I read part one of this article in the UT on Sunday. Here's part two of it today.

All of this really makes me wonder when America will wake up and learn that conservation is the best and fastest way to solve our oil addiction and force us to discover and develop new cleaner energy technologies.

The current administration's view of lowering prices through expanding supply is not the way to do it. Political will is needed, as there are no technical hurdles to overcome, only challenging the public mindset.

Today we relax comfortably in our safe and quiet homes, among family and friends, enjoying a holiday from the horrors of the work week. Today also hundreds of thousands of servicemen and women are far from home, family, and friends, enduring the horrors of war.

Please, next time you see a man or woman in uniform, walk up to them and shake their hand. Thank them specifically for their service to their country and the incredible gift of freedom they and their forebearers have given to all of us to enjoy today through their sacrifices, both past and present.

To all servicemen and women who have given the ultimate sacrifice for their country, I salute you.

My friend Al sent me this link yesterday and I found the article convinently bookends with my latest newsletter. Enjoy.

In case they remove the link in the future:

Designing the Future
In a new interview series, NEWSWEEK talks to a leading ecological architect whose goal is nothing less than eliminating waste and pollution.

May 16 issue - Imagine buildings that generate more energy than they consume and factories whose waste water is clean enough to drink. William McDonough has accomplished these tasks and more. Architect, industrial designer and founder of McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry in Charlottesville, Va., he's not your traditional environmentalist. Others may expend their energy fighting for stricter environmental regulations and repeating the mantra "reduce, reuse, recycle." McDonough's vision for the future includes factories so safe they need no regulation, and novel, safe materials that can be totally reprocessed into new goods, so there's no reason to scale back consumption (or lose jobs). In short, he wants to overhaul the Industrial Revolution—which would sound crazy if he weren't working with Fortune 500 companies and the government of China to make it happen. The recipient of two U.S. presidential honors and the National Design Award, McDonough is the former dean of architecture at the University of Virginia and co-chair of the China-U.S. Center for Sustainable Development. He spoke in New York recently with NEWSWEEK's Anne Underwood.

UNDERWOOD: Why do we need a new industrial revolution? MCDONOUGH: The Industrial Revolution as a whole was not designed. It took shape gradually as industrialists and engineers figured out how to make things. The result is that we put billions of pounds of toxic materials in the air, water and soil every year and generate gigantic amounts of waste. If our goal is to destroy the world—to produce global warming and toxicity and endocrine disruption—we're doing great. But if the goal isn't global warming, what is? I want to crank the wheel of industry in a different direction to produce a world of abundance and good design—a delightful, safe world that our children can play in.

You say that recycling, as it's currently practiced, is "downcycling." What we call recycling is typically the product losing its quality. Paper gets mixed with other papers, re-chlorinated and contaminated with toxic inks. The fiber length gets shorter, allowing more particles to abrade into the air, where they get into your lungs and nasal passages, and cause irritation. And you end up with gray, fuzzy stuff that doesn't really work for you. That's downcycling.

[My mentor and colleague] Michael Braungart and I coined the term upcycling, meaning that the product could actually get better as it comes through the system. For example, some plastic bottles contain the resi-dues of heavy-metal catalysts. We can remove those residues as the bottles come back to be upcycled.

Not all products lend themselves to that. Most manufacturers take resources out of the ground and convert them to products that are designed to be thrown away or incinerated within months. We call these "cradle to grave" product flows. Our answer to that is "cradle to cradle" design. Everything is reused—either returned to the soil as nontoxic "biological nutrients" that will biodegrade safely, or returned to industry as "technical nutrients" that can be infinitely recycled. Aluminum is a technical nutrient. It takes tremendous energy to make, but it's easy to recapture and reuse. Since 1880, the human species has made 660 million tons of it. We still know where 440 million tons are today.

Are there products already that meet cradle-to-cradle goals? If so, how do we find them? Within the month, we will be branding cradle to cradle. Products that meet our criteria for biological and technical nutrients can be certified to use our logo. A note on the packaging will tell you how to recycle it. You'll know: this one goes into my tomato plot when I'm finished or this one goes back to industry forever. We have already approved a nylon, some polyester textiles, running tracks, window shades, chairs from Herman Miller and Steelcase, and carpets from Shaw, which is part of Berkshire Hathaway. The first was a Steelcase fabric that can go back to the soil. We're now working on electronics on a global scale.

How do paper products like magazines fit into this picture? Why take something as exquisite as a tree and knock it down? Trees make oxygen, sequester carbon, distill water, build soils, convert solar energy to fuel, change colors with the seasons, create microclimates and provide habitat.

My book "Cradle to Cradle," which I wrote with Michael Braungart, is printed on pages made of plastic resins and inorganic fillers that are infinitely recyclable. They're too heavy, but we're working with companies now to develop lightweight plastic papers. We have safe, lightweight inks designed to float off the paper in a bath of 180 degrees—hotter than you would encounter under normal circumstances. We can recapture the inks and reuse them without adding chlorine and dioxins to the environment. And the pages are clean, smooth and white.

So we can keep our trees and have newspapers, too. Most environmentalists feel guilty about how society behaves, so they say we should make longer-lasting products—for example, a car that lasts 25 years. That car will still use compound epoxies and toxic adhesives, but the ecological footprint is reduced because you've amortized it over a longer time. But what's the result? You lose jobs because people aren't buying as much, and you're using the wrong technology longer. I want five-year cars. Then you can always be getting the newest car—more solar-powered, cleaner, with the newest air bags and safety features. The old car gets upcycled into new cars, so there are still plenty of jobs. And you don't feel guilty about throwing the old one away. People want new technology. You're not typing on an Underwood, if you know what I mean.

So growth is good? Yes, if you use nature as a model and mentor, if you use modern designs and chemicals that are safe. Growth is destructive if you use energy not from the sun and a system of chemicals that is toxic, so it's anti-life.

Given that industry today fits your definition of anti-life, why aren't you fighting for stricter environmental regulations? If coal plants release mercury—and mercury is a neurotoxin that damages children's brains—then reducing the amount of mercury in emissions doesn't stop that. It just says, "We'll tell you at what rate you can dispense death." Being less bad is not being good. Our idea is to make production so clean, there's nothing bad left to regulate. This is extremely interesting to people of all political persuasions—those who love the environment and those who want commerce free of regulation.

Can you really have industry so clean it requires no controls? [At the Rohner textile plant in Switzerland] we designed a fabric safe enough to eat. The manufacturing process uses no mutagens, carcinogens, endocrine disrupters, heavy-metal contaminants or chemicals that cause ozone depletion, allergies, skin desensitization or plant and fish toxicity. We screened 8,000 commonly used chemicals and ended up with 38. When inspectors measured the effluent water, they thought their instruments were broken. The water was as clean as Swiss drinking water. A garden club started using the waste trimmings as mulch. Workers no longer had to wear protective clothing. And it eliminated regulatory paperwork, so they've reduced the cost of production by 20 percent. Why spend money on paperwork, when you can spend it delivering service or paying your workers a living wage?

Where would I find this fabric? It was selected for upholstery on the new Airbus 380. It's made of worsted wool to keep you at the right temperature—cool when it's hot and warm when it's cold—and [a plant fiber called] ramie to wick away moisture. It's a high-performance-design product. Going ecological doesn't mean downgrading performance criteria.

How do you get more industries to adopt these ideals? Industries don't change unless they have to or there's some commercial benefit. At Herman Miller [the furniture company], we designed a factory full of daylight and fresh air. Productivity soared. And because of all the natural light, they cut lighting costs by 50 percent—overall energy by 30 percent. We've been doing this a long time. But now that China has taken it up, it portends exciting things.

What are you doing in China? The China Housing Industry Association has the responsibility for building housing for 400 million people in the next 12 years. We're working with them to design seven new cities. We're identifying building materials of the future, such as a new polystyrene from BASF [with no noxious chemicals]. It can be used to build walls that are strong, lightweight and superinsulating. The building can be heated and cooled for next to nothing. And it's silent. If there are 13 people in the apartment upstairs, you won't hear them.

We've designed a luxurious new toilet. The bowl is like a lotus leaf—so smooth, axle grease slips right off. Nothing sticks to it, including bacteria. A light mist when you're done will be enough to flush it, so you won't use lots of water. We'll have bamboo wetlands nearby to purify the waste—and the bamboo, which grows a foot a day, can be harvested and used for wood.

The Chinese are afraid urbanization will reduce productive farmland, so we'll move farms onto rooftops. At least, that's what I'm proposing. The farmers can live downstairs. And when you look at the city from a distance, it will look like part of the landscape.

Is it practical to put farms on roofs? Traditional roofs aren't practical. They degrade from thermal shock and ultraviolet radiation and have to be replaced in 20 years. For the Gap's corporate campus in San Bruno, Calif., we planted a "green roof" of ancient grasses. The roof now damps the sounds of jets from the San Francisco airport. It absorbs storm water, which is important because they have serious issues with storm water there. It makes oxygen, provides habitat, and it's beautiful. We also made a green roof for Ford Motor Co.'s River Rouge plant. It saved Ford millions of dollars in storm-water equipment.

How will you fuel the Chinese cities? I want to see solar power cheaper than coal, but to get the speed and scale to do that fast, you need a place like China. We're not talking about dinky solar collectors on roofs. Think of square miles of marginal land covered with them. This could drop the cost of solar energy an order of magnitude. And for every job making solar panels, there are four jobs putting them in place and maintaining them. We could import these panels, and for every job the Chinese give themselves, we get four. What a gift. And I guarantee you, China will never be able to capture an American photon. We would have indigenous energy and energy security. And we wouldn't be throwing our money into holes in the ground.

And we wouldn't need nuclear energy. I love nuclear energy. I just want to make sure it stays where God put it—93 million miles away, in the sun.

Your ideas are really catching on. It's an amazing moment in history. We also have two huge new projects in England—working with the cities of Greenwich and Wembley. The developer, Adrian Wyatt, has asked us to conceive the meta-framework for the project.

We won't get everything right the first time. Change requires experimentation. But no problem can be solved by the same consciousness that created it. Our job is to dream—and to make those dreams happen.

Earth Day is celebrated every year on April 20th. On that day, hundreds of millions of Americans are asked to think about what they can do each day in their little corner of the earth to make it more environmentally friendly. Unfortunately, we then spend much of the remaining 364 days a year ruining the world we live in by running along unquestionably with the destructive economy that controls much of our lives.

Like it or not, we are a country that suffers from an oil based dependency that is not likely to subside anytime soon. Drilling in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge has recently been all but green lighted by our elected officials and little can stand in the way of drilling in the area now, thus the addiction continues unabated and other energy possibilities are pushed again to the back burner. Although arguably affecting a fractional amount of area in terms of square miles of the refuge that will be impacted, the fact that an arterial pipeline must carry away any oil discovered is often ignored or downplayed.

Done safely and correctly, such drilling can be helpful in aiding our foreign oil dependance. However, there are inherent risks involved if a break in the line should occur, as has happened in the past with other oil pipelines, or as seen in Iraq, subject to sabotage and terrorism that can and does result in great expense to our nation, both financial and environmental. There are alternatives to oil and have been for decades. Hybrid technology, solar, wind, hydro, and other sources of “green” power are available to us. Yet the economies of scale required to make them profitable have not yet been reached and little progress is made here in the US. Japan and Germany will crush the US with their solar technology and already have a tremendous advantage in marketing to us a product we will invariably need down the road. Most Americans, true to form, will wait until the last minute to change, and will suffer the consequences of doing so.

Let’s face it. We’ve only got one planet and we’ve been messing it up quite a bit more than necessary lately. With China and India’s immense growth continuing at a red hot pace, the limited resources of the earth are getting to be exactly that. No longer do we live under a false thought of endless reserves of oil and the idea that technological advances will save us. The gasoline combustion engine was created over 100 years ago and even today with all our knowledge, lighter materials, and space age technology, the average full size truck gets less than 15 miles a gallon. Honestly, that’s pathetic and we can do better.

What’s worse is that we know we can, but we simply don’t because economic forces have not pushed us to the point where we must change our ways. The economic cost of creating a kilowatt of energy from solar, hydro, or wind power is still far higher than burning natural gas or coal to achieve the same kilowatt on a dollar per dollar basis. What is often ignored is the environmental cost we will eventually pay for our short sightedness. Yet 60,000 people got together in San Diego this month to celebrate the 16th annual Earth Fair in Balboa Park, where alternative solutions are well known, understood, and demonstrably available.

Hybrid electric cars are a great example of blending current gasoline combustion technology with advanced use of electronics and batteries for energy storage and conservation. If you have ever driven a Toyota Prius, it can be disconcerting the first time you stop at an intersection. I honestly thought I’d killed the engine. Then it occurred to me: What a wonderful shift it would be to sit in traffic if everything was quiet and non-polluting. A majority of fuel spent on the dead locked highways is absorbed in rush hour traffic at low and idle speeds. This is a solution to that specific problem we should be pursuing. However, the fact I was caught entirely off guard with such a novel idea is testament to how much further hybrids have to go to become accepted on a national level. With fuel costs soaring towards $3.00 a gallon, I foresee their popularity increasing dramatically and hope the government increases efforts to encourage their use. However, I don’t see the average American changing their commuting ways considerably until we reach the level of cost long endured by Europeans in the $5-6 range per gallon. Not surprisingly, their public transportation systems are dynamic, flexible, and wide ranging.

Another thing Europeans have on us is conservation of energy with something as simple as water heating. I love a hot shower as much as the next person and have long lived with a 30-50 gallon tank sitting in the garage of almost every home I ever lived in. Once, however, I had the “luxury” of living in a home that had installed a tank less hot water heater. If you are not familiar with how it works, let me break it down this way: A standard water heater brings water up to a temperature between 100 and 150 degrees based on the setting. That water is heated constantly throughout the day, 365 day a year, regardless of it ever being used, and sits there waiting. The average life expectancy of a standard water heater is 8-12 years, as they are built with designed obsolescence due to leaking of the seams from caustic minerals and oxidation. Yes, they can last 20+ years, but by that point, there is so much built up sediment, minerals, and other crud on the heating element, you are paying to heat that first before you can even heat any of the water. This is far from efficient.

A tank less water heater, on the other hand, heats only the water being used by the individual at the time of use. Also known as point of use, they can be installed in an entire house, or under just a single sink on the far end of a house to avoid running dozens of gallons of water through the faucet before the hot water reaches that point. The water passes through a series of copper coils and is rapidly heated to a preset temperature similar to a standard water heater. The end result is the same hot water, but even better, you’ll never run out. Since there is no waiting storage of water to draw from, you could technically take an eternally hot shower. However, this poses problems in terms of water conservation, but you see my point. There are better ways to live with the benefits of modern life; you just have to go about doing them slightly different sometimes.

Pardee homes recently started a small experiment here in San Diego that should be a full scale option on any new home in the greater southwest. They are called solar roof tiles and they do exactly what they sound like: Tile your roof and provide you energy at the same time. Some of these homeowners, based on their lifestyle choices, are expected to have 100% energy generation and no electric bills. In a city that averages 335 sunny days a year, it should be a crime that solar technology is not embraced and enforced in San Diego. Yet, small steps in the right direction are better than no steps at all. If you are going to be building a new house, please give me a call or drop me an email. I’ll give you some ideas on how you can better design and build your home to be more energy efficient than you might have ever believed possible. Oil isn’t just used in gasoline. Most carpeting requires large amounts of plastic, a petroleum based product. Have you considered bamboo flooring?

You and I may never get the chance to save the planet on our own, but if enough of us make the extra effort to conserve and utilize our resources wisely, we can ensure a brighter future for the next generation. Start with the simple things in your home: buy a water heater blanket and install it, turn off the lights as you leave rooms, put easily forgotten lights like garages on timers, use dimmer switches or change out incandescent and halogen bulbs for florescent, run full loads of laundry and dishes, use fans and blankets, not AC and heat. I know, these are all such hassles, aren’t they?

When driving, plan and combine trips or carpool with friends and family whenever possible. Recycle anything paper, plastic, glass, cardboard, or aluminum, including this newsletter, as the city makes it terribly easy with the blue bin pickup at your home. Currently the city charter does not allow San Diego to charge its residents for garbage pickup. This may change in the future with the financial crisis the city is facing. In the meantime, what pays for the garbage man to come by your home once a week is the revenue generated from the recyclable items placed in those blue bins. The Miramar landfill is sadly chock full of recyclable materials and filling up way ahead of schedule. Originally slated to be closed in 2012, estimates now see it full as early as 2007.

Ask yourself why is it so hard for us to think about what we are throwing away before doing so? Don’t think you have to give up your comfortable lifestyle to be environmentally friendly, just learn to think differently. It’s easier than it sounds. As soon as I realized how much the city can recycle, I went and asked for an extra blue bin, and it was free for the asking. I now recycle about 3 to 1 what I throw away here in my home.

I personally look forward to the day I can tell my grandkids that we once burned gasoline in our cars, used natural gas and coal to heat our homes, regularly threw away recyclable materials, and drilled for oil in the most beautiful of places. I suspect they will look at me with complete and utter shock, wondering aloud why anyone would have paid so much to be so destructive and ever done something so short sighted and barbaric to the earth when the sun, wind, and water are free to all...and always have been.