Posted on 05/29/2005 7:24:58 PM PDT by blam
3m homes 'should be demolished' to cut global warming
By Charles Clover
(Filed: 30/05/2005)
Some 3.2 million homes must be demolished over the next 45 years to fulfil the Government's aspirations for tackling global warming, academics have warned.
The report, by researchers at Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute and Heriot Watt University, is bound to re-ignite the controversy caused by the proposed demolition of 400,000 homes in the Midlands and the North.
Households account for around 30 per cent of Britain's total energy use and the researchers conclude there is a "desperate need" for a clear strategy for housing stock to bring about the 60 per cent reduction in the country's fossil fuel emissions that Tony Blair has said he wants to see by 2050.
The academics say that Britain's 25 million homes are among the oldest and least efficient in Europe and recommend that 14 per cent of the current stock - 3.2 million homes - should be pulled down by 2050.
Listed buildings would be spared, but the plan would quadruple the present demolition rate to 80,000 homes a year by 2016.
"Care must be taken not to invest money in upgrading those homes that will ultimately be demolished," say the authors.
Even so, two thirds of the housing stock of 2050 has already been built and this will have to be made more efficient. The immediate priority is for walls and lofts, then solid walls, to be insulated. By 2050 all windows will be double or even triple glazed. The report, the "40 Per Cent House", emphasises the need to construct the 10 million new homes that will be built by 2050 to far greener standards than in current building regulations.
John Prescott's department has said that from April 2006 all publicly-funded new homes - including 120,000 planned for Thames Gateway - will comply with a new code for sustainable buildings, due to be released this year.
Quinlan Terry, the leading classical architect, criticised the researchers' recommendations last week at a conference in London about designing sustainable buildings.
He said the proposed demolition missed a "bigger picture", which included the fossil fuels already expended in putting up existing buildings and how long the new buildings would last.
He said that the embodied energy in each Victorian terrace house scheduled for demolition as part of the Government's urban renewal plans in the North was equivalent to 15,000 litres of petrol, according to the Buildings Research Establishment.
The carbon from the fossil fuels burnt to build our existing housing stock was already in the atmosphere, warming the Earth. "So why repeat the process?" asked Mr Terry.
Really. I think we are going to have to institute some sort of policy that people who come up with this mind numbing garbage must go through mandatory shrink sessions. They are definitly insane.
Yah. The germans were saving the earth. Who knew.....
Are they talking about pulling down the old post-war council houses? I always got the impression they weren't too sturdily built in the first place, and by 2050 they would be a century old and likely falling to bits anyway.
We live in an 1889 Victorian with single-paned double-hung windows. On the ones that have not been broken over the past 116 years, we still have the old glass that looks wavy when you look through it.
There may be a business in designing double-paned inserts to reglaze the original frames with, even giving the outside glass a "wavy" appearance.
It might be a compromise between historical preservation laws and energy conservation needs and a good business opportunity if it works out.
Marty, it was a joke.
I know. I thought I put a sarc by it.
Most cities are blue, right?
I believe you are right... and that's why I stay away from them...
What's ur secret for cats living so long?
Marl
Oh, I thought you were being mean to me. I am always misunderstanding the sarc thing,,it feels like someone has been sarcastic to me.
naw...I use it to mean I'm being a smart a**. My remark is not to be taken personally. It's to show that your joke would be serious to the idiots trying to push this rediculous idea.
Exactly my thoughts. Probably the comatose and the terminally ill will be the first to go, then the elderly, soon to be followed by those who refuse to group think. Closer and closer.
Me too, except for shopping.
Welcome to the New World Order.
POS globalists.
Resist, as best you can.
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