"Building Green"
Green building, to me, is probably the most obvious thing we can do to reduce our footprints on the environment. By simply choosing some alternate means of construction, we have a way to save millions of kilowatt hours and keep potentially billions of tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
We need to learn to build around the environment rather than on top of it. Houses oriented to make full use of sunlight during the respective seasons could save Americans, particularly in the Southwest, thousands of dollars individually by reducing the need for active heating and cooling units (AC units). Solar thermal and geothermal units could also achieve the same goal, and there are few places in the US where at least one of these methods couldn't be incorporated.
I saw some very interesting practices in green building at Earth Haven, which was probably my greatest take away from the trip. They used primitive, but very effective, building materials to provide better airflow and insulation in the structures, as well as to reduce the carbon footprint that materials like mortar and concrete have. They oriented certain buildings to capture the sun's warmth to heat the house throughout the nights, which I found out can be very cold. They also made very efficient use of the space they had been given, clearing no trees that didn't need to be removed to give more habitat to local fauna, while using the trees they did remove as building material in the structures themselves. I was also impressed that they attempted a green roof, something I've never actually seen firsthand, and found very practical and aesthetically appealing.
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