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There is no silver bullet.

Robert Powell, an assistant professor at N.C. A&T University, said this to me over lunch Wednesday when I asked him what Greensboro needs to do to address the challenges of climate change and peak oil production. He said we would need a multi-faceted approach with the city first establishing a baseline of how much fossil fuels it uses as part of its signing the U.S. Mayor's Climate Protection Agreement last year.

Powell (who also happens to serve on a construction advisory group with Guilford County Schools and was part of an initiative to help Glenwood neighborhood get a sculpture garden) has been promoting energy efficiency and sustainability measures for the past 30 years and believes we have reached a time when several groups working in silos are coming together around the same table to talk. But his passion is architecture and he and other professors at the university are working on an initiative, funded by the state energy office, to research programs and building techniques that can be applied commercially and residentially across the state. I'll have details on that initiative later.

Powell is also a fan of architect Edward Mazria, who designed the Mount Airy Public Library, which uses extensive daylighting. 

Mazria also established Architecture 2030, a non-profit, non-partisan and independent organization, whose mission is to rapidly transform the national and global building sector to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

According to the group:

"Credible scientists give us 10 years to be well on our way toward global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions in order to avoid catastrophic climate change. Yet there are hundreds of coal-fired power plants currently on the drawing boards in the US. Seventy-six percent (76%) of the energy produced by these plants will go to operate buildings.

Buildings are the major source of demand for energy and materials that produce by-product greenhouse gases (GHG). Slowing the growth rate of GHG emissions and then reversing it over the next ten years is the key to keeping global warming under one degree centigrade (°C) above today's level. It will require immediate action and a concerted global effort."

"Green" building has caught on locally, although some question whether the long-term savings are worth the short-term costs. Guilford County Schools is incorporating green features in its new schools, the new Proximity Hotel is LEED-certified and New Garden Friends School recently announced it is building a LEED-certified arts and athletics complex. I also hear the Greensboro Builders Association will promote green building on the residential level. (Via an Action Greensboro blog, check out Rivercane Village outside of Asheville, which the developer bills as the "largest residential application of solar thermal technology in the U.S.")

Powell said Americans need to stop waiting for government groups to initiate changes.

"It's not going to happen that way," he said. "If it happened (that) way it wouldn't work."