They’re faster at using computers and surfing the web than their parents. They are immersed in technology like Wii, iPhone, and navigation systems. They’re also more in tune to energy issues. The government has targeted kids to lead the energy efficient home movement and kids have seemingly responded by making moves to position themselves as the green leaders of the future.
As early as September 12, 2008 the U.S. Department of Energy and the Advertising Council announced the launch of a series of public service advertisements designed to educate pre-teens about the importance of energy efficiency. The campaign was a response to a February 2008 national survey of kids 8-12 in which 85 percent of respondents believed that they could lead their family to do what is needed to consume less energy in the home. The campaign, entitled “What’s Your Excuse?”, highlighted the simplicity of making energy efficient changes in the home and asks kids to join millions of others to make a difference by using their energy wisely.
With so much money to be made in the energy production industry, more kids are likely choose to attend a college that offers an education that will land them a high-paying job developing alternative energy or researching the cleanest, most efficient fuels of the future. And more colleges are now offering courses and even majors that concern green technologies. A Newsweek article from one year later notes “Green Degrees in Bloom” with talk of degree offerings that will enable students to graduate as LEED-certified contractors.
Quick Share: This study compares three affordably built homes, the energy consumed and the thermal comfort of each. The ICF-built home used 20% less energy than the stick-built and achieved slightly better thermal comfort ratings for the occupants. This is a fairly significant difference and good news in areas where wood is not as readily available as it is in other areas.
Large commercial buildings are often subject to poor air quality as a result of improper construction or a disruption caused by the people that use the building. This video details one investigation of a cold-climate North American office building. These guys were engaged when some tenants of an office space complained about the air quality. As it turns out, most of the return air was not actually being pumped outside, and one vent was completely blocked off.
Depicts 60,000 plastic bags: the number Americans consume every five seconds.
Says Chris Jordan of his artwork:
“Running the Numbers An American Self-Portrait
Running the Numbers looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 32,000 breast augmentation surgeries in the U.S. every month.
This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. Employing themes such as the near versus the far, and the one versus the many, I hope to raise some questions about the role of the individual in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming…
Currently I am working on new Running the Numbers images that will look at some issues that are more global in scope: the world’s oceans, African issues, species extinctions, and a few others.”
