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 The United States, while accounting for 5% of the world's population, uses 25% oif the world's resources. In
the United States, buildings alone account for: - 39 percent of total
energy use
- 12 percent of the total
water consumption
- 68 percent of total electricity consumption
- 38 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions.
A recent report from the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) concludes that promoting the green
design, construction, renovation, and operation of buildings could cut North American greenhouse gas emissions more deeply,
quickly, and cheaply than any other available measure. The CEC was established by Canada, the United States, and Mexico to
build cooperation on environmental issues in North America. The CEC report notes that North America's buildings cause the
annual release of more than 2,200 megatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, or about 35% of the continent's total carbon
emissions. The report concludes that the rapid deployment of currently available and emerging energy efficiency technologies
could avoid 1,700 megatons of annual carbon dioxide emissions by 2030. When scientists and public policy specialists gathered at the Earth Institute
at Columbia University, New York, to assess the State of the Planet in 2004, their overriding concern centered on global-scale
interactions between the growing human population and Earth processes under increasing strain. The fourfold increase
of the human population during the past century, coupled with a roughly 4.5-fold increase of economic activity per person,
has led to adverse anthropogenic effects on species extinction, ecosystem functions and biodiversity, climate change, groundwater
depletion, soil nutrient losses, and zoonotic disease emergence and transmission,with far too little societal effort invested
in mitigating these consequences... There is a public hunger today for information that is not spin or sound bites.
Editorial, Science
What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls
a butterfly. Richard Bach
Climate,
soil, air, water, energy resources, food, fisheries, and biodiversity are all elements of the global commons, and all have
prospects that range from uncertain to perilous. Editorial, Science
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| Kelso Dunes |
It is from numberless diverse acts of courage
and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or
strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope; and crossing each other from a million different centers
of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
Robert F. Kennedy, Make Gentle the Life of This World, The Vision of Robert
F. Kennedy
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