Tag: buildings

Construction and use of buildings account for a major share of global warming emissions. Depending on how one calculates, allocating roughly 40 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to this built infrastructure is roughly correct.  Heating … cooling … lighting … building materials … etc, it all adds up (and up … and up).  A good share of the building GHGs relates back to energy usage — where, after all, does the lion’s share of coal-generated electricity end up other than illuminating our entertainment systems and over-cooling during summer heat?

A simply reality: tremendous room exists for efficiency measures at not just cost effective but, in fact, profitable financial rates of return.  That energy efficiency has remained an under-exploited  example of a win-win-win space means that it remains a place for fast and effective action.

Today, President Obama focused on this win-win-win opportunity.  

Taipei 101

Yesterday’s news of the opening of the world’s tallest building phallic symbol was a pun fest.  The New York Times, for example, had as a headline, “Dubai Opens a Tower to Beat All.”  The Dubai Tower, it seems, is 2,717 feet tall.  It is far taller than any of the other really tall buildings phallic symbols in the world, including the one in China Taipei, Taipei 101.

All of this, of course, begs the question as to why Dubai, which apparently cannot pay its debts and is teetering on the abyss of financial collapse, decided to build this gigantic monument to itself.  Maybe its name should be changed from Burj Khalifa to the Ego Tower or Narcissus 101:

The glittering celebration may have been an attempt by Dubai’s ruler, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, to shift the focus from Dubai’s current economic troubles to a future filled with more promise.

All the same, the tower’s success by no means signals a recovery in Dubai’s beaten-down real estate market, where prices have collapsed by as much as 50 percent and many developers are having trouble finding occupants for their buildings… snip

At a time when several of Dubai’s newly built office towers stand empty, [the big one] is 90 percent sold, according to the building’s developer, Emaar Properties.

Can you believe that?  Lying about one’s size and performance apparently goes with the territory.  Even yesterday there were whispers that the building was empty, that it wasn’t as hot as it was claimed to be.

And what about the US?  Doesn’t the US need to have the world’s tallest monument to Priapus?  Apparently, 1 World Trade Center proceeds apace, but it is about 1,000 feet shorter than Burj Khalifa.  What a huge disappointment.  Can the US face up to this embarrassing Erecting Dysfunction?  Isn’t there some kind of architectural Cialis or Viagra to grow this project?

All of this begs the real question.  What kind of sign of the Apocalypse is it that humans are building gigantic, expensive, unneeded phallic symbols rather than feeding those who are starving and caring for those who need medical care?  How many schools, hospitals, clinics and libraries could be built instead of these awful, unnecessary buildings?  How many hungry people could be fed, how many sick people could receive care and medicine?  Couldn’t these resources be better spent developing systems to keeping humans from broiling or drowning on this planet?

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simulposted at The Dream Antilles