Carbon Critic al Design
Is technology the answer?
Clarke: We cannot afford to wait for a magic bullet. We’ve
never had a major technological advance without unintended
consequences. When colour television was invented, we could
not have dreamt that snooker would become one of the nation’s
favourite sports. When we were first told about nuclear power
stations, we were told energy would be so cheap it wasn’t worth
charging for. now we can’t build new nuclear power stations
without a subsidy. We can’t bank on a widget that will be
invented to solve our problems.
Tabone: I hear a lot of discussion about the need to quickly find
high-tech solutions – I think we’re running out of time and
I think it’s quite clear we need to do more. High-tech solutions
have their place, but we also need to focus on some of the
lower-tech answers, whether in the built environment or how
we design communities, so they are more pedestrian and cycle
friendly, for example.
Jones: While technology can only move incrementally, the
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same is not true of how designers and engineers go about their
work. the danger with incremental is that you do what you did
last time but add something on, and you end up with a lot of
baggage. the answer is often to do what we’re doing now,
but differently. When it comes to technology, it may actually
be simpler, not more complex.
Changing the design question
Clarke: nobody knows enough today about how to solve or
mitigate the carbon issues in the products that we design.
We will not get there in a single step. We will no longer be able to
design a building, and then do the energy calculation only to
find it uses too much energy. the same is true in how we define
our public infrastructure, choose our materials and procure. It will
radically change the design question to something that starts at
the beginning.
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