Zero Carbon or Zero Bank Balance

The battle to reduce carbon emissions has taken a back seat whilst we figure out how we are going to cope with hugely expensive energy bills. It all seems a bit introspective as we balance the well-being of our domestic households and small businesses like pubs, restaurants, hotels etc., as they face astronomical costs to keep themselves open and sod the rest of the world as they battle war, floods, drought, food shortages and more.

Like every other crisis or turning point in history, we are going to have to adapt to a massive shift in geo-political and cultural revolution to cope with changing circumstances - and, no, I am not advising we line up behind Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil and other organisations who are happy to stir up unrest without, like the rest of us, having the slightest clue how to go about solving the crises, but to take advantage of the technologies we have spent the last couple of centuries developing.

We've got a couple of articles here that do just that, providing the intelligence we need to start to reverse the trend. After the agricultural age, industrial age, and the digital eras, we are now in the Information era. We can now amass mountains of information about our lives, environment, cities, infrastructure and the cost to ourselves, and the planet, in what we consume, manufacture and waste - and only by analysing the data we collect can we hope to mitigate the effects of increasing populations, mass urbanisation, shifting populations and rising social tensions - and reliably forecast where it is all taking us.

The Construction Industry is at the heart of all of this. We need to know what our buildings and our energy needs cost before we can effectively make plans to reduce them - both carbon-wise and cash-wise. We also need to cope better with our personal comforts - Would you put on an extra jumper in the winter to ensure the survival of a family in the Third World?

David Chadwick

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