Designers, builders and architects need to pressure their communities, policy-makers and others to focus on negative emissions technology, renewables and electrification to wrestle climate change here and around the globe.

“This isn’t a future solution, it needs to happen now,” said Peter Halsall, the former president of the Halsall group of Companies.

“Everything we do has to change. The materials we use, how long they last, what it would take to change the use of that building…it has to start today,” Halsall, who was the keynote speaker at the 16th Canadian Conference on Building Science and Technology (CCBST) recently in Woodbridge, Ont. told a packed auditorium at the Paramount Eventspace.