ECO- BUILDING II
TOM BENDER
May 1996
I've worked the last twenty-five years on developing parts of what is now
called "Eco-design", under the belief that healthier buildings,
lower energy use, and less ecological impact was important. This was only
to discover recently that all this time I was still looking at things in
isolation rather in their ecological interconnectedness!
What I didn't see was that every dollar a person saves on energy use in
a building is somehow spent on something else - vacations, a new car, an
education, or just paying the bills. As those same dollars ripple around
the economy, they end up using up similar amounts of energy and resources
as before.1 (The only apparent
out seems to be earning less or investing in renewable resources.) And after
working to cut in half the use of wood in a building (and equivalently the
ecological impact of logging) we find that in one generation of growth we're
cutting twice as many trees to build twice as many, twice as large
houses.
All these connections lead back to our base cultural values of greed, growth,
and violence. Until we let loose of our insane belief that geometric expansion
of our numbers and our appetites can continue in a finite world, any
"eco-building" is only a band-aid. True "eco-building"
involves whether we build as well as how, and the values from
which we work. It is, however, possible to let go of the values of
greed, growth, and violence. And doing so, we discover many unexpected benefits.2
We discover first that stabilizing growth has immense monetary, resource,
and personal advantages. It totally avoids our current expenditure
of 33% to 40% of our time and resources spent on creating the infrastructure
to accommodate more people and things.3 A population doubling means duplicating our entire stock
of houses, water systems, power plants, cities, roads - as well as prematurely
demolishing existing ones. It also means spending more on feeding and educating
those additional people to adulthood.
Growth has been claimed as necessary "to help the poor" - as if
growth over the last twenty years hasn't dramatically worsened the
condition of the poor and heightened the concentration of our wealth among
the rich.4 The median US
household income for wage-earners is currently $31,000, with more than 13%
of households under the monetary poverty level of $15,000. A fully equitable
distribution of personal income would amount to $59,000 per household.5
An equitable society could totally eliminate poverty and support EVERYONE
at the current median income level of $31,000 per household. To do
so would, surprisingly, need 47% less work, and equivalently fewer resources
than our current society uses to maintain poverty and inequality!
To achieve growth, we have also developed the habit of paying for personal
expenditures, corporate expansion, and governmental infrastructure consistently
through debt purchasing. That debt purchasing has resulted in an across-the-board
20% surcharge on our cost of living, without any substantive benefit.6
Together, stabilizing growth and dealing directly with the inequality
in our society can permanently release us from almost 75% of our present
energy, material, financial and human costs of living, without lowering
our material living standard, and without need for any "technical fixes".7
Our belief in an endless cornucopia of resources and wealth has also caused
us to ignore care and efficiency in all of our institutional structures,
production processes, and living patterns. The result is that they have
developed almost inconceivable waste - which now represents an equally great
opportunity for improved effectiveness and efficiency.9
Well-documented research over the last twenty years has shown and
is beginning to produce factor of ten savings (90% reduction) in
energy and resources needed in almost every sector of society.10 This means two hundred mile-per-gallon cars, safer than
today's, and totally recyclable.11
They're due on the road in four to five years. It means homes that require
only sunlight and rainfall to operate.12 Prototypes are already in operation in almost all of our
climate zones. You've probably been involved in some of them. Water?.....today's
toilets and showers already have reduced water use 75% from fixtures of
only a few years ago - and more improvements are on the way.13 Forestry practices are available now
- requiring no new technology - that maintain all forests in old
growth condition, while doubling timber production, increasing the economic
benefits from timber production nine-fold, and increasing total forest value
many times more.14
How about a higher education system with resources available - free
to all, worldwide - via satellite TV?15 Housing that costs only one-tenth of today's, through
improved durability, energy efficiency and financing patterns?16 Industrial products with virtually
zero ecological impact and magnitude lower production costs?17 All these and more are immanent or
already being implemented today. "Eco-building" (or "eco-adapting",
as we need much less new building under such conditions) is clearly an important
element of improving the effectiveness and efficiency of our systems - once
we deal first with the basic causes of instability in our society.
When we put just these four opportunities together, they add up to ways
to reduce our resource consumption, ecological impact, and use of our time
by up to 97%, which is significantly more than appears needed to achieve
sustainablilty. (And the real rewards of a sustainable society
do not fall in these familiar material dimensions of life.)18
It is unlikely that we would ever follow such possibilities out to these
extremes - if for no other reason that we decide we want to work
more, or we want to do better for ourselves and all life, and ask
for higher levels of performance in all we do. But even if we decide to
only achieve two-thirds of each of these savings, that still adds up to
an 82% reduction from our present patterns - almost exactly what is projected
to be needed to operate on a sustainable basis.19
We've also looked at these issues very briefly and in isolation. In reality
they are interactive. Some give resource savings but not financial or employment
ones. Others, as in any ecological system, have multiple and interactive
effects and savings.20
Hours worked would drop significantly, but unlikely to the equivalent 12
minutes a day, as these alternatives are often more employment intensive.
* * *
What is important is that the savings possible
are far more than enough to totally transform a once frightening prospect
of change into an opportunity for significant betterment of our lives!21
* * *
One of the curious twists of ecological interconnectedness
here is that proceeding with implementing these efficiency improvements
(such as eco-building) without first dealing with growth and our other base
values can turn out scarily counterproductive. It would result with us twenty-five
years down the road having twice the population, fewer resources, and having
already used up the opportunities for releasing resources out of our operating
patterns to finance a transition to sustainability.22 The likelihood of major reduction in our material quality
of life would then be immense.
Does that mean we should stop trying to improve the ecological fitness of
our building? That would seem crazy. What I think it means is that we hold
such building up as an example of just one of the benefits
of stabilizing growth, and explain the others. That we add to the technical
aspect of eco-building the human, psychological, and spiritual dimensions
that give us connectedness with the rest of creation, places with souls,
gardens to nurture our spirits, and cities of passion.23 And along side, to put as much or greater effort into
helping us all become aware of and achieve all the benefits of stabilizing
growth and becoming a sustainable society.24
TOM BENDER
38755 Reed Rd.
Nehalem OR 97131 USA
503-368-6294
© May 1996
tbender@nehalemtel.net