Adapting to a Greenhouse World

Adapting to a Greenhouse World

I’ve been harboring this illusion that once the doubts were adequately addressed, the world would wake up and take real action to address the problem. Instead, we’re faced with global gridlock over the Kyoto Protocol—which even if fully implemented would hardly make a dent in the problem—and fossil fuel lobbies arguing that climate change is good for you. As I recover from the disillusionment, I realize that living in a greenhouse world calls for many of the same green approaches we’ve been pursuing, only it calls more strongly.

In some ways we are already reacting to and dealing with the effects of global warming. New York City is gearing up for a second summer of widespread pesticide spraying to control its first-ever encounter with the tropical West Nile Encephalitis. Parts of the U.S. suffering from water shortages are drilling deeper wells. For the most part, however, planning for and adapting to climate change has yet to begin, and a myriad of choices are about to be made that will determine whether we help solve the root problem as we adapt, or exacerbate it.

For the building and design professions, many of the green strategies we discuss in

EBN are all the more appropriate in the face of climate change. Global warming will not affect all regions uniformly—the changing climate patterns will actually result in cooling in some areas. Regardless of the anticipated local effect, designing a building that requires minimal mechanical heating or cooling is certainly better for all involved than just beefing up the mechanical system to cover climatic uncertainties. Light-colored surfaces will help to keep cooling loads down while also helping to prevent

urban heat islands from making the localized warming even more extreme.

In addition to changes in temperature, predictions in many regions include more frequent severe weather events and changes in precipitation. To prepare for a possible increase in droughts, it’s better to plant drought-tolerant species than to rely on irrigation in places that historically have not needed it. And, in the face of torrential rains, we’ll all be better served by landscapes and hardscapes that can

absorb water rather than draining it. As always, the challenge is to keep the big picture in mind as we respond to the many expected and unexpected circumstances we’re likely to encounter in our global climate experiment.

– Nadav Malin