A more sustainable neighborhood…Bed ZEDBy Brian Skeele, on April 5th, 2011 Built and occupied in 2002, Beddington Zero Emissions Development, Bed ZED, helps people go green with time tested encouragements. The resident on the right took too long a shower. the one on the left failed to recycle a beer can. What were they thinking, what planet are they living on????
Remember, don’t take too long a shower! As you can see, my sense of humor loves to go gonzo. Twist the lines of reality and poke fun at our collective humanity. Hey, I own it…one of my favorite sayings is of the late Hunter Thompson, “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” This post started out to be about Bed ZED and floor plans. It still is, just had a zany intro… The point I want to emphasize is the relationship between neighborhood, shared amenities and your home’s design. In Bed ZED, the transit friendly location creates a deeper affordability as alternatives to private car ownership are expanded….WATCH BED ZED VIDEO>> READ MORE >> Drought Happens: US and ChinaBy Brian Skeele, on March 30th, 2011 Drought is the Impending Bummer of the Southwest. We pay attention to La Nina and El Nino, the ocean currents whose temperature determines how much rain and snow we get in Santa Fe. I think it was the summer of 2003 when we had a serious drought, pinon trees died, and the city went into water rationing. You got a ticket if you watered on the wrong days, or in the middle of the day! There are still dead, barren pinon trees standing across the landscape, reminding us that drought happens. A few weeks ago I was buying a replacement part for a storm door from the manufacturer in South Dakota and got to talking to customer service about the weather. She was saying they had a wet fall which saturated the ground, and then a lot of snow fell this winter. If the snow should melt rapidly, 1/2 of the upper US will be having serious flooding this spring. Drought in China has parched 16+ million acres of farmland, threatening the livelihood of 50 million farmers. 20 million people without drinking water. I shared with her we’ve had a really dry winter and spring. In southern New Mexico, there have already been fires, and the fire danger remains high. Today I came across this news report that China is having a similar occurrence; really wet in the north and severe drought in the South. In 2007, NASA released a report that 17 out of 18 computer models predicted permanent, catastropic drought in the Southwest US and the Mediterranean by 2050. My take on all this, is we had better get good at recycling water! I’ll be talking about water recycling in future posts, but for now, here is some of the article about China’s Drought… READ MORE >> Is your neighborhood playing with A FULL DECK OF CARDS?By Brian Skeele, on March 21st, 2011 is your neighborhood playing with a full deck of cards? To help folks become conversant in all the parts that go into a sustainable neighborhood, while having fun at the same time, how bout a deck of playing cards??! Like baseball cards, but with a different component on each card; An illustration on the face, and info on the back…”Collect em all!” The cards could tie into Lessons Learned, Ideas, Tools, How to… , Sustainable Rules of Thumb, Indicators, etc and maybe the big village scene. Hey, submit your ideas for cards, and if your idea(s) is chosen, we’ll send you a pack of cards! Make em totally fun, and yet informative, and empowering. Remember, the challenge is to make sustainable neighborhoods as popular as cell phones, so they’ll spread across the planet like wildfire! Hey, how can we be making sustainable real, if your neighborhood isn’t playing with a full deck of cards??!! Submit your ideas Here!! Entrepreneurship-Innovation from here on outBy Brian Skeele, on March 20th, 2011
Collaboration! Our times call for rapid prototyping social, economical, and ecological strategies so the emerging sustainable economy can….emerge! Many of the jobs being created from evolving technologies, don’t even exist yet. We are inventing the future as we travel forward. Half of the hottest futurist jobs don’t even exist yet, according to Daniel Burrus, author of Technotrends and CEO of Burrus Research Associates. “We’re in the early stages of shifting gears into the e-society,” he says. “Virtually every part of an enterprise will be e-enabled, which includes connectivity, content, commerce, communication, collaboration, and community.”… READ MORE >> Health and Healing- Inner work in a supportive environment!By Brian Skeele, on March 19th, 2011 Physical, emotional, mental, spiritual levels of health Whoa, this is a huge component to a sustainable lifestyle. In many ways, health is an indicator of sustainability. There’s inner health, coming to grips with emotional, mental, and spiritual issues. And of course, there are the elements of physical and outer health. A newborn’s health begins in the womb. Diet and food quality, toxicity in the environment, stress in our lives, how loving our environment, and what kinds of options we have available as we age and transition from this plane are just a few of the profound components that come into play…. READ MORE >> Sustainable Fiber-Industrial Hemp-Get over it!By Brian Skeele, on March 19th, 2011 It grows in marginal soils. It’s fibers are really tough. 19th century sailing vessels made their sails and rope with industrial hemp. I’ve heard blue jeans made of hemp don’t wear out, they wear in. The excuses we are using to not grow hemp, are bogus! It’s time we stop being run by emotional boogie men and wise up. The herbicides and pesticides used to grow cotton destroy a soil’s fertility. Paper mills use dioxin in the processing of paper pulp. Dioxin is the most toxic man-made organic chemical known to man, second in toxicity only to radioactive waste. The healthy omega oils in hemp are sorely needed in our diets. Our ocean based Omega oil sources are getting polluted and over fished. When all the externalities associated with all the products that can be created by this amazing plant, are compared to externalities from fossil fuel based products, we will gratefully embrace industrial hemp. Our sustainable future needs renewable, non polluting fiber and food sources! Our farmers need the profitable crop. It’s time America, to make sustainable real! Share your ideas, links to resources, and recommendations for renewable fibers here!… READ MORE >> WANTED: Killer Modeling Tool to Sell Sustainable Urban Villages! Part 1By Brian Skeele, on March 8th, 2011 1/3 of the Boomers want to move in. 88% of the Millennials want to move in. The problem is, Sustainable Urban Villages don’t exist!
Building Your Neighborhood Sustainable Well they do, between my ears and in my heart, but we need a great modeling tool so all the future residents, landowners, finance people, city planners, designers, the school district, and neighbors can see what there are signing up for/signing off on. Then the resuscitation of the construction industry can begin in earnest, the emerging sustainable economy can…emerge! As this is the ultimate sales tool, we are building the neighborhood on paper, so the future residents can say, “Yes, if you build that, I’ll move in!”. And of course, the numbers have to work for everyone involved. Let me give you a walk thru of “the Killer Modeling Tool” as I conceive it…. READ MORE >> What to do about the economy? Go Sustainable!By Brian Skeele, on February 28th, 2011 The thing to do these days is get a more affordable lifestyle. Lower your gasoline bill, lower the monthly heating bill, lower the housing payment, lower healthcare costs….you name it…make it lower. The problem is gas prices are going up! and that makes everything more expensive. It’s time to get creative. It’s time to go sustainable. This is where we are as a planet, in the middle of reinventing ourselves… We need an affordable lifestyle…..one that is economically sustainable. Coincidently, there is a good chance our more affordable lifestyle is going to live lighter on the planet too. So this reinvention, this retrofit, this more sustainable living is going to be good for the polar bears as well. President Obama brought it to our attention in the State of the Union address… Americans have always invented themselves, and the time is here again…. READ MORE >> |
