Does Green Building Have to Break the Bank?

by Roger Valdez

Posted by WorldChanging Team
June 23, 2009, 5:40pm

Mythbuster: Green Building doesn't mean expensive and complex.

The intuitive view of most people might be that building green is going to be vastly more expensive and complex than building to the most basic standards required by local code. It follows that we assume affordable housing probably isn’t going to be green. But a recent article in the Communities and Banking magazine published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston (FSB) this spring busts the myth that affordable housing and green housing are opposite and mutually exclusive concepts...see full article.

As We See It: More Trash Talk

By Dave Schudel and Jack Benz

Published on Tuesday, June 16, 2009 Cayman Net News

A year ago we wrote two pieces all about our favourite Cayman attraction, its National Treasure – the George Town landfill, and it’s good to see it making the news again, but this time from a very different angle (quite literally). What an idea to get on a cruise ship and take a photo – a graphic view of what the real trouble is. And if you look on Google Earth, someone has helpfully posted the panorama on a blue flag over the landfill site.

This shouldn’t really be news. GBB (Gershman, Brickener & Bratton) showed an almost identical photo in their “Winter 2007-08 GBB Waste Outlook” after they had been selected by DEH to consult on waste-to-energy management of the site. And the landfill saga itself is a long-going one...see full article.

Mega trends form electric future

By Norma Connolly
Published on Monday 15th June 2009
Caymanian Compass

Five unavoidable “mega trends” dictate the future of sustainable electricity generation on the planet, utility company executives were told at a regional conference held in Cayman this week.

Business consultant and author Mark Gabriel, speaking at a conference of CEOs of Caribbean electricity companies this week, explained that mega trends occur regardless of the state of the economy or government or corporate intentions.

Mr. Gabriel’s book “Visions for sustainable energy future” outlines the five mega trends and he explained them to the delegates at the Electric Utility Services Corporation, or CARILEC, conference...see full article.

Conserving overseas territories

Published on Tuesday 9th June, 2009
Caymanian Compass

Volcano eruptions, invading reindeer and starving penguins were among the myriad subjects covered in just one session of a conservation conference of British Overseas Territories in Cayman this week.

The wide–ranging conference attracted speakers and delegates from as far afield as South Georgia near the Antarctic, South Africa and the Canary Islands in Spain.

A session early in the conference brought to light some of the expected, and unsual, effects that climate change is having on small island nations.

In introducing the session, former governor of the Cayman Islands, Bruce Dinwiddy, said: “I first became concerned about climate change 12 years ago when I saw first hand the effect of slowly rising sea levels on the British Indian Ocean Territory which is even lower and flatter than Grand Cayman.”...see full article.