It’s Getting Hot In Here

Last week, while talking with a group of high school students in Delhi about climate change, it came out that I am really excited about making our built environment green. After talking about green buildings for a few minutes, two 11th grade girls came up to ask “Why do we have to make them green? Can’t we use any other color?” While I laughed and explained about all the other ways to make things green than by painting them, it did get me thinking…

I thought of Thomas Friedman’s movie and articles about making green the new red, white and blue. Green is patriotic – and why shouldn’t our red states and blue states all be green states?

I also thought about Solitaire Townsend, one of the best speakers I’ve ever seen talk about communicating climate change. She, and her company Futerra, are working to make green pink, that is, making sustainability cool, fun and optimistic.

And today, in Delhi’s winter smog and constant particulate fog, I thought that going green means we can keep the blue, too. The science says the air has really improved since the government mandated CNG in all buses and autorickshaws, but I can’t imagine a less blue sky, or what it will look like if 1,000 cars continue to be added to Delhi’s roads each week.

There are so many colors of green,  so I’m just wondering what color is your green?Green could be clear or even tinted, depending on the performance of your windows, though recent reports on making green buildings safer for birds might show that real green is double-paned and frosted. That way, you can have lots of daylight, not lose your building’s heat, and prevent bird death from impact on the shiny window surfaces.

Even green roofs often show up in multiple colors, as demonstrated by the red sedum on the beautifully appropriate Ford Rouge plant in Dearborn, Michigan on by the green roof mosaic on the Birmingham City Council.

And an article in Bangalore’s Deccan Herald pointed out that we should make green white referring to the benefits of replacing black tar of roads and roofs with reflective paints or materials. The urban heat island effect results in summertime temperatures in Tokyo that are up to 12.5 degrees Celsius higher than the surrounding countryside; such heat increases have been measured in many global cities and are blamed for many of the extreme heat waves and their associated deaths in urban areas. Massive reductions in urban heat island effects could be achieved with lightening up our roads (and adding more of those green (even if not green-colored) roofs)!

And in so many ways, green really is green — whether that’s through the profitability of efficiency, a plate of local and organic salad, or using local vegetation in landscaping rather than exotic flowering plants!

Now back to making the world greener…