White Roofs, White Pavement
http://www.risingtidenorthamerica.org/wordpress/2008/09/10/white-roofs-white-pavement/
I read this article recently because after my Mom sent it to me. It is about the usefulness of replacing roofing and pavement materials with more reflective surfaces to offset global warming. Apparently having white roofs has been a building practice in warmer climates as it lowers costs of air conditioning, but a study released at the 2008 Climate Change Research Conference in Sacramento supported white roofing materials as a strategy to fight global warming. California is the only state to enforce building codes on commericial buildings to use white or heat reflecting materials for their roofs, but if it were to become a nationwide trend, carbon dioxide emmission could plummet. A physicist from Berkeley estimated that the average american home could offset 10 metric tons of carbio dioxide emissions if their roofs were replaced with white materials instead of black shingles. The article also talks about replacing asphalt roads with concrete roads as concrete is much lighter than asphalt. Combined, roads and roofs account for 60% of urban surfaces worldwide. One study said that if 100 major urban cities switched their paving and roofing practices it would offset 44 gigatons of greenhouse gases. This would allow for the fighting of glabal warming in a way that does not affect our industrial production.
That is not to say that implementing concrete roads and white houses would not be a major overhaul. In fact it would challenge every architectural norm out there. Homes would be changed forever and I feel that many people would adopt a NIMBY attitude to such practices. I could only imagine going onto google earth and feeling like I am in a white-out at some college sporting event. It does not seem like a big deal to make all roofs white, but it would challnege many concepts of home. Presuming this would be an expensive overhaul, old homes would be torn down rather than brought up to new building codes. Replacing roads and implementing new paving techniques would create a lot of jobs in the U.S. but it would make more sense to implement thses ideas in developing cities who have more of a blank slate to work with than stubborn Americans. Atlanta residents (who have now started creating their own weather! from their massive amounts of sprawl) would especially benefit from these new practices. It seems that all the green movement should take notice of the white movemnt.
When I read the first sentence of your post, I imagined gorgeous sandy beaches on the Greek coast with white-washed houses blanketing the hills. Never would I imagine that image representing an American city, beach, or suburb. While black roofs distinctly define the American single-family home, it is not completely absurd to imagine a future where minimal changes such as roof color slowly transform the American landscape. This argument, though perhaps using Greece as its model, would not undermine the American home as we see it. The future will require alternative methods to ensure climate change does not achieve its full potential impacts, and roof colors, or even roof plants for that matter, will conceivably become "normal" in sustainable architectural methods.
