If you could live anywhere, where would it be?
An old friend emailed me over the holidays, “Did you ever look into those enviro/sustainable flats in london? If so, what did you find?”
Last year I chanced on a sales exhibition at the architecture center off Charing Cross. But for the same reasoning its better to buy an obsolete car instead of a prius, or second hand clothes, I wouldn’t get one of those flats, but an existing one: if you consider the energy that goes into producing new things that are ‘green,’ they are not very green any more.
One day I could be interested in fitting waterless sanitation if the location wasn’t too metropolitan, and even going off grid if the location was favorable. A guy I know in the Free Software community has a domestead but it invovles a lot of real engineering which I know nothing about.
But while libertarianist approaches are psychologically empowering - doing something yourself feels great - and as a market opens up it will get funded and become a popular movement, I figure only government regulation can do anything meaningful here.
That assumes a healthy democratic culture.
Oops. Even if Al Gore became president in 2008, he’d just get assasinated like JFK if he started doing anything useful ;-)
Blue chip propaganda funds lull democracy at its ears, and lobbying trips up its feet.
But with China’s growth, the USA looks as unimportant as the EU. And I don’t see China is ever going to become democratic, which is a shame as China is the only superpower that could challenge the USA.
Having just got back from Cape Town, I heard that South Africa is the most developed African nation, but its democracy is a write-off. Maybe Brasil and the other South Americans might do something interesting, but it won’t really have any impact unless China and the USA follow it.
So I’m more interested in not moving into areas that will be flooded or have no ozone layer and stable access to fresh water and such.
Any suggestions? :-)
The If you could live anywhere, where would it be? by David Crossland, except the quotations and unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
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If there’s no existing green places, should you buy green or existing?
On the one hand, buying existing means that you are reusing something old and you will probably green it somewhat as you go along, but on the other, you’re doing nothing to general green housing demand and greening it as much as possible will probably take more energy than a new green place because it’s not designed for it.
s/general/generate/ # brown paper bag, anyone?