"'All the rich can afford a new car,'" an elderly British woman commented at a recent protest in London against plans to expand a toll on older, polluting vehicles to outer suburbs of the city. 'It’s affecting so many poor people… Everybody wants clean air but it’s all about money,' she told Times Radio."
"Her comments encapsulate growing resistance to pro-climate measures because of the costs they can impose on already stretched household budgets or the hassle they add to daily lives."
"Many people have seen their incomes eroded over the past 18 months by soaring food and energy bills and high borrowing costs. Even among those who accept that climate action is needed, rising numbers are unwilling or unable to shoulder additional expenses in these circumstances," writes Hanna Ziady.
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Severe Himalayan flooding exposed systemic infrastructure risk, cutting Nepal’s hydropower output by more than a tenth and confirming that resilience is fundamental to sustainable construction and environmental sustainability in construction.
Catchment-scale planning, diversified energy portfolios and redundancy in critical systems must sit alongside siting, access and social equity to keep projects viable. Policy momentum is shifting toward integrating adaptation into core planning, with procurement and finance required to price climate risk across whole asset lives through whole life carbon assessment, lifecycle assessment and life cycle cost analysis.
Targets for whole life carbon and embodied carbon should be locked into briefs and contracts, with BREEAM and BREEAM v7 used to embed building lifecycle performance, life cycle thinking in construction and sustainable building design.
Reconstruction that embraces green infrastructure, nature-based buffers and community-led recovery can avoid the “build–break–rebuild” loop. Circular economy in construction, circular construction strategies and end-of-life reuse in construction should guide material choices, supported by environmental product declarations (EPDs), sustainable material specification and low embodied carbon materials to cut the carbon footprint of construction. Eco-design for buildings, low carbon design and resource efficiency in construction are now baseline for energy-efficient buildings, green construction and eco-friendly construction.
US safety clearance for a mile‑deep nuclear reactor design signals decentralised, climate-resilient, low‑carbon power for energy‑intensive cement and steel, hardening supply for data‑rich construction workflows. Reliable clean baseload can accelerate decarbonising the built environment, enable net zero carbon buildings and net zero whole life carbon pathways, support carbon neutral construction and deliver measurable carbon footprint reduction with renewable building materials and green building materials in low carbon building programmes.
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