50-50 Sustainability Dilemma – Is it Ethical?

These musings relate to buildings, civil engineering developments and our whole built environment. The terms “house” and “building” are used for brevity.

An energy-efficient house is not environmentally friendly. Every building covers ground that would otherwise be organically productive or useful in some other way, thereby making it functionally sterile. Every building reduces the area of the earth that is capable of keeping the earth in balance due to the natural interactions between soil, sun and water. What is the link between sustainable building as an ethical issue and building design and construction as pragmatic activities? All human activities produce green-house gases that are said to be detrimental to the functioning of the earth from the point of view of human habitation.

The main mitigating factor with new building is that they remain relevant and useful for a maximum period of time and that they are designed to be capable of minimal modification in dealing with changing user needs during the life of the building.

While most of us learn from direct experience with feedback – that is facing the consequences of our actions, this does not apply to the notion of sustainability as we are usually unable to observe the consequences of our actions due to such long time-frames. Sometimes, however, we are able to make those observations but forget what existed several decades ago in our lifetime. Degradation to the environment is so gradual that most people are not able to discern or forget changes over a long period of time. Younger people just accept the status quo of the environment that 'it has always been like that'.

The construction and use of buildings consume up to 50% of all energy consumption and 50% of all material taken from nature. They also produce 50% of all waste and 50% of all CFC and HCFC production.

Humans are the only animals that create waste. Buildings provide human habitat. In contrast to what natural undeveloped land does, buildings fail on all other aspects of life principles. Some of these other principles are to create clean air and water, store water, create its own food, create rich soil, use and store solar energy, provide wildlife habitat, moderate climate and weather and consume its own waste.

If the above musings have any credence, then what are the answers for going forward? Ethics codes as adopted by professional organisations such as IPENZ and RICS, both of which I am a member, purport to deal with members’ advice and actions relating to sustainability. While I could never admit to breaching these codes of ethics I can genuinely say that mitigating the adverse consequences of my actions is paramount. But given that each mitigating action still continues to have incremental adverse results for the long-term sustainability of the earth may leave us all in a slight dilemma.