As if making an about-face from the Bush administration, the U.S. is heading toward becoming "green." On February 17, the then newly-elected President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. He laid out very compelling policies by emphasizing the development of renewable energy technologies and expanding employment opportunities, aiming at solving environmental problems and the economic crisis together at that same time.
As a result, the number of Americans who only think of the band Green Day when they hear the word "green" has decreased - well, I am not sure about that - but the word "green collar" is often used these days in the same manner as blue collar and white collar are used. Green collar refers to workers involved in environmental industries, such as alternative energy or recycling businesses.
According to a report released by a research organization called the Pew Charitable Trusts on June 10, the clean-energy economy grew 9.1% during the ten years between 1998 and 2007 and generated 777,000 jobs. The increase rate of employment during the same ten-year period surpassed the overall increase rate of employment in 38 of the U.S. states and Washington, D.C. Although the number of newly created jobs accounts only for 0.5% of the total, people can't help but see it as a ray of hope in times where one hears words like "bankruptcy" and "unemployment" from the media day after day.
Under such circumstances, the Solar Decathlon, a unique event hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy, will be held in October 2009 in Washington, D.C. The event brings together twenty teams nominated to represent colleges and universities from around the U.S., Puerto Rico, Canada, Spain and Germany. The teams will bring the houses they developed to the National Mall in Washington D.C. and compete to have them selected as the ultimate energy-efficient house utilizing solar or wind power. Contests will be held in the ten categories of Architecture, Market Viability, Engineering, Lighting Design, Communications, Comfort Zone, Hot Water, Appliances, Home Entertainment and Net Metering, from which the title "Decathlon" seems to have been derived.
The thing that concerns me the most is the sense of temperature of a typical Caucasian person. Once there was a fierce battle between a number of Japanese workers and a Caucasian worker in an office that I used to work in over the temperature setting of the air conditioning. The temperature that a typical Caucasian person thinks is just right is too low for most Japanese people. To begin with, the commonly recommended temperature for energy conservation is said to be 25 °C (78 °F), which is still too low for most Japanese, who try to maintain the temperature at 27 to 28 °C. I suppose that there is nothing anyone can do about innate predispositions to temperature.
