While we battle global warming with long-term projects, and plans for adaptation and remediation, we fail to defend the front line—the upfront emissions that impact us now, rapidly warming the planet toward 2°C. Fortunately, the carbon footprint of the building and construction sector came to light over the last five years, notably for materials like cement, concrete, steel, glass, insulation and asphalt. National and regional Buy Clean programs encourage production of low-carbon materials for construction, and encourage low-carbon building designs. Nevertheless, the general public is oblivious to its own role in global warming, being the economic driver of final demand. The onus is on all of us—through our power of choice—to influence our supply chain’s manufacturing emissions, through product and services selection.

The battle to curb global warming in a timely manner resides with consumers—the largest market shaping force on the planet. The public needs to know. Our current challenge is to buy time to decarbonize, to reduce emissions via educated consumption. One challenge remains to accomplish this: How to reduce consumption without provoking a recession. And that’s what we need to learn.

Sound building design can reduce Embodied Carbon even lacking sufficient Life Cycle Analysis data and tools.

This video addresses reality. How building design and construction materials accelerate Climate Change. How simply meeting building code proforma and low-carbon policy is not enough. Smart low-carbon design is required. See how building designs can ignore embodied emissions, and how unreliable Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) data can defeat low-carbon building material selection. Watch this short-course on how to cut embodied carbon immediately.

Bill Caplan at the Cary Institute:

Opening Address - AIA Climate Symposium at Cary Institute (October 2024)