KINGS LANGLEY, England, February 26/PRNewswire/ -- - 'Whole System Thinking' Urgently Needed to Address Challenge of Climate Change The danger of the 'zero carbon agenda' that has gripped the UK property industry is that it ignores social and economic sustainability and could result in highly perverse outcomes, building experts and the home-buying public were warned today. Speaking on the first day of the Ecobuild conference in London, Dr David Strong, chief executive of Inbuilt Consulting, called for an urgent reality check and a change to "whole system thinking." "I am a strong supporter of zero and low carbon buildings. The drive towards zero carbon is very important - it has had a powerful effect in galvanising the UK housebuilding and property development community and in stimulating innovation." "But there is much more to delivering exemplary built environments than zero carbon," says David Strong, who recently won the 2007 Sustainability Leadership Award and is one of the founders of the UK Green Building Council. Commenting on recent prototype houses that meet the highest levels (Levels 5 and 6) of the Code for Sustainable Homes, David Strong warned that: "The single-minded scramble to design and build Level 6 homes gives out the message that this is the highest ambition and most worthy outcome we should aim for." "However, if we end up with 'zero carbon' Code Level 6 homes that are uneconomic to maintain, are built on flood plains, overheat in summer, have poor acoustic performance, poor indoor air quality or other unintended consequences, then we have created a generation of homes that are unfit for people. We can't call this sustainability. The so-called 'best' are in real danger of becoming the enemy of the good." Addressing the challenge of climate change requires a holistic approach to deliver genuine sustainability, explained David Strong. "We need whole system thinking. This means collaborative, multi-disciplinary, integrated team working like we've rarely seen before."
