Winning by not loosing

The economics of just staying warm have changed over the
course of history. If we consider the "temperate" climates
where the most industrialized and fuel intensive centers
of population exist today, the pattern of the historical
change might be characterized as a backwards "J" shaped
plot. Measured in the number of hours a household had
to devote to work that obtained fuel and kept the fires
going, we went from a lot of hard work gathering wood
to increasingly mechanized acquisition of coal and oil
and increasingly automated distribution and consumption
via electrification and increased efficiency of centralized
generation plants. What we DID NOT do , except sporadically,
was find ways to live with less energy and that non-trend
has combined with the other trends to push us to the point
of exhausting all the cheap sources of fuel. A brief
change of course in the USA after the oil embargos of the
1970's was a heartening demonstration that laws and
consciousness can be changed toward more rational use of
resources but in time, the old ways of find-more-burn-more
reasserted themselves. The bottom of the j shaped curve
has been reached and energy will take an increasing bite
from here on out.
Today's link is an example of
how thorough economic analysis shows that you can build
for strict energy conservation and wind up saving a bundle
of cash into the bargain. This page has many links:
http://nickw.worldonline.co.uk/House/links.html
Of which I particularly recommend:
http://www2.rgu.ac.uk/subj/search/Research/SustainableHousing/Sust-H-Design/Publications/zeroleaflet.htm