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Woz Details His Plans for Energy-Efficient House
An anonymous reader writes "ECN magazine has posted a long interview with the Woz on his new passion: energy-efficient housing. 'ECN: In PC World, you said, "It's like the way I used to make computers" -- how so? Woz: Simple design. Think about the right way to build something and take a lot of time to get it the best that can be done with the fewest resources used. No waste. Build it right and with few parts it does a lot. Don't cover things with more and more and more technology for features. Design them in from the start. It starts with the architect, of a home or a computer, working from a knowledge of the building materials and a desire to choose wisely.'"
Woz: Simple design. Think about the right way to build something and take a lot of time to get it the best that can be done with the fewest resources used. No waste.
The answer to that is easy. concrete dome.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
He used to live in a 7,100 square foot home. It was up for sale a year ago - I don't know if he's sold it.
I get a little tired of rich, jet setting, mansion owners going on about the environment, even when I agree with them or approve of the work they do.
I think the better idea is to start first by thinking about build quality of houses. My house has had several repairs - things which were minor things to do right the first time end up costing thousands of dollars. The quality could easily extend to Woz's (Woz'z ? ;) ) analogy of the computer.
If the goal of the energy efficient house is to save money on heating and cooling, my thought is we have to look at the expenditure of a house across its lifetime. The materials needed costs something in energy to manufacture, transport, etc - nails, screws, tiles, 2x4, shingles, etc. When these things are thrown away due to shoddy construction* - it leads to more energy demand and wastage to replace it.
*Its usually not the materials that fail except in natural disasters. In disasters. better construction practices, building to code or better codes would help. Again quality the issue.
"Once the population size reaches some critical mass, there are enough of us on the planet to really impact on the environment in a bad way, but as we do so, we start noticing the problems we cause and eventually in order to survive we have to move to better tech for both energy production and to less polluting manufacturing techniques."
There are at least two schools of thought on this. One is along the lines you have described, and that technical solutions will be found before problems get too bad. The other is that we will "overshoot" that limit (think about it: a bunch of people are already "on the way" (i.e. born) when we might figure out there is a problem), and things will get really bad before (if) they get better. If people are struggling to live hand-to-mouth because of the poor conditions, they might not have much time to think about technical innovation.
So, yes, it is all about population growth, and growth in energy/resource use per person, but whether it will play out the hard way or the easy way when we reach practical limits is very debatable. Certainly, many biological systems don't handle that limit gracefully, and historical human civilizations aren't much cause for optimism either (although the constraints were not usually energy, but agriculture). We have the benefit of enough intelligence to perhaps see the problem ahead of time, but that doesn't mean people will react to it collectively and effectively in a reasonable amount of time.
I'm not trying to be cynical, but it might be much harder to adjust than you suggest, and it might require radical solutions. To pick an extreme example, a mud and grass hut in a warm climate or an igloo in a cold climate are very energy efficient homes and composed entirely of renewable materials. That doesn't mean that they would let us keep our current lifestyle if we decided to adopt them, or were forced to because the resources to sustain more elaborate housing were unavailable or prohibitively expensive.
I look at it this way -- as the original poster suggested, yes, oil would have been used eventually anyway, but as a currently energy-rich industrial society we have an obligation to either find an alternative way for the next generation to continue with a similarly rich lifestyle, even as non-renewable resources dwindle, or to fundamentally change.
I don't want the next 10 generations to be scraping out a meager living while cursing my generation for squandering the golden opportunity granted by a cheap energy supply. I don't want people to look back on the 20th and 21st centuries as a "golden age" when things were the best they ever got for humanity, and it was downhill from there. I want it to be sustainable or better. Anything less is irresponsible to the many generations of struggle that got me here, and the many generations that I hope will follow after I'm gone. The last thing I want to do is be complacent about the challenges, and expect it to just happen automatically.
There's one huge difference. Howard Roark was an asshole.
The cake is a pie
You'd likely be an asshole as well if everyone in your entire industry told you that what you were working on was worthless and bound to fail.
Yes, a private jet is the most hoggish, environmentally unfriendly way to travel. But if the functional advantage afforded by a private jet was really just "30 minutes waiting in the security line," I doubt near so many people would use them. Having a direct flight available from any airport to any other, able to depart at a moment's notice, is a big deal, especially for someone who is trying to hold meetings with lots of high level people with very tight schedules. If a private jet brings business advantages to an oil exec, should environmentalists be denied those advantages?
Here's a rather contrived example: The president of Flotsjetzistan is trying to decide what to do with a million acres of virgin timber. The CEO of Pollutocorp has a plan for cutting down the timber to build giant novelty toothpicks. Al Gore has a plan to keep most of the forest intact while bringing in the same amount of revenue. The secret? Cheese!
Anyhow, Prez sez, "These are both great plans. Drop by my office tomorrow, and explain them in further detail."
Pollutocorp says, "I'll be there."
Gore says, "For the sake of rigorous ethical consistency, I'm heeding fredmosby's advice and taking the public airline. I'll have to take a transcontinental flight to Beijing, with a five hour layover, then a flight to Jakarta. Then there's an eight hour flight to Saudi Arabia, because they're the one country you've managed to keep diplomatic relations with. In other words, I can be there on Thursday at the latest. Could we do a teleconference?"
"What is this... teleconference?"
"Well, we each have a camera..."
"No good. Cameras capture mens souls."
In the end, Pollutocorp wins. Had Al used a private jet, he might have spared a million acres of trees, enough to cover centuries of constantly running his jet.
The example is contrived, but the point is clear: If Al has even one huge success to show for his flagrant gulfstreaming, if he gets a few million more people trying to lower their energy bills, or gets an important piece of legislation passed, or gets a few coal plants in China replaced with renewable energy or energy conservation efforts, then by comparison his own personal CO2 emissions are but a fart in a hurricane. If using a private jet makes him more able to make his case to the movers and shakers who decide energy policy and research priorities, then shaming Gore into giving the jet up could be a net loss for the climate change movement as a whole.
The counterargument is that appearances matter, and the accusations of hypocrisy are causing problems for other environmentalists. But in my mind, if you took this issue away, the right wing would just find some other issue to blow out of proportion. Gore isn't going to win over the Hannitys of the world, and it's a waste of time for him to try.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!