Letter to Bob Brown. Senator for the Greens. Australia

Hi,

This e-mail is in response to the debate I watched a part of on TV at lunch today. I absolutely stand behind senator browns renewable energy policy but find it curious that no one as yet has picked up on what to me is so obvious. And that is that our cities are the perfect location for capturing solar energy. maybe not all of them but for the most part Australia is gifted as far as weather is concerned. What if every building in the country, be it residential or not was obliged by law to utilize its roof space for solar production. By law. Our cities are huge.

Senator Brown said that today to replicate our coal-energy production we would need a 30 by 30 km area of solar panels (seems a bit small to me) but our cities are enourmous. The impact would be fenonemal. Not only energy wise but also as far as design of more streamlined skylines for this purpose, more efficient cities.. the list of positive results from this is endless.

Am I the only one to see this? This sort of policy has no negative drawbacks. Except maybe for the builders of highrise buildings as they would have to cater to the new design guidlines and not be permitted to cast shadows on their neighbours.

Regardless of that, this isi an option that I personally would love to see come out in the debates. Its time we started using our grey matter as far as designing more efficient cities is concerned and doing the right thing, not only for ourselves as egoistic animals, but also for the rest of our fellow planetary inhabitants. After all our cities are like large craters of destruction and ecological death. We have the capacity to turn this around. Why dont we? Are we too set in our ways? If the Sheiks of Abu dhabi can think that far ahead and build ecological cities why not us?

Thanks.

Antony de Lemos, Architect.