The climate emergency is indifferent to postcode. With the fate of the Marks and Spencer’s Building on Oxford Street hanging in the balance, it continues to generate huge media interest. Relatively recent buildings are routinely demolished, and the majority of the time no serious examination is given to retrofit opportunities. These may be in places where land value has less market interest, nor significant architectural merit. But on one crucial level this is immaterial: the squandering of their embodied carbon will have precisely the same deleterious impact on the climate emergency as the demolition of more prestigious buildings in more prominent locations.
The UN’s Emission Gap Report 2022 makes for stark reading. Their environmental agency sees “no credible pathway to 1.5C in place”, while “the failure to reduce carbon emissions means the only way to limit the worst impacts of the climate crisis is a rapid transformation of societies”. We simply cannot assume we can continue to demolish old buildings and build new replacements without consequence.