Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Green Shelter

I thought group three did an overall good job of addressing the residential side (on an individual scale) of shelter and the environment. While some of the concepts/information could be applied across the world, the presentation focused primarily on what first and maybe second world nations could live to be more green. Geothermal or energy star appliances are not feasible for many third world countries not only because of high upfront cost, but electricity and heating/cooling are not as imminent (and often not available) a need as staying dry, nourished, and drinking clean water (although they did talk about a natural filtration system, but I’m not sure how expensive it was). I do feel that if looking at the scale of the United States, they did a very good job addressing how people of different economic status may approach becoming more sustainable on their own (the group activity was one example). Whereas someone with less spending money may be looking at resealing/insulating their house, someone on the higher end of the spectrum may be looking into geothermal or solar. I also liked how they established early on the need for more circular economic thinking rather than linear (which is where the U.S. is). This is one example that strikes at the heart of the ethical difference between the ethical stance that the group proposed (sustainable development/consumption) and the current dominant, at least economic/policy wise, utilitarian ethic. The big difference between sustainable development from utilitarianism is this notion of development meeting the needs of today while not encroaching on future generations ability to meet their own need. An example of this in shelter is using materials that can be sustainably harvested, which gives us the shelter we need now and allowing future generations to be able to utilize that same source, forming this cyclical cycle. Utilitarian philosophy, on the other hand, would advocate for the harvesting of materials (cheapily) that could most readily develop our infrastructure, the depletion of the source not being as much of a consideration.

No comments:

Post a Comment