Showing posts with label Sustainability. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sustainability. Show all posts

Sunday, September 5, 2021

Gratitude and Praise

Editors. "Gratitude and Praise" Orion, Autumn 2021, p. 4.

We also partnered with the Brooklyn Public Library to cosoponsor discussions of Lauren Groff's Florida and Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass as part of their monthly Climate Reads series.  If you missed us live, you can find recordings of these events and more archived at www.orionmagazine.org/connect/events.


COMMENT

The public library partners with an environmental magazine to hosts public presentations that address climate change.

Thursday, March 18, 2021

An Architects' Muted Triumph

 Brett Sokol. "An Architect's Muted Triumph" New York Times, March 18, 2021 pp. C1, C6.

[Maya]Lin appeared equally buoyed by touring the library.  She led the way to a rooftop terrace that offered stirring views of the surrounding mountains, pointing out meaningful details along the way.  Large upper-floor windows that were near treetops had been laced with an ultraviolet webbing pattern-- invisible to human eyes buy not to flying birds that might otherwise crash into the clear glass. Bird watchers had a comfy nesting spot too, with many of the window frames large enough to climb into.  "People are going to be sleeping in here," Lin said with a chuckle, flashing back on her won long days -- and longer nights -- studying at Yale, where, as a 21-year-old senior she beat out 1,420 competing proposals for the Vietman Veterans Memorial.  "I know because I was one of those people."

COMMENT

When Architect Maya Lin was hired to remodel the Neilson Library at Smith College she designed a place of refuge with window nooks to sit in.  My college library had with window nooks, but sadly, they   were lost to remodeling that created larger windows and overall brighter space.  Lin's design also highlights ink and paper books. "You're still in a house of books," Lin says, "Ultimately a library has to be about reading.  I don't read on an iPad and I never will.  Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm a dinosaur.  But I still feel the beauty of a book, I still believe in that beauty".

Friday, February 15, 2019

No Good Alternative (Carbon Ideologies v. 2)

William T. Vollmann. No Good Alternative, (Carbon Ideologies v. II), Viking, 2018 p. 217.
     By 1980, world coal production totaled 71.2 quadrillion BTUs.  By 2011 it had more than doubled to 152.5 quads. It had to, to accomplish all the thermodynamic work we commanded. After all, given (as I keep repeating) that our power plants needed to burn three pounds of it in order to utilize one pound's energy, coal didn't stretch terribly far.  As the following table shows, keeping the lights on for a single hour in the reading room of one of those Western Virginia libraries that I frequented while writing Carbon Ideologies might take 20 pounds of that good old brownish-black stuff-- which meanwhile released 49 pounds of carbon dioxide....
COMMENT

     Vollmann was on the road investigating the worldview that defends burning fossil fuels despite the existential threat of climate change.  His book is framed as an apologia to people of the future, now living on a hot, miserable and resource depleted planet.  

     As he was writing, Vollmann used public libraries for temporary office space and  information research.  The availability of fast Internet, lighting, office furniture and research sources enables him to work remotely.  The network of libraries means that people can check in to work from remote locations.  It's especially great for writers who may need to do a little fact-checking. 

As he often does throughout the book, Vollmann  muses about the energy use of his ordinary life.  In this instance, though, he doesn't point out that the 49 pounds/hour of carbon are at least shared between many library users instead of squandered by a single individual. The table he cites is from American Electricians Handbook  (2002) --  "Cutting, inspecting, sewing dark colored cloth; Also: Library reading rooms" clocks in at 60 watts per square foot,  where 1 watt = 3.413 BTUs per hour when lit by incandescent filament lamps, so the library could also save energy by using energy-efficient fluorescent or LED bulbs,  or for that matter, lighting the reading room with sunlight from windows.