Concrete is tipping us into climate catastrophe. It’s payback time
Cement, the key component of concrete and one of the most widely used manmade materials, is now the cornerstone of global construction. It has shaped the modern environment, but its production has a massive footprint that neither the industry nor governments have been willing to address….
Because of the heat needed to decompose rock and the natural chemical processes involved in making cement, every tonne made releases one tonne of C02, the main greenhouse warming gas.
Annual cement production has quadrupled from nearly one billion to over 4 billion tonnes a year in 30 years. In the next decade it is expected to increase a further 500m tonnes a year. Unless there is a dramatic change, cement emissions are expected to continue to rise beyond 2050.
The cement industry has transformed the world and enriched both itself and mankind. But it now threatens to tip the environment into uncontrolled warming. It’s now payback time and the industry must respond urgently to the problem it has helped to create.
(being a civil engineering librarian is the an opportunity to learn all sorts of fascinating things)
Bring back wooden buildings… although that means cutting down trees…. we can’t win really can we?
Maybe we’ll run out of sand first? http://theconversation.com/the-world-is-facing-a-global-sand-crisis-83557