Our Forebears Were Jerks, but Minecraft Will Save Us: Top 5 Stories This Week

Sustainability might not come naturally to us, but maybe we’ll get past that if we can teach our children well.

Minecraft helps kids in Kenya show how real places could be transformed.Photo Credit: FyreUK

Sustainable design: the next generation

Apparently my kids are not the only kids on earth obsessed with Minecraft. And unlike my children, some are actually putting it to good, practical use in Kenya. For more, read this awesome story about the power of play for solving serious problems, from Sarah Goodyear at The Atlantic Cities.

Or, sustainable design: a sinister plot?

“Do trash receptacles and sidewalks have an ideology?” asks Renee Loth in a column over at the Boston Globe. Apparently, some people think so. Sentiments against the UN’s “Agenda 21”—and by extension anything to do with sustainable neighborhood development—are growing in some circles. The U.S. Republican Party has even adopted an anti-Agenda 21 plank in its 2012 platform, Loth reports. Read more commentary on this at Treehugger, where Lloyd Alter has been following this story for months.

Or, sustainable design: just not in our genes

Maybe evolution is to blame. Apparently we’ve been slashing and burning the planet since the Bronze Age, says Christine Lepisto at Treehugger.

A SEED sprouts in Washington

New York City has released gobs of energy data from its buildings, as Nadav Malin reported recently in EBN. But there’s a downside, says David Leipziger at the Institute for Market Transformation: he calls the data “a maze of mind-numbing Excel tables” and says help is on the way from the U.S. Department of Energy. DOE is almost done developing SEED, a platform that helps governments sort through all that data and make better use of it. Cool!

Meanwhile, Honest Buildings has teamed up with Lucid Designs to improve its data and how that data is presented. Also cool!

Wind could power the whole East Coast

Researchers from Stanford have concluded that off-shore wind could provide a third of our electricity—the entire East Coast of the U.S., in fact, reports Jake Richardson at CleanTechnica.  “It will be fascinating to see if one region could become energy independent, and if that real-world example would cut through the resistance and red tape,” Richardson writes.

Also read:

Energy Reporting: It’s the Law

Occupant Engagement: Where Design Meets Performance

Are Wind Protestors Full of Hot Air?