Episode 8: CarbonShack Design: What Connects Us
The biophilic designs are brought together across many of the CarbonShack finishes — fabrics, carved wood doors and furniture, tile and custom decorative grates — with an exploration of mycelium, the fungal threads that live under the forest floor, breaking down plant materials which they give to trees through their roots, in return for sugars the tree makes via photosynthesis, and creating a kind of wood wide web by enabling trees to communicate with one another to promote the health of the forest as a whole. Using the calculators the team developed for measuring embodied energy, they discover the amount of carbon dioxide they were able to save from being released into the atmosphere in building the CarbonShack.
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There is no question about it. We are living in exciting times. Just this past year, 90 cities, ten counties and two states, have set targets for 100 renewable energy in the U.S. alone. Oil giants like Exxon Mobil and Shell are lobbying to advance the case for a carbon tax, solar is now cost competitive with fossil fuel powered electricity, and the Green New Deal is fundamentally changing the public’s rhetoric and confidence in climate solutions. Each day a fully decarbonized economy is looking more likely. However, the path to decarbonization is not linear.
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