Last week, Southface hosted their Visionary Dinner to raise awareness and funding for their continued work in sustainable community development, high-performance building, affordable housing and green jobs training.
Rutherford and I have been working with Southface for many years and were especially honored to receive Argon Awards for Leadership in Sustainability. (Argon is the gas that is used between the panes of highly efficient windows to reduce the transfer of heat between the inside and outside of a building.) Southface has played a big role in our lives, they counseled us when we built our home, they worked with Rutherford on Philips arena, and they are a key part of Mayor Reed’s vision of turning Atlanta into a model sustainable city. We had a great time receiving these awards at the same time, even though that meant sharing the microphone!
While Rutherford and I work hard to promote sustainability and environmentalism, I admire keynote speaker Amory Lovin’s work so much I wanted to turn around and give my award to him! Amory is the cofounder, chairman and chief scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute. Fifteen years ago, Rutherford and I visited Amory at his home at the institute. His home ran off 1/18th of the energy and water used in an average home. We were really blown away and this became a big inspiration for us in building our own home.
Amory’s speech was based on ideas from his new book, “Reinventing Fire: Bold Business Solutions for a New Energy Era,” which outlines Amory’s vision for running a 158-percent bigger U.S. economy by 2050 that would require no oil, coal or nuclear energy. I strongly encourage you to watch his video below!
You can see more pictures from the event on Southface’s Facebook page.
