hink of it all - of the life that is! Study your friends and foes!
Study the past! And answer this: "Are these times better than those?" The life-long quarrel, the paltry spite, the sting of your poisoned pride! No matter who fell it were better to fight as they did when the world was wide.
Green houses?
"TOUGHER rules to make new houses greener could "easily" be achieved and are widely supported by people who recently built, or are planning to build, a home, a Government-commissioned report has found.The report, obtained by The Sunday Age under freedom-of-information laws, found that the [Victorian] State Government could improve the energy-rating scheme for new homes from five stars to six "immediately and with no major problems" and seven stars was "attainable in the medium term".
The focus groups also backed seven stars - which includes even better insulation, ensuring no large unprotected windows faced east or west, and eaves on windows - but there was some resistance, particularly from those who felt it may be difficult to change the way a house sat on a small block, and from those who did not want to modify windows. It was explained the seven stars would add 2-6% to building costs but reduce demand for heating and cooling by 45%."
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Very nice. But while we argue about what energy rating is most suitable for houses we must remember that any benefit to the environment from making existing houses slightly more energy efficient will be well and truly cancelled out by our, or our government's, current fanaticism for growth:..
"Victoria's population swelled by about 80,000 last year.
A report from Monash University's Centre for Population and Urban Research says... the Victorian Government's Melbourne 2030 planning vision is a failure and Melbourne will need to accommodate at least an extra 1.1 million cars and 782,000 new homes in the next three decades."
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We can embrace symbolism as much as we like, with 'green' energy ratings for houses, but we simply cannot convince ourselves that such measures will deliver net environmental benefits when our population is going up, and bloody fast at that.
The emerging global society has no goal beyond unlimited growth and pure quantity. What help can energy stars and green light bulbs be in this context?