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Sustainable Living Audio Book – Learn From Looking – Chapter 3: Part 3
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The author of Learn from Looking, Charlie Szoradi, has given us authorization to share the written content and drawings from his book with our readers. This is one of many segments that focuses on the overall theme of sustainable design and overall sustainable living.
Book Topic: Sustainable Living
Learn from Looking is about critical thinking and reaching a sustainable future more cost-effectively than ever imagined. The book's subtitle "How Observation Inspires Innovation" speaks to the core aspect of the content, given that the author, Charlie Szoradi, is an architect and inventor who has traveled extensively around the world over multiple decades and built businesses that range from energy saving lighting to indoor agriculture systems. Mr. Szoradi shares insights on "green" clean-technology that are increasingly key for sustainability, profitable businesses, healthy living, and raising intellectually curious children in a pre and post Covid-19 world. We give Learn from Looking five out of five green stars! Note that the audio book comes with the E-book for only $15 together. Click here to Order the Audio Book on Sustainable Living
Sample content from Learn from Looking:
Examples of Critical Thinking for Sustainable Design (Continued)
Light-Emitting Diodes (LEDs): I repeatedly saw that fluorescent tube lighting was the dominant from of commercial illumination at a global level. I asked, why? The answer lies with inertia over innovation. Fluorescent tube technology was more efficient when launched over fifty years ago than incandescent bulbs. So the commercial market readily adopted the change. Since then, the form factor has stayed largely the same, with the typical four-foot (120 cm) tubes. I saw a path to double the efficiency and reduce the 32-watt tubes to 15 watts with LEDs back in 2009, and in so doing also eliminate the toxic mercury vapor in each fluorescent tube and reduce the air-conditioning load. I expected the world to respond. However, disruptive technology takes time. The next year in 2010, we developed a robust thermal management system to keep the LEDs cooler, and we moved our manufacturing from China to southeastern Pennsylvania to increase quality assurance. The superior engineering and made-in-America reliability triggered the sales to major corporations and the US government.
According the US Department of Energy (DOE) there are over 2.3 billion fluorescent tubes in American ceilings. As an architect with a master’s thesis on energy intelligence, I take that data as an awesome challenge to switch the lights and save 50 percent or more on energy, create American jobs, and reduce CO2 emissions along the way. A link to critical thinking lies in the fact that lighting accounts for about a third of commercial electricity but it is not sub-metered on the electricity bills. Simply, business owners can’t see the breakout expense on lighting. It is a costly cancer that grows in each utility bill. For about fifty years, no one really asked the question, “How much do my lights cost to operate?” Taking anything for granted is the opposite of critical thinking, and since 2009, my team has been beating the drum of energy efficiency through lighting. We have had to assess and count many lights in many locations to calculate the annual kilowatt-hour consumption. The calculations let us show property owners their burden of electricity for existing illumination, and the savings potential with LEDs. We have proudly retrofitted some “firsts” in property categories like commercial high-rises, retail, health care, education, hospitality, automotive, industrial, and the military. Each spring, I think that the mainstream tipping point will come, and we’ll see if it happens soon.
Critical thinking is often about connecting the dots that are not immediately apparent, and the act of digging deeper with something as common as a showerhead that saves water and energy relative to heating the water sets the stage for explorations into how LED technology could reduce electricity for lighting but also reduce the air-conditioning costs since they run cooler than other less efficient types of lights.
Pens and Pencils: During the 1960s space race with the United States and Soviet Union, a story unfolded that NASA was spending millions of dollars to develop a pen that would work in a gravity-free environment, while the Soviets just used pencils. The story turns out to be an urban myth, because both programs used a form of pencils. Our American astronauts initially used mechanical pencils with high-strength outer casings while the Soviet cosmonauts used wax pencils. Both writing implements had their downsides, because the unintended material waste could damage sensitive electronic equipment in the space capsules. Plus, the broken graphite from the mechanical pencils or the peal back paper from the wax pencils could float around and get into someone’s eye. Both programs eventually ended up using the Fisher Space Pen.
The innovation by Paul C. Fisher used nitrogen under pressure to force the flow of ink. This resulted in a pen that would write in zero gravity, upside down, in a vacuum, and also underwater. A floating barrier separated the nitrogen from the special high-viscosity ink, and a tungsten carbide roller ball helped prevent the ink from leaking out into the space capsule.
I share this story, because I like the message of the myth more than the reality of the historical facts. Solutions that use readily available materials versus high-tech alternatives have a certain simplicity and elegance.
Moving a Mountain: In 2014, when my son, Calvin, was eight years old, I asked him one of the questions that I have asked high school seniors that are at the very top of their class, during interviews that I help conduct for my alma matter, the University of Virginia, for the Jefferson Scholarships. I ask, “How would you move Mount Fuji?”
Many of the high-performing students respond with answers that are literally about moving Mount Fuji through earth-moving equipment, which is similar to what is expected of employees in interviews for companies like Microsoft, McKinsey, or Booz, Allen and Hamilton. In his book How Would You Move Mount Fuji, William Poundstone provides details into the earth-moving calculations and many other thought-provoking questions and answers.
The idea of the “big” questions is to see how people respond to breaking down the steps necessary to tackle seemingly insurmountable challenges like moving a mountain or walking on the moon. As a second-grade student, my son, Calvin, answered the Mount Fuji question with a question, “Dad, isn’t the real question how to stop it from moving?” As he asked, he spun his finger around and then widened the circle radius to mimic the earth rotating and revolving around the sun. The next day, he asked me, “In what time do I have to move that mountain?” I asked if he meant how much time did he have to move it, and he said, “No, when do I have to move it, because if it is now, it would be easier than with old technology, but if it is in the future, it would be easier because I could use future technology like lasers and hovercrafts.” In both of his first two responses, I loved that he skipped over trying to wrestle with the earth-moving calculations and questioned the question.
The next day on our morning drive to school, he asked me to ask him the same question again. I looked in the rearview mirror and said, “Calvin, how would you move Mount Fuji?” He looked back at me through the mirror and with a calm and almost unaffected demeanor said, “What am I?” I asked what he meant, and he said, “Well you said how would ‘I’ move Mount Fuji. What if ‘I’ am magma and can move it by erupting tomorrow?” Since then, I have proudly shared his set of rotation, time, and existential responses with friends.
In the twenty-first century, we have some potential mountains to move. Given that human population has doubled since the 1970s, and we face energy, natural resource, and climate challenges, we will need to rethink prior solutions. We may need to also question the questions in order to open opportunities for productive paths forward.
Summary on Critical Thinking
Overall, critical thinking starts with observation and the act of asking questions versus having preconceived answers. I now have many more questions than answers. By embedding in communities around the word at urban, suburban, and rural levels, my preconceptions were challenged daily. In many cases, drawing something like a town square involved multiple hours of documentation. The time-consuming act of drawing enabled me to absorb local social interactions. In different countries, I have seen a surprising range of commuter “shift changes” in bustling cities and interaction between merchants and customers in towns and villages. The social observations and personal interactions have certainly shaped some of my critical thinking into the people side of the triple bottom line: people, planet, and profit.
Drawing on observations from prior experiences or from other countries and synthesizing those observations is what elevates critical thinking from just … thinking. The most effective synthesizing is often when a number of apparently disparate things are combined into a coherent whole. The whole may become an insight, tactic, or strategy. The next chapter focuses on how critical thinking can inform sustainability and a new clean technology approach for America.
