. He's the one that got me thinking about sustainability and energy issues, and it's one of those things that snowballs once you learn more and more about it (like info security).

The U.S. Green Building Council (http://www.usgbc.org/) and LEED are helping to establish methods by which the environmental friendliness of buildings can be measured, however this system is still in its infancy. For one, the current "Green Building" system uses points to determine just how "Green" your building is, so a silver or a gold rating doesn't necessarily mean that you don't commit gross environmental negligences.

They're on their way, however. LEED certification is more stringent than either GREEN or Energy Star (www.energystar.gov) and all help to mitigate a long-undiagnosed problem. The key idea to remember is that energy resource scarcity affects everyone who cares even remotely for the next generation[s] of people regardless of whether or not you hug trees.

k wrote:
] ] Still, relatively cheap energy costs in the United States
] ] mean most building owners remain unconcerned with
] ] efficiency, said Srinivas Katipamula, a research engineer
] ] at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Of the roughly
] ] 4.7 million commercial buildings in the United States,
] ] only 10 percent have energy management systems or time
] ] clocks that turn lights on or off based on the time of
] ] day, he said.
]
] [ This is the key issue. Market forces are very good at
] curbing demand for scarce resources, but the more i read about
] the world energy infrastructure, the less confident i am that
] the market can respond in time. In a situation where
] availability of a resource drops sharply while demand
] continues to increase due to other factors, the market shocks
] will be severe. If we're gonna minimize the real cost (much
] of which is still in the future), it's time to start on this
] now. In fact, it was probably time to start decades ago. But
] it's ever so hard to get anyone to spend money on R&D without
] a short-term financial incentive. It doesn't appear that
] market forces operate well on long time scales. Efficiencies
] in existing products and processes will go a long way to
] reducing our demand for energy, saving money in the long run,
] not to mention the resulting environmental benefits. -k]

Not necessarily. It just takes leadership, something that is sorely lacking in this country at the moment.

Left to our own devices (market forces) nothing will change. There's simply no incentive for anyone to migrate to sustainable energy sources or even more efficient utilization of existing resources. When it comes to the combustion engine, there was a brief spurt of innovation in the late 70's/early 80's around fuel economy, but that was just Detroit cow-towing to competitive pressure for engines that were closer to the mean in annual costs. Regression to the mean has brought us back to little or no innovation because there is simply no profit motive to power it.

If anything, the market forces have eroded fuel economy in favor of horsepower and torque. It's far more important to us to be able to have 350+hp engines sucking down 15mpg than it is to avoid dependance on fossil fuels, get out of the Middle East political situations, or any other grave issue that's widely known throughout our society. With all of these serious issues, there's STILL no profit motive for investment.

Such was the same after WW2, when leadership in aeronautics was slipping to the Soviet Union. Shortly after the war, no one gave a fuck about it. It wasn't until Congress and Eisenhower started proving that superiority in aeronautics was a moral imperative. Sputnik helped, but just like 9/11, it was clouded in disinformation and disillusionment than anything concrete. People were... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

flynn23 wrote:
] Until the US MANDATES development of sustainable energy, it
] will not happen in a meaningful way in which the US will
] benefit. Notice that I didn't say it won't happen period. It
] WILL happen, because unlike the Cold War days of the early
] 60s, there are other nations which have the capabilities,
] accumen, and cultural aptitude to take advantage of this
] opportunity and leap frog everyone else. The question is not
] IF, it's WHO.

[ You make good and salient points. I think a mandate of this sort is necessary, and it needs to come in the form of large budgets for R & D. Unfortunately, even if Kerry is elected, he's gonna have his hands so full digging us out of the enormous hole W put us in, that I'm not convinced there'll be money available. Still, it wouldn't be a stretch to say that all that money is going to develop technologies which will untie us from the volatile Middle East and prevent stupid pointless wars in the future.

To tack on a little to the end of your post, it's also a matter of when. 2050 ain't good enough. Even the best predictions put us smack in the middle of financial crisis due to a lack of non-OPEC oil by that time, so this shit needs to happen on an accelerated scale, which means it'll cost more. Alas, even after paying $2 a gallon at the pump, americans aren't likely to be in favor of large alternative energy investments, not to mention the auto industry, power industry, and so on. It's a political 3rd rail that's gonna take some real balls to grasp. I hope someone's up to it. -k]

k wrote:
] flynn23 wrote:
] ] Until the US MANDATES development of sustainable energy, it
] ] will not happen in a meaningful way in which the US will
] ] benefit. Notice that I didn't say it won't happen period. It
]
] ] WILL happen, because unlike the Cold War days of the early
] ] 60s, there are other nations which have the capabilities,
] ] accumen, and cultural aptitude to take advantage of this
] ] opportunity and leap frog everyone else. The question is not
]
] ] IF, it's WHO.
]
] [ You make good and salient points. I think a mandate of this
] sort is necessary, and it needs to come in the form of large
] budgets for R & D. Unfortunately, even if Kerry is elected,
] he's gonna have his hands so full digging us out of the
] enormous hole W put us in, that I'm not convinced there'll be
] money available. Still, it wouldn't be a stretch to say that
] all that money is going to develop technologies which will
] untie us from the volatile Middle East and prevent stupid
] pointless wars in the future.
]
] To tack on a little to the end of your post, it's also a
] matter of when. 2050 ain't good enough. Even the best
] predictions put us smack in the middle of financial crisis due
] to a lack of non-OPEC oil by that time, so this shit needs to
] happen on an accelerated scale, which means it'll cost more.
] Alas, even after paying $2 a gallon at the pump, americans
] aren't likely to be in favor of large alternative energy
] investments, not to mention the auto industry, power industry,
] and so on. It's a political 3rd rail that's gonna take some
] real balls to grasp. I hope someone's up to it. -k]

I totally agree with you that the president-elect will have a very tough time finding the finances to do what I suggested. Between healthcare costs, eminent Medicare/Medicaid crisis, eminent Social Security crisis, Iraq, HUGE deficit, and a bunch of other stuff, it'll be very difficult to direct any real funding to the matter. There are probably some creative ways to spur it (tax relief for funds that invest in the space, etc), but that's not going to have the same impact that we had with the Apollo program. Laser focus is what we need, and united muscle behind it, to get the job done.

Your point about timing is also spot on. And that's why the sense of urgency is requiring such focused investment. Even if all the projections are wrong about how much fossil fuel is left, it doesn't matter. The point is that in today's geo-political reality, empowering the Middle East with exponential growth on a fossil fuel economy is suicide. It's not even about the US anymore. It's about developing nations in Africa and Latin America. They're fed up with this shit too, and a lot of the strife in these lands is directly related to reliance on these systems.

I disagree wi... [ Read More (0.3k in body) ]