A building shaped like a butterfly. A skyscraper modeled after self-cooling termite mounds. A structure in arid climate inspired by a desert snail. Biomimicry, the application of nature’s principles to solve problems, is an emerging influence in modern day green building and other design and technology.
Here at COP17, some experts have said that the single most important outcome that can emerge from Durban is an agreement on the design of the Green Climate Fund – the new long-term mechanism for dispersing billions of dollars of climate finance for clean technology, adaptation, and capacity-building.
COP-17 has made me proud to be South African for several reasons. First, hosting of the 17th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP) here in Durban, South Africa, has helped to remind the world that the impacts of climate change are already dis…
This entry is cross-posted from Rick Fedrizzi’s blog on Huff Post Green.
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No power on Earth can stop an idea whose time has come.
– Victor Hugo
I found myself sitting at the kitchen table last night, long after the President and the Packers were done.
The Packers won. What was keeping me up was the thought that the country might actually be able to pull our own victory out of what has been inc…
Mariah Howard-Porath, USGBC Emerging Professional, Social Media Coordinator, Earth Day New York
Imagine having the ability to gather a village of engineers, architects, designers, lawyers, teachers and advocates of green building practices in one pla…
With the release yesterday of the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) sustainability scorecards for federal agencies and departments, the public got its first progress report on federal agency efforts to cut emissions.
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As the Manager of USGBC’s Building Performance Partnership and Recertification programs here at USGBC, I spend my time thinking over and over again about which aspects of building operations should be regularly monitored and which make the maximum contribution to the continuous high-performance of each building. We have to figure out how to encourage building operators to look at the holistic performance of their buildings and act based on the full story – So, how do we do that? What do we ask them to monitor?