[lit-ideas] GW, innovation, and simple steps
- From: "Julie Krueger" <juliereneb@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, J. <Snazzbo3@xxxxxxxxxx>, "Jim Krueger" <yaakov@xxxxxxxxxx>, "Dan Leonowich" <dleonowich@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2008 10:20:44 -0500
I stumbled onto this site and love it -- some very cool ideas. (I love the
building-top lake, but I have questions about the sheer weight....)
Ecoscraps - A Scrapbook of the Green World <http://ecoscraps.com/>:
And, of course, a bow to slimplicity --
*Study: If we painted every rooftop in 100 major cities
white<http://www.latimes.com/news/science/environment/la-me-roofs10-2008sep10,0,1149905.story?>,
it would offset the entire planet's carbon dioxide emissions for one year*.
*That's nearly 44 metric gigatons.*
[image: Going green just turned
white.]<http://sustainablog.org/files/2008/09/white-roof.jpg>
It makes sense. We all know white reflects heat (that's why we wear white
shirts and dresses on hot days), and we even knew that painting rooftops
white lessens the need for air conditioning. But until now, we didn't know
that changing dark-colored surfaces to white would help fight against global
warming.
The news broke yesterday at California's Climate Change Research
Conference<http://www.climatechange.ca.gov/events/2008_conference/>.
Hashem Akbari, attending the conference from the Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory, announced that replacing dark shingles on an average-sized
household rooftop with a lighter color would offset 10 metric tons of carbon
dioxide—comparable to taking two mid-sized cars off the road for a year.
Speaking of roadways, they're part of the problem too. Because of its cheap
nature, most roads are paved with black asphalt instead of light grey
concrete, which causes roads to absorb an inordinate amount of heat.
Repaving roads with lighter-colored materials would have a similar impact to
painting rooftops.
California already mandates that newly-built large buildings have
light-colored rooftops, but the law was intended to decrease air
conditioning costs. Akbari hopes to enlist the United Nations in an effort
to convince major cities to make their roadways and rooftops more pale.
Julie Krueger
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