I start off today with this beautiful collage of compassionate and courageous young human beings.  They are 13 of the 14 youth of Hawai’i who, on June 1, 2022, filed a constitutional climate lawsuit against the Hawai’i Department of Transportation, the HDOT Director Jade Butay, Governor David Ige, and the State of Hawaiʻi. They claim the state operation of a transportation system resulting in high levels of greenhouse gas emissions violates their state constitutional rights, causing them significant harm and impacting their ability to “live healthful lives in Hawaiʻi now and into the future.” The youth plaintiffs seek to ensure HDOT steps up to meet the state legislature’s goal to decarbonize Hawaiʻi’s economy and achieve a zero emissions economy by 2045.

I was glad to find these images on the website of Our Children’s Trust.  This is just one of several legal actions OCT has brought on behalf of the children of several states and provinces across North America in addition to their major action against the U.S. Government (Juliana v. U.S.) claiming all children’s constitutional right to breathe free.

         

I was glad to begin the blog with their faces as opposed to this scintillating photo of the gray Zehnder Energy Recovery Ventilator (ERV) stuck in the ceiling of grandson Jackson’s private toy closet in our Net Zero Home in Central Oregon.  I mean, give your own reviews, but there’s little question which brings the most goosebumps.  I included their names and ages so you could briefly know them and look into their bright, determined faces to see what you will.  Truth is, both pics are about breathing.  Surely we don’t have to rely solely on the big stories of Genesis and the creation myths of so many cultures to know how essential is breath.

God formed the human from the topsoil of the fertile land and blew life’s breath into human nostrils. And the human became a living soul. 

Genesis 2:7

The life of all with lungs begins with not just air.  The Hebrew translates “moist air,” humid air.  That’s the breath that awakes us from our fetal stupor.  I have come to another BFO recently (Blinding Flash of the Obvious!)  I take breath for granted.  Even in 35 years of intentional organizing in response to Earth’s climate emergency, I have narrowly focused on conservation and renewable technologies and paid less attention to human aspiration as breath and public human health.

A recent “Oh duh!” occurred on my morning 2-miler.  I was jogging (actually gleefully shuffling) my regular route near home.  It’s a boulevard increasingly clogged of commuter traffic either stopped with idling internal combustion or accelerations competing for the next destination.  Running an uphill sidewalk

I was having trouble breathing.  I realized it was just a teensie dose of what our most marginalized neighbors, over-represented by people of color, experience every day 24/7 living by the tracks, airports, industrial zones of all kinds and the smoggy, dieseled transportation corridors where, by red-lining and the cruel absence of privilege, we have discarded them.  From George Floyd to the nameless millions of school children who daily inhale fumes of the diesel-powered school buses that transport them, more and more of us repeat the mantra “I can’t breathe” from multiple sources of brutality in forgotten zip codes.  Fair treatment and good breath are privilege.

Homes in all zip codes breathe.  They either inhale unintentionally of the exhaust, wild-fire smoke and pollution from the drafts and leaks of unsealed and poorly constructed building envelopes or they breathe in fresher filtered air more intentionally through ventilation systems in buildings that are more air-tight and far less asthmatic.

Anyway, back to the award winning pic of the gray, Swiss-made Zehnder ERV stuck in the ceiling of Jackson’s toy closet.  This time, we give you the official, even-more-fascinating, installed view—what you see looking up from Jackson’s 4 3/4 year-old level.  The access handles for the two filters are shown where we can easily remove them for vacuum cleaning every now and then.  This ComfoAir 200 is a slightly different gismo than what we had in Passive House #1.  The pic of the former unit shows it sitting on the floor of the pre-Jackson closet, with the visible filter ports.  It also shows the bundle of flex tubes before installation, ready to be connected to a port in the ceiling of every space, making our home the lungs of our lives.  The flex tubing above the ceiling of our current house looks different but, either way, these channels become the bronchioles of our house-breath, inhaling the fresh and exhaling the stale air 24 hours a day.

In fact, the Zehnder completely exchanges old air for new every three hours!

The transport of air through the building is quite easy to understand.  Some of the tubes connect the Zehnder to kitchen, bathroom and other humidified-possible-toxin-producing spaces like laundry sucking

that old air out of the space through a ceiling port and exhausting through a vent on the outer wall of the house.  The other tubes inhale new outdoor air through a second outside vent and deliver it fresh to the rooms through a ceiling port.  The Zehnder does all the breathing.  That is, there are no separate conventional exhaust fans in bathroom or kitchen.  There’s an extra toggle switch on the wall in the bathrooms and kitchen so when you’re performing soap-a-dope in the shower or steaming the asparagus on the induction range top, you hit that extra switch and the system goes to a higher sucking speed for several minutes then reverts to it’s 24-hour-a-day regular sipping rate.

Understanding the transfer of energy from the stale exhaust air to the incoming fresh air challenges the noggin a bit more, at least my noggin.  Passive I employed an HRV or Heat Recovery Ventilator.  In the HRV, as the stale and fresh streams pass in winter, most of the heat (90%) is transferred from the outgoing warm air to the incoming cold air.   In Passive II we have an ERV or Energy Recovery Ventilator which as the two streams pass in winter weather, transfers heat as in the HRV, but here in this dry climate, 70% of the humidity is also transferred from the warm humid outgoing air to the cool, incoming, dry desert air.  This fits our move from Passive I on the wet side of the Cascades to Passive II on the dry desert side.

If you’re thinking this through with me, you will want to know what happens in the summer when it’s 105 degrees outside in Bend, Oregon.  Well…our smart Zehnder removes the heat from the outside air before the fresh air enters the house.  Zehnder’s polymer membrane functions as a separating layer between the airflows.  It also prevents impurities from being transferred from the outgoing air to the incoming air.  OK…so I think that’s nerdy enough for one blog.  If you want more, these visuals from (zehnderamerica.com) may help satisfy your geekness.

One of the goals here is air quality in this time of wild-fire smoke and the increasing jeopardy to the health of the marginalized and endangered.  This can’t be just for those like us who can afford it or live in communities who care how buildings are coded and built.  One of the ways we work on equity as a public is by making public policy.  The Oregon Legislative Assembly is working on significant legislation to

strengthen codes to reduce emissions and the infiltration of polluted air, with favor given to our most vulnerable.  Oregon Senate (SB) 869, titled “Smart from the Start” seeks to ensure new buildings in Oregon are constructed energy efficiently and are more resilient to climate impacts.  If justice is “what love looks like in public,” making public policy is certainly one of the ways to do justice.  SB 869 directs the Oregon Building Codes Division to “update ventilation and air filtration standards for indoor air quality.”  This and SB 868 (Healthy Heating and Cooling for All) are just two of a host of bills presented to the 2023 Assembly by the Resilient Efficient Buildings Task Force. They all require that priority be given to healthy air for our lowest income neighbors who are over-represented by people of color including our tribal friends. Click on these links and find out where your legislators stand on these bills:

Healthy Heating & Cooling for All (SB 868), one-page info sheet

Build Smart from the Start (SB 869), one-page info sheet

The quality of the air we breathe in Passive II depends in part on our keeping the filters clean.  Of course any 4-and-three-quarters-year-old could probably do that.  But, until at least the next growth spurt, Gramps will have to reach them.  Of course one of the clues is the Zehnder thing on the wall flashing “FLTR, FLTR, FLTR” till our team pays attention and does the vacuuming. 

In the next evolutionary step toward an America with a conscience, I imagine the monitor on the wall of each home would keep flashing “JSTC, JSTC, JSTC,” till our sense of oneness with all Creation awakens!  Oh No!  Did I just suggest an affinity for WOKE HOMES?  At this date all the Republican Senators in the state legislature have walked out so nothing can be considered or passed.  I think that means I don’t need to mind my language right?!!?

On June 1, 2022, 14 youth in Hawaiʻi filed a constitutional climate lawsuit, Navahine F. v. Hawaiʻi Department of Transportation.  I want you to meet lead plaintiff Navahine F. face to face because she has great news to share!!!  Just a few weeks ago, April 6, 2023, the Honorable Judge Jeffrey P. Crabtree ruled in favor of the 14 youth plaintiffs, denying the state’s attempt to prevent their case from proceeding to trial. The young plaintiffs and their attorneys are now gathering evidence in preparation for trial, scheduled to begin September 26, 2023!

I don’t often ask you to do something specific when I blog, but you can complete this action today in less time than it takes to breathe one breath.   You’ll be conspiring with Navahine and the 14 kids from Hawai’i to make a real difference.  Breathing in, click on this link.  Breathing out, add your signature to the Wall of Support.  There!  You did it!  You now “Stand with the Youth Plaintiffs of Navahine F. v. Hawaiʻi Department of Transportation!”  You can also post messages of support to your social media using the hashtag #YouthvGovHI!

How did that feel?  Don’t you breathe just a little easier? Before too long we’ll all breathe better!  And we will conspire together.  When we do that, humanity again becomes a living soul.