If you set out to buy a car and your options were a Model T or an electric vehicle, would it take you much time to decide which one to buy? 

Now think about a house – if your choice was between a house powered by the electrical grid and oil-fired furnace that costs you a lot, and one that draws power from underground geothermal sources and sunlight at minimal cost, which would you choose? 

The past, or the future? Renewable energy from the earth, or non-renewable sources that are like grinding up diamonds to put in our gas tanks (as Zimbabwean architect Mick Pearce memorably describes it.)

I hadn’t thought about it in quite those terms until I listened to Peter Merrigan of Taurus Investments, which is behind an amazing new housing development near Austin, Texas.