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Cooling our Environment: An Architect’s Vision to Combat Global Warming

By: Kalpana Sutaria
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Publication Date: December 10, 2024
ISBN: 979-8891325418
Reviewed by: Diana Coyle
Review Date: January 16, 2025

We look at buildings as a place where we live, work, and play. We take for granted that those existing buildings may or may not have been built with our environment in mind. In Cooling our Environment: An Architect’s Vision to Combat Global Warming by Kalpana Sutaria, we learn that professionals in the building industry are presently implementing sustainable building practices to create green buildings and infrastructures to lower emissions as best we can. All our activities, whether they are for work or play, are continually warming our planet. If we don’t make serious changes now, our planet and generations to come will experience unnecessary suffering.

Through our actions, global warming plays out in future weather events that will lead to increases in droughts, wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and hailstorms. The intensity of these weather events has been increasing over the past decades, causing severe devastation across the United States. Because of these severe weather changes, we must pay careful attention to our actions, and that of future generations, to address the severity of our present situation. In order to do this, we must use cleaner energy sources such as wind and solar power.

Sutaria presents a valid argument that if we and future generations don’t start taking responsibility for our actions, we are setting ourselves up for future devastating disasters. We need to be educated in not only how we, as individuals, can conserve for our planet, but as a whole we must all take responsibility to preserve our planet for generations to come. Part of this education comes from understanding how our homes, schools, and work places are being built. We need to get our local politicians involved and make them just as accountable for helping protect our future environment. They are the ones allowing areas to be built up, so let’s hold them accountable so we can collectively work toward a better, healthier, and environmentally friendlier place for future generations can grow up in.

The author has done her research and it clearly shows in the diagrams she provides and the statistics she shares. While reading, this reviewer had to take a minute or two to pause from time to time to actually let these statistics sink into her thoughts. Honestly, with everyone’s schedules being jammed with family and work routines, we all collectively don’t put much thought to what our future generations are going to be dealing with because of our present day actions. We don’t think about how buildings are being built, or what materials they might be using to build them. We don’t hold our local city and state departments accountable enough when they grant building permits. We have to wonder if they are truly taking the time to see what the builders plan on using to build the structures. But as Sutaria states, the time is now to start making changes before it is too late to do so. We all need to be held accountable for what future generations are going to have to deal with due to unfriendly environmental actions today.

Quill says: Cooling our Environment: An Architect’s Vision to Combat Global Warming will make readers stop and take a look at the footprints they are creating today. After reading this book, readers will be equipped to put into practice positive changes in order to shape a healthier environment for our future.

For more information about Cooling our Environment: An Architect’s Vision to Combat Global Warming, please visit the publisher's website at: atmospherepress.com/books/cooling-our-environment-an-architects-vision-to-combat-global-warming-by-kalpana-sutaria/