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There are a whole lotta examples from the last thirty or forty years of intentional sustainability and restorative living.  In the US, the New Alchemy Institute had enormous effects and proved many of the concepts that we are revisiting today.  They have been, by and large, forgotten, although many of the old New Alchies are still active in the field.

Davis Homes in Davis, CA was a whole solar development that has flourished since it was built and has increased in value over the years more than the surrounding developments because of its sustainability features.

If you want to go back even farther, there is the suburban Chicago solar development of Keck and Keck that deserve much greater study from a purely architectural standpoint.

We've had the answers to climate change for 35 years.  We just haven't implemented them because we live in a society and economics system that mitigates against such humane solutions.

Solar IS Civil Defense

by gmoke on Tue Oct 20th, 2009 at 10:03:24 PM EST
My mother could say something about sustainable living, her family having "sustained" themselves on a Colorado mountain farm for 40 years including the depression.

My sister visited her last year during a winter power outage, and she was sitting at her kitchen table wrapped in a blanket, reading a book by her antique kerosene lamp. Nobody knows where the kerosene came from...

by asdf on Tue Oct 20th, 2009 at 11:57:55 PM EST
[ Parent ]
It always seemed that it was so much easier to invade Iraq or do deals with the Saudis or Texas Oil Billionaires than to change the way you were actually living.  Hell, even building sustainable cars with better fuel consumption would have been a great start.  But the market ruled because the market saw the Earth (and foreign lives) as an expendable commodity because the market was seen as guided by the hand of God the magic of the markets.

Well that "God" is telling them something different now.

notes from no w here

by Frank Schnittger (mail Frankschnittger at hot dotty communists) on Wed Oct 21st, 2009 at 02:16:33 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Our economy is run according to business principles and actions are taken on the basis of whether they are profitable to the holders of assets or claims over assers and not for (or against) any given notion of common good.

En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Oct 21st, 2009 at 06:42:20 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Our economy is run for rentier profit.

Worse, this rentier profit is denominated not in Value, but in a claim over Value created ex nihilo -  ie 'anti-Value'.

"Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky

by ChrisCook (cojockathotmaildotcom) on Wed Oct 21st, 2009 at 07:08:59 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Harry Thomson's active solar houses are still operating 40 years after their development, and achieve 5 9s availability heating in climates like up-state new york.  They are also quite cheap to build and maintain.
by njh on Wed Oct 21st, 2009 at 07:55:24 PM EST
[ Parent ]

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