Straw-bale insulation lines the houses of Inner Mongolia--and the pockets of corporate America.

By Brian Libby
The Metropolis Observed
December 2001

Villagers (above) in Heilongjiang Province, China, employ a press rented from a paper factory to prepare straw bales for use in home construction (below).
If George W. Bush is viewed by some as the Big Bad Wolf of contemporary environmentalism, Kelly Lerner is Little Red Riding Hood. This past summer, while Bush was further distancing America from the Kyoto Protocol (the international agreement to reduce greenhouse gases), the Berkeley architect was building energy-efficient straw-bale homes for the poor in a remote area of China's Inner Mongolia region. And in a surprising Kyoto subplot, Lerner's work is funded in part by the very corporations Bush says he's trying to protect.

Lerner's efforts are sorely needed in Inner Mongolia. Left behind in urban China's economic growth, the region's high desert steppe is eroding from high water use and overgrazing. Thousands of rural herders who have lost their way of life suddenly need places to live after moving to the cities. Working with the Chinese government and the charitable organization Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA), Lerner has helped build more than 250 houses here in the past four years.

The energy-efficient straw-bale insulation significantly reduces dependence on coal heating. With temperatures dropping to as low as --40 degrees Fahrenheit, that means big savings in both money and carbon-dioxide emissions, which in turn has attracted interest from American corporations.

Although the United States hasn't signed the accord, its companies are paying attention to Kyoto's Clean Development Mechanism, established in 1997. In lieu of reducing their own emissions, corporations from industrialized nations can invest in charitable projects like Lerner's that reduce carbon dioxide in developing countries. It's like paying a sibling to do your chores. The actual investment is made through charities like ADRA; this year corporate America has already bankrolled about 30 to 40 percent of the cost of these straw-bale homes. "Most companies believe signing onto Kyoto is a question of when, not if," says Sean Clark of the climate change risk-management firm Trexler and Associates. "The more experience [reducing CO2] they can get now while they're unregulated, the better they'll be able to do it efficiently when it counts."

This 1998 school (above), in the Hebei Province, was the first straw-insulated building in China. The exterior is plastered and tiled, making it indistinguishable from typical area buildings.
Just as in America, Lerner says that Chinese and Mongolian clients were initially perplexed by straw-bale construction, but its superiority soon won them over. "Building with natural materials isn't anything new," she says. "The Chinese already have it down when it comes to permaculture principles: integrating your house, garden, and animals--and making them all fit together nicely. Straw-bale construction is just another step." What's more, Lerner believes the lesson is a two-way street. "There's a lot more smiling, relaxed people here with a lot less stuff," she says. "It makes me question the things that supposedly make us happy in the U.S. We need to think not just about the materials we're using but about building only what we need."


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