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Vanessa and I went to Colorado last week to go to the Greenbuild Conference in Denver. Wow, what a transformation that city has seen. We were able to walk the showroom floor and see all of the very cool applications of sustainable products available to us for constructing our houses. Much of what was shown we have already been incorporating into our specifications but there are always a few standouts that are new. Just to name a few: There was the “Coolarado” a swamp cooler that removes all humidity from the air and can cool a house on a small fraction of the energy required to run an typical HVAC unit, a big hit was the “Big Ass Fan” for obvious reasons of humor, and there was a recycled tire pervious pavement by Firestone. Many of the vendors gave away samples, from baseball caps to aluminum water bottles and florescent light bulbs. But the educational seminars were the bigger time component of our trip for certain. I will probably post on individual products in the future but, for now, I would like to share what for me was the most impacting part of the conference.

Jeff Sachs is a global economist and Director of the Earth Institute who has worked extensively on extreme poverty throughout the world. His book “The End of Poverty” explores the following topic in depth and is recommended reading by Vanessa. He began his speech by outlining the two foes to a sustainable planet his so called “Dual Threat”, extreme poverty and dramatic ecological stress. One billion people are currently living in extreme poverty around the globe. Freshwater supply is falling sharply, ocean ecology is diminishing, forestry is being removed at alarming rates, and carbon dioxide is filling the atmosphere. When graphed together all indicators entered in a steep decline within the last 150 years or so. The United States is contributing 25% of the worlds carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases to the environment. By 2009 China will surpass us in that wonderful statistic, boy that will surely tick us off won’t it. These are all factors in what is termed the Anthropocene by Paul Crutzen a Nobel Peace Prize recipient. This is basically an epoch in which humans have begun to affect earth’s climate and ecology.

Human population on earth reached its first billion in 1830, second in 1930, third in 1960 and currently is around 6.5 billion. Technology has allowed this near vertical explosion in population in the 20th century. The advent of nitrogen based fertilizers has allowed us to produce the food required to sustain this growth coupled with life expectancy rates that are currently expanding. This coupled with the current pace of new zoinotic diseases such as SARS, AIDS, and Avion Flu and current weather patterns can be disastrous. One half of Australia’s wheat crop was lost this year due to drought and high temperatures. The affect of this loss will most likely be felt more-so in countries that are unable to produce their own grain.

We can end extreme poverty by 2025 according to Jeff Sachs. One example of our ability to solve a crisis is given with the malaria epidemic in Africa. A $5 bednet lasts for five years and would cost $1.5 billion to cover 300 million beds; this solution alone would significantly minimize the spread of malaria currently devastating the continent. To put this into perspective we currently spend $1.5 billion per day in defense spending in the U.S.

Is this sustainable? What are the affects of ending poverty? Extreme poverty causes extreme survival measures to be taken. Clear-cutting of forests, warring over land for the food it produces, dumping waste in fresh water supplies, these all occur when survival is the pressure being applied. People can’t be concerned with ecological sensitivity when they are starving. If the world as a whole were to spend just 1% of its $50 trillion in GNP annually we would be able to set a truly sustainable course by ending Anthropogenic climate change and end world poverty.

Dr. Sachs ended his presentation with this quote which I think he attributed to William McDonough and which completely cemented a paradigm shift in my heart and mind, “Ignorance ends today, negligence begins tomorrow”.

Micah