Sitemap - 2023 - Carbon Upfront!

From the archives: Falls may soon be the leading cause of death

From the archives: Older pedestrians are dying on our roads

From the archives: Baby boomers will be among the hardest hit by climate change

Boxing Day Bonus: The Zero Ambitions Podcast

Counter Intelligence: Australia bans engineered stone

To end fossil fuels, "remember, it is the demand that will decide."

More lessons from Canadian small house designs

Canadian government to develop house plans for the 21st century

Saudi Arabia tries to kill COP28 while it pours concrete for ski resort

Why living on top of the shop is making a comeback

There's only one way to make the circular economy work: use less stuff.

One Hundred and six years after the Halifax Explosion, what have we learned?

Did Virgin's transatlantic flight really use 100% sustainable aviation fuel?

Stanley Jevons goes to Las Vegas

Seen at Construct Canada: marvellous modular and wonderful walls

What are the upfront carbon emissions of a cookie?

Has anything really changed because of the climate crisis?

Get out today and support Small Business Saturday

Tax the rich before they kill us all

Does carbon capture and storage with limestone make sense?

In the future, everything will be a drive-through

New studies find SUVs and pickups with high flat fronts are 45% more likely to kill.

It's America Recycles Day!

Hearables just keep getting better and better

Sidewalks should be designed for people, not cars

Death to skeuomorphism!

BONUS: What happened to WeWork?

The end of work

Lessons from Livermore's 2022 Energy Consumption Chart

An alternative vision of transportation, from my Dad

Preservation is climate action

Everyone is talking about E-bikes these days

Pedestrian safety is not a two-way street

On Simplicity (and Thomas Heatherwick)

Why our cities are becoming a corporate monoculture

Imagine these houses with acrylic stucco and vinyl windows

Why heritage preservation is climate action

Small CLT is Beautiful: A different model for mass timber

What happens when we get a clean slate? We write the same thing again

Why we need “windows with purpose”

Another cyclist murdered by the construction industry and the government

Lego changes course, will recircle instead of recycle

When you look at the world through the lens of upfront carbon, it changes everything

The Therme Spa at Ontario Place in Toronto is a carbon bomb that must be defused

Nobody is telling you that you have to give up your hamburger or stop buying pants

The three different kinds of obsolescence

Are the new Apple Watches truly "carbon neutral"?

Why everyone should have a bidet toilet seat

Car bloat is getting ridiculous and must be stopped

When I hear the word "abatement," I reach for my delete key

Stop the Presses for Labor Day (or Labour Day, which is how you should spell it)

Ephemerality: Another radical design concept for the climate revolution

The latest design trend: "House hushing"

I keep saying people want walkable communities, but apparently I am wrong

OK, what should a green building look like?

Dear Zero: Please accept my apology and my explanation of why I hate AI images of buildings covered in trees

New study looks at the impact of frequent flyer points

Pedestrian bridges are mostly designed for cars, and we will be seeing more of them.

We have to stop "carbon lock-in" now, and that means stopping Doug Ford from paving the Greenbelt

Has recycling failed? No, it has been successful beyond the convenience-industrial complex's wildest dreams

Kitchen bloat is everywhere, from tiny homes to monster homes

A reader asks: What motivates me?

Underground parking garages are not "sustainable"

It's time for limits on truck and SUV size and weight

Climate doomism means I'm gonna need a bigger pickup truck

Air conditioning is a hot topic these days

Upfront Carbon helps kill replacement of Marks & Spencer's Oxford Street store

Let's get creative with our office-to-residential conversions

Listen to Zero Ambitions: PH+ Revisited

The three little pigs got it wrong

It's time to make side guards mandatory on every truck in North America

Quit whining. Even the Dutch don't all cycle like the Dutch.

Buildings can be too tall and too thin.

“Fist pumps for R290 Monoblocs!”

The Canadian connections and parallels to the UK drinking water crisis

Can architects and designers make a difference in the climate emergency?

From the Archives: Le Corbusier on airplanes: " in less than ten years, the whole world could fly."

Why is it so hard to hang up the car keys?

Scoping out carbon emissions

Why we should be designing for intermittency

How much does a tonne of carbon dioxide weigh?

CO2 from forest fires? Don't worry; it's biogenic carbon and doesn't count.

Niagara Falls: Some things never change

Wildfires are another reason that every house should be Passivhaus

The real problem with electric cars

Why we must save our "third spaces"

From the Archives: The issue for boomers won't be "aging in place."

E-bikes are everywhere, and the CBC is on it

Less is less

I survived riding a bike in Dublin

The wood revolution in building is just getting started

Everyone in the building industry must read "Show Me the Bodies: How We Let Grenfell Happen"

What colour is your aluminum? It makes a massive difference.

Up close and personal at the Ontario Science Centre

Happy 10th birthday and happy Earth Day, Bullitt Center

How tall should a building be: How not to build in a climate crisis

How big should a home be? If you're measuring upfront carbon, size matters.

The New Manual: Light, Air and Openness

The problem isn't dockless e-scooters, it's dockless cars

Everything connects, including greenhouse gas emissions

The new Manual of the Dwelling

Universal design comes to the e-bike

What's new in e-bikes? The Gazelle C380 HMB has been Lloyd-proofed

An all-electric multi-modal vision of the future

Investing in infrastructure: Bike parking garage is built under Amsterdam canal

Happy Våffeldagen, or Swedish Waffle Day, my annual celebration of waffle slabs.

IPCC: Always look on the demand-side of life

Does 3D-printing houses make sense?

We need speed governors on cars and watercraft as well as bikes and scooters.

Maybe people who replace their windows are not so deluded.

(With Images!) Bill Gates doesn't think much of a 1.5 degree lifestyle

Bill Gates doesn't think much of a 1.5 degree lifestyle

It's time to dump Railway Time and War Time and go Local Time

UK might ban demolition without planning permission

Forget Repo Man, Ford applies for a patent that would put a repo computer in your car

What's wrong with this picture?

Cows burp a lot of methane. Does it cause climate change?

No, the Canadian oil sands are not making "clear strides to net-zero."

Stop eating fossil fuels and tune in to turnip.

Mind the gap! The chasm on climate change

British judge finds Just Stop Oil protesters "admirable." Drivers are outraged.

A visit to the Auto Show makes it clear: the future is electric

Jargon Watch: The Nirvana Fallacy

The deluded world of window replacement

I have unpublished my previous post about 15-minute cities.

Help! I'm trapped in a 15-minute city with Jordan Peterson!

E-Bikes are Eating Cars

I'm on a podcast with zero ambitions

Do heat pumps need a new name?

Happy 125th Birthday, Alvar Aalto; We are still learning from you

Stop the attack of the killer bathtubs!

The Goldilocks Density has the lowest carbon footprint

How Dangerous Design in our cities and homes is killing our olders

Why Toronto's Yonge Street bike lane is part of a worldwide transportation revolution

Well, this was a surprise....

The gas stove freakout is ridiculous but unsurprising