Answer: Freeze.
2) what do you do in the dead of summer when you have the hot sun beating down on you all day, our side temps in the high 90’s?
Answer: Roast.
3) why not tell us about the technology rather then give us a bunch of promises? how does it work?
Answer: because that's the way Enviro-nut social policy works. How it works -- indeed, whether it works -- is besides the point. You can feel good about yourself while you are freezing or roasting because you are "doing something" about the environment.
Passive solar works with the fact that the summer sun angle is much steeper than the winter sun angle. So windows have awnings to where the sun does not come in the glass during the summer but then comes through the window in the winter, striking stone floors that absorb the heat during the day and release it at night.
Smart planting of deciduous trees can play a part as well, as they shade in summer and let sun through in winter.
Wrong, passive solar just works. You still need some conventional heating and cooling, but passive will cover a high percentage of your heating and cooling even in extreme climates.
Can you think of anything in the world more conservative than designing buildings to be well-suited to their climate, thus "conserving" energy and money?
Instead of being so stupid as to build a home that is utterly dependent on fragile infrastructure?
1) what do you do in the dead of winter when the sky is overcast for several weeks in a row, and outside temps below zero?
Build a fire in the woodstove?
Proper passive solar design minimizes solar heat gain in the summer, while maximizing it in the winter.
How this is accomplished depends utterly on the climate and location. There are lots of locations where roasting in the summer is just not an issue.
“Conservative” does not equate to “anti-environment”.