Climate Change Action

I`ve been doing quite a bit of reading about building movements, and messaging, one interesting if unsprising commonality of largescale movements is the involvement of wider constituancies. For example outspoken scientist and business leaders in the case of the clean air act. It is these non-traditional activists that really signal a movement has a chance. In the UK I have been interested in how active MedAct has become on climate change, development charity ChristianAid has likewise become involved in climate change. Bellow is an editorial from Architechture 2030, a growing organisation of Architechts who are taking measure to lower the carbon footprints of buildings. I find this kind of thing very encouraging.

Architechture 2030 Update.

"Over the past several months Architecture 2030 has been busier than ever. We set some very challenging goals for ourselves, and with enormous support and commitment, we achieved much of what we set out to accomplish. Our team, accompanied by four very influential speakers, joined forces with some of the most powerful names in the industry to produce a live web-cast that would inform more students, professionals and community leaders than we could reach in a lifetime by traveling and lecturing.

On February 20, 2007, Architecture 2030 hosted the 2010 Imperative Global Emergency Teach-in, which was sponsored by the Home Depot Foundation, American Institute of Architects, US Green Building Council, New York Academy of Sciences and many other generous supporters. The event, web-cast live from New York City for three and a half hours, reached over a quarter of a million participants from 47 countries worldwide. Over 1200 AIA members participated for continuing education credit and hundreds of universities across the globe hosted exciting events with remarkable turnouts.

Now the word is out: Global warming is happening and the educational and design communities have an obligation to join others worldwide in the battle against catastrophic climate change. The 2010 Imperative offers students, faculty and administrators a historic opportunity to lead our nation in this time of crisis, and The 2030 ˚Challenge offers professionals and policymakers a simple, achievable strategy to reduce fossil-fuel consumption and the carbon emissions that are currently a by-product of the built environment."