David Korten: Living Buildings, Living Economies, and a Living Future

from YES! Magazine:




Living Buildings, Living Economies, and a Living Future
David Korten: What we can learn from two of the most exciting emerging movements of our time.

by David Korten
posted May 18, 2011


At a recent conference, I saw the potential for blending two of the most exciting emerging movements of our time—the living building and the living economies movements. A vision of the combination of these two movements energized me with renewed hope that we humans can end our isolation from one another and from nature—that we can move forward to achieve a prosperous, secure, and creative human future for all.

The Living Building Challenge

The conference I attended was led by Jason McLennan of the Cascadia Green Building Council and the International Living Future Institute. Ambitiously titled “Living Future 2011,” the conference focused on the “Living Building Challenge,” which takes Green Building standards to a new level. As I listened to the conference presenters, I heard some of the brightest and most tech-savvy minds in architecture, construction, and urban planning spell out the practical possibilities for creating built spaces around integrated energy, water, and nutrition (food) systems. Some of the ideas are still theoretical. Most, however, are already in application or being incorporated into physical structures now under construction.

These innovative proposals eliminate waste, feature natural lighting, and provide for onsite capture of rainwater, energy (wind, solar, and thermal), and organic matter (food scraps and human waste) for recycling and reuse, including for urban gardens (edible roofs and walls and built in green houses). .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.yesmagazine.org/blogs/david-korten/living-buildings-living-economies-and-a-living-future

And the ask yourself: why?

The reason is simple, and it's the same reason that electric vehicles and alternative energy have so much difficulty making in-roads into these standards: There is a group of well-connected business -- at EVERY level (city/county/state/federal) -- that make millions off the system being the way it is. They don't want new standards or techologies, because it forces them to a) compete and/or b) change and innovate to remain competitive. And this group of people funds powerful lobbyist groups to keep it this way, despite the fact that more efficient technologies have been developed.

That's where we need to start: Kick the well-connected bozos out of the queue. It'll also require rewriting building codes to allow for green and/or 'experimental' building technologies. Right now, it's next to impossible to build anything that's not standard box-frame construction, despite the fact that it's any extremely inefficient way of building things, and makes the reckless assumption of unlimited cheap energy and resources.