Photo by RBerteig
US Energy Secretary Steven Chu has been promoting the idea of painting the whole world white to combat climate change.
Well okay, maybe not the whole world, just the rooftops.
The theory is that the whitewash will act like the polar icecaps and reflect sunlight instead of buildings absorbing the radiation as they do at the moment.
There's only one slight problem - this does nothing to stop the pollution. You could argue that a white building will need less air conditioning, but outside of the US you don't tend to find many aircon units - certainly not on domestic buildings. Plus, there's the chemical processes involved in making all that paint.
Personally, I'd rather see green roofs. They can insulate a building and reduce the heat island effect in a city. Plus, more flora means less CO2!
2 comments:
I've seen someone laugh about this at a forum too!!
How does this stop pollution from coal or nuke powerplants indeed?
It's an interesting idea, but I agree all that color would be chemically questionable!!
(of course the shares of paint companies would go up though? maybe a way to 'save' the paint industry? /sigh/)
& roof paint is not very 'stay-able' in rainier climates-!! so it would need to be reapplied every few years.. oh gosh..
hope they do not make a law out of this indeed!!
I'm all for green roofs too...
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