Resilient Design Institute Completes Six-Continent Outreach Tour

BuildingGreen and Environmental Building News founder Alex Wilson crisscrosses the globe to spread his climate-change preparedness gospel.

April 1, 2014

The exhaust system on the BuildingGreen corporate jet was modified to write an important message over Sydney, Australia

Photo: jimmyharris (license: CC BY 2.0) and Armchair Aviator (license: CC BY 3.0). Changes made by Lard Anemone.

Citing the urgency of climate change, Resilient Design Institute founder and president Alex Wilson traveled more than 28,000 miles in 88 days—by chartered plane, SUV, and Jet-Ski—educating audiences large and small about the importance of preparing for disruptions due to unforeseen weather events.

“Catastrophic storms like Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy have opened our eyes to the importance of preparing for disaster,” he said from atop a diesel mega-yacht to a beachfront crowd in Rio de Janeiro. “You should really consider retrofitting your building envelope with some rigid mineral wool,” he shouted to the crowd, emphasizing his major points with pyrotechnic displays.

Reaching a broader audience

Wilson’s worldwide tour represents a broad departure from his understated approach of the previous 30 years. He confessed he’d grown weary of “preaching to the choir” about passive solar heating, “tuning” glazing characteristics by building orientation, and the global warming potential of insulation blowing agents.

“You go to conference after conference and see the same two dozen people talking about ‘moving the needle.’ I needed to reach a new audience, so I had to go big,” he said, adding that the worldwide tour might also help him locate the needle.

Tour highlights include:

• Arriving in Tokyo by Concorde (borrowed from Russian oligarch/Foamglas magnate Dimitri Zhutov), and explaining to a 20,000-person stadium audience how heat pumps work.
• Skydiving into the courtyard of a Balinese elementary school and telling the kids all about the durability and fire-resistance of slate roofing.
• Appearing on live television in Ulan Bator and describing how traditional Mongolian yurts could be improved with smart vapor retarders.

The RDI stretch Hummer, donated by longtime EBN sponsor General Motors, will become Alex Wilson’s primary vehicle back in Vermont. “Did you know you can fit a pair of canoes right on top?” he enthusiastically exclaimed.

Photo: Lard Anemone

Wilson spoke fondly of the stretch Hummer he used for portions of the tour. “It was great on roads that were washed out by storms, and it made a real impression whenever I drove into a new town—kids especially loved it! And it stayed very temperate inside, since I coated it with some of that insulating paint before the tour. Three coats and—bam!—R-57… I’m not sure why this stuff isn’t listed in GreenSpec” (BuildingGreen’s database of green building products).

Next stop: Antarctica

Wilson is already looking ahead to his 2015 outreach tour, which will cover all seven continents.

“I’m excited about next year’s trip to Antarctica—with a warming climate, I believe it has a lot of potential as a human habitat. The passive solar possibilities are terrific, of course, and I think we’ll discover some interesting locavore options once we acquire a taste for the local fauna. In fact, now that Jerelyn and I have completed and moved into our renovated farmhouse [in Vermont], I’ll have time to start planning our next home, and I think the poles have a lot to offer.”

Jerelyn Wilson was unavailable for comment.