This book is designed for makers.

That's not to say that our subject isn't important for consumers of all the kinds of products and services that we use in our everyday lives, but this guidebook is directed broadly towards producers and, more specifically, the people who produce buildings. This not only includes planners, architects, and engineers, but also industrial manufacturers, product suppliers as well as policy-makers and developers - anyone who makes daily decisions about the materials and technologies we apply to the maintenance and expansion of the built environment.

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In one sense, the theme of this book is an accounting of construction materials and methods and all the energy we consume throughout the process. This includes everything from raw material supplies to the manufacturing processes that are needed to make building products, to assemble them into a building, to then use, maintain and repair the building over the course of its life, and - ultimately - to disassemble it and recycle its components. In this book, we also discus the impacts of the built environment on landscapes, ecological systems and specific biomes as we strive to answer our growing need for more buildings and infrastructure. But essentially, this is a story about carbon. About its role in forming human settlement and - as has unfortunately become apparent - in determining the future of the only habitable planet we know of.