ABSTRACT
Introduction Climate change and the built environment ro b e rt s . m c l e o d a n d c h r i st i n a j . h o p f e
It can have scarcely gone unnoticed that for several decades, eminent scientists have warned that we are polluting the planet at a pace beyond which its natural systems can process. At the same time non-renewable resources are being consumed at a faster rate than at any previous point in history (Kendall, 1992). Fossil fuel emissions and deforestation have been cited as the principal factors which have caused the destabilisation of the earth’s carbon cycle resulting in serious and progressive climatic changes. These climatic changes are in turn contributing to the destruction and collapse of a host of natural ecosystems upon which life on earth depends (Stern, 2006; IPCC, 2014).
