“Face It” Webcast to Fire Silver Bullet

Summary: Architecture 2030, the nonprofit research organization founded by Ed Mazria, AIA, says there is a “silver bullet” solution to global warming and it’s time the nation faced up to it. To get its message out, Architecture 2030 will host a nationwide Webcast, called Face It, focusing on the solution. In addition, during the Webcast, Architecture 2030 will unveil two competitions about the solution with $20,000 in prize money. The half-hour Webcast will be broadcast from Architecture 2030’s Web site, www.architecture2030.org, beginning at 9 a.m. ET on January 30.

Face It serves as the warm-up for “Focus the Nation,” a national effort to engage students, faculty, administrators, citizens, and government officials in discussions to address global warming, which takes place January 31.

The Face It Webcast will build on the information provided during Architecture 2030’s highly successful Webcast, “The 2010 Imperative Global Emergency Teach-in,” broadcast live in February 2007 and focused on the role of design education in global warming, which reached a quarter of a million students, design professionals, and government officials worldwide.

The solution to global warming, according to Mazria, is two-fold. “Energy use is at the heart of global warming. There are two sides to energy use, supply and demand, so any viable solution must address both sides of this coin,” he says. On the supply side, Mazria advocates first for a U.S. and then a global moratorium on the construction of any new conventional coal plants and the gradual phasing out of existing coal plants by 2050. On the demand side, he advocates for adoption and implementation of The 2030 Challenge, a global initiative calling for all new buildings and renovations to reduce their fossil-fuel greenhouse-gas-emitting consumption by 50 percent by 2010, and that all new buildings be “carbon neutral” by 2030.

Reverberations coming
The Face It Webcast is part of Architecture 2030’s larger Reverberate campaign, which will involve several events throughout 2008. The first of these are the two Reverberate competitions to be unveiled during the Webcast. Students will be asked to create something (you’ll have to tune in to the Webcast to learn what) that will reverberate throughout their campus and society at large. There will be two categories, graphic design and video. In addition to the $20,000 in prize money that will be distributed among the winners, the winning graphic design entry will appear in a full-page ad in Metropolis magazine and the winning video entry will be featured on the Metropolis and Architecture 2030 Web sites.