Senator Barack Obama's energy plan includes zero-energy building codes nationwide for all new buildings by 2030. For such a standard, buildings must not use more energy than than they produce. California has already legislated a zero-energy building requirement, slated to begin by 2020.

For architects familiar with meeting design requirements for energy efficiency, such as California's Title 24, the next step should not prove difficult to achieve.

Legislated building-efficiency improvements have created incentives to go the extra mile, because higher initial costs are offset by future energy savings. Even now, LEED-certified buildings generate 3.5 percent higher occupancy rates and 3 percent higher rental rates; they have a 6.6 percent improved return on investment. Zero-energy buildings would presumably do even better: Their energy costs are not just reduced, they're eliminated -- in the long run.

Innovative concepts such as biomimicry, new urbanism, permaculture, cradle-to-cradle, lifecycle analysis and ecological design mark the field of sustainable design. It's changing how we think about our relationships with nature and the built environment.

The solutions are many: solar panels that work in place of traditional roofing, micro wind turbines and ground heat pumps. When you build from scratch, excavation for the  earthquake-proof foundations some building codes already require takes you deep enough to install a heat pump.

This new, more stringent efficiency requirement will not meet the same resistance from architects that we've seen from the auto industry for fuel-efficient designs. Architects and designers can brush up on new design requirements to incorporate sustainable, zero-energy products into each building at the start of a project -- they don't have to retool entire factories to switch production lines.

Legislating requirements to increase building efficiency may be a more productive avenue for reducing carbon emissions than pushing on vehicle-emission requirements. The building design field is driven by individual architects who -- like designers in other industries -- thrive on innovation and actively seek out solutions to problems. Ecological concerns are already fostering an industrial revolution in sustainable design and green building.

This nation can excel at the technological and economic challenge of preventing artificial climate change. The right politician can recast this task in practical and optimistic terms.

Rolf Disch's solar village: Solarsiedlung