Still, I have to say that these wouldn’t make my list. Again, this is completely subjective, but for me these lack 2 key qualities to make it on the list:

a) musical sophistication — the music has to stand as fresh and compelling on it’s own. Widely subjective, of course, but there it is. While I’m still a big fan of folks music, the simple 4 chords of guitar plus voice really needs something astounding in the lyrics or delivery to carry it. Bright Eyes can pull this off, but it just feels dated in most other cases.

b) lyrical sophistication — As you note, this is a hard topic to write about. The biggest error in most political songs in my opinion is being too straightforward and plain in the lyrics. Where’s the poetry? Where’s the layering of meanings? Where’s the unexpected? I’m not saying it’s easy – I write songs and I haven’t written anything about this. It’s hard.

So, I’d say bravo to anyone writing from their heart. Play it for everyone you can and keep up the good effort to write good music and change the world! But to make it on my list, the above need to be met, and these don’t do that yet. That doesn’t mean they suck, it just means they’re not on my list.

Thanks again for sharing.

They can be found on
http://www.climatesongs.com

Please give your view.

What’s even better is that ENERGY STAR gets updated as new codes come out, so that it continues to get stricter. For instance, the current ENERGY STAR for homes requires the building to be “at least 15% more energy efficient than homes built to the 2009 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC)”. That’s stricter than this study from 2008 would have had to be.

As codes get tighter (and the latest, IECC-2012 and ASHRAE 90.1-2010, are much more stringent than their predecessors), just meeting code becomes less laughable as a design goal. We’re raising the floor for the lowest common denominator, and at the same time stretching the envelope with exceptionally high-performing buildings like Passive House.

The basic gist: It’s really all about the energy efficiency much more so than about the materials in either direction – at least for residential. The question of the dollars and effort required to get as energy efficient as possible is the key — and how does new vs. retrofit effect THAT?

Certainly if you make sure existing homes are made not just a little but way more energy efficient, then things start to look a lot better. But doing deep retrofits is not always easy. Take a house I worked on in Ann Arbor: it was built with 2x3s! We blew in foam and it helped, but the only way to really get that thing decent is to remove all of the siding, add additional insulation and then re-side the house. We also had to re-do the windows (they were single-pane aluminum – one of the few times I’ll advocate for replacing windows at this point). Throw in an upgraded furnace and all of these efforts together put the house outside of it’s marketable value. But I could BUILD a comparable house with much better energy performance for less overall money.

Obviously part of the problem here is the financial context, right? And we need to fix how energy efficiency affects appraisals and home value — but in the meantime… I truly don’t know. The real question comes down to this: regardless of retrofit vs. new — how energy-intensive is the building designed to be for it’s operation? In either case, a bunch of factors from status quo to codes to appraisal systems to financing options all push people to do little to no energy improvements, and at that point, new vs. retrofit may not matter so much for the LCA. The real issue is how much you reduce the energy use by. So then we’re looking at cost and ease of implementation factors for creating seriously energy efficient spaces between new and retrofit, which is NOT what this study really does — and I think it may often be cheaper, and therefore more effective to make new building MORE energy efficient than a retrofitted existing building. At least for residential. It may be a very different story for a variety of other building types. THAT’s what I want to know, and that’s what this report implies, but I think it doesn’t know either.

We have other good reasons to invest in existing buildings, from cultural and historic to aesthetic considerations. Of course, we want to reduce our impact on materials waste. These are all good things. But if we want to talk what has the biggest impact on the environment for stopping climate change, that may be a different issue.

The study you sent is great – (See: http://www.otrfoundation.org/Docs/OTR_GREEN_HISTORIC_STUDY.pdf) — lots of good info. As for this topic, it only proves my point further. They all acheived LEED, but with minimal energy attention. Here’s how the 4 projects did for the Energy section, showing how many points they got out of how many possible for the Energy section of LEED: 4 out of 38; 4 out of 38, 5 out of 17, and 0 out of 38. They DIDN’T TACKLE ENERGY because it was hard to do so in an economically reasonable way.

Am I missing anything here?

You know, I’m a big believer in rehab — and there are many many good reasons for it. Personally, I just LIKE a lot of those older buildings more, and the history infuses a space with meaning — this is important! And other reasons reside as well — but I don’t want to claim that it’s better for our carbon footprint if it isn’t. What I want is a more reliable study.