WHITE IS GREENER...REALLY

When I hear white wash I think of cover-ups, the Cameron Inquiry or Tom Sawyer but did you know that if we painted every rooftop in 100 major cities in the world white, it would offset the entire planet's carbon dioxide emissions for one year!

Replacing dark shingles on an average-sized household rooftop with a lighter color would offset 10 metric tons of carbon dioxide comparable to taking two mid-sized cars off the road for a year! That according to a report presented to the Climate Change Research Conference by Hashem Akbari from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Builders have known for decades that white roofs reflect the sun's rays and lower the cost of air conditioning. As a matter of fact since 2005, the California has required that flat commercial structures have white roofs. Next year, new and retrofitted residential and commercial buildings, with both flat and sloped roofs, will have to install heat-reflecting roofing, as part of an energy-efficient building code.

a 1,000-square-foot roof -- the average size on an American home -- offsets 10 metric tons of planet-heating carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere if dark-colored shingles or coatings are replaced with white material.

Apparently similar savings could be found by recovering roads with lighter colored-materials.