Sustainable_Development_Policies_in_the_Building_Industry

Sustainable Development *What are the main Contextual factors which have driven the introduction of sustainable development *policies' In recent times there has been a growing realisation that the way we live our lives, treat our planet and develop the world we live in is unsustainable. We are living beyond our needs and not considering the world of tomorrow. This is because of the strain we put on our environment, are land, water and air are suffering factors by way of our negative consumption and the pollutants we are putting into our atmosphere. We have always needed a certain amount of CO2 in the atmosphere to keep a habitable amount of heat in, but since the industrial revolution the CO2 levels have become too high. Coal mining and burning, the dirty and pollutant way of creating power is still being used by the US and China as it is an extremely profitable industry. Car pollution is also a major contributor of C02 emissions. Atmospheric temperatures are rising and intensifying all the time, the ten hottest years to date have been in the past 15 years. This is a strong indicator that our generation must make a change, globally. ‘_The era of procrastination of half measures, of soothing and baffling expedients of delays is coming to a close, in its place we are entering a period of consequences’ _Winston Churchill Our own actions of the past and present require a re-action. The warning signs are there and that period of consequences has become more apparent in the past decade. The high temperatures and the warming of the oceans are leading to devastating consequences, they create storms, cyclone’s, typhoons and hurricanes, some of the major ones of 2005 were ‘Hurricane Emily, Dennis and Katrina’. Storms are created in the open oceans and as they move across warmer water, the wind velocity increases and the moisture content rises, which in turn increases the hurricanes energy. This happened in 2005 and America was a casualty of its devastating power. Precipitation is also a result of global warming leading to floods which can cause disaster worldwide, flooding is an affect we have seen closer to home, in Europe and in England. It has lead to loss of life and to the loss of many people’s homes. Paradoxically precipitation leads to drought, and in nearby places to the flooding. Global warming relocates the precipitation, it takes all of the moisture out of one area causing drought and ultimately taking away a major life source and puts it in another area causing mass devastation. The arctic ice caps are melting due to the climate change, normally the sun rays shine on the ice and reflect back out into space but the rising temperatures and intensity of the rays are now heating the water around the ice caps which is speeding up the melting process. The less ice there is to reflect away the more of the sun’s energy that is absorbed into the ocean. The ocean absorbing energy and melting the ice caps has another resulting factor, Antarctica is the largest ice mass on the planet and large portions of ice are falling into the ocean this increasing the melting rate, this causes sea levels to rise, some small islands in the south pacific have dropped below sea level, forcing natives to move to New Zealand, if this continues, many areas of densely populated areas in the world will be covered by sea. Bibliography www.sustainable-devlopment.gov.uk www.ecozine.co.uk An Inconvenient Truth- Al Gore