When he took the stage for the closing session of this year's Greenbuild, amid flashing lights and a thumping rock anthem, USGBC CEO Rick Fedrizzi got right to the point: "When people say green building is over, tell them there were 29,752 people at Greenbuild. That doesn't sound like we're at the end of the road."
It's a message that green building advocates are chanting every chance they get -- and personally, I hope they're right. Green building makes sense on all sorts of e-word levels: energy, environment, economy, employment.
But there was some sense that this crowd -- as massive as it was -- was still fairly ... insular, at least if keynote speaker soundbites are to be trusted (e.g., "what would we do without NPR?" and "finally [since the election] we feel like we have our whole lives ahead of us, and anything is possible"). For a reality check, I talked to some of the staff and volunteers at the event.
There was Will, a young water-quality researcher from Virginia who volunteered so he could attend the education sessions. (Eight hours of volunteering got you entry for all four days -- not a shabby deal.) "I'm a little concerned," he told me as he directed a stream of architects and designers toward the proper recycling bins for their type of refuse. "This has the feeling of being a trend or a fad, and we really need it not to be."
There was Axel, a fellow volunteer and middle-aged graphic designer from north of Boston who told me that green-minded builders in his area are "scarcer than hen's teeth." There were hospitality staffers Angie and Kim; when I asked what they thought of the conference, Angie blurted out, "I don't care about recycling!" as if it had been weighing on her all day. Kim was more interested in the proceedings, but concluded that green building, while interesting, was too expensive.
Attendees, too, were in a realistic frame of mind. Gina, a civilian with the Air Force in Atlanta, hoped to gather concrete and convincing information to bring back to the engineers at her base. They "weren't trained on sustainability," she says, and are shifting their practices slowly -- mainly at the behest of the government. "I hope I can learn enough to show them some new things," she said as she waited for one of the final sessions to start.
Scott, a Home Depot "install expediter" from San Antonio, had accompanied his LEED-certified wife to the event. Reluctant at first to position himself as more than a "tag-along," he went on to confess to some expertise, telling me that the new green products his store sells tend to be returned more often than conventional ones: "If you have to replace your carpet after two years instead of ten, it kind of defeats the purpose."
Scott characterized the entire conference as "nice," and oddly, that word came up multiple times in my conversations. The sense I got was that people are hungry for action on the ground, not cheerleading. Of course, there's a place for cheerleading. And with the economy the way it is, cheerleading might have to be enough for now. But when the money starts flowing again -- or even trickling -- I know 29,752 people who are ready to spring into action. To quote one Midwestern real-estate executive I spoke with, "We just gotta do it."
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 7:09 am
23 Nov 2008
Dear Friends,
Perhaps we can agree that science is indisputably the finest source for gaining an adequate understanding of the way the world we inhabit actually works and for accurately enough grasping the "placement" of the human species within the order of living things on Earth. But, as others have noted with such clarity and coherence, too many world-class scientists have treated the human overpopulation of Earth as a taboo topic and, even worse, perniciously participated in the politicization of the science of climate change. Barack Obama cannot know whatsoever could somehow be true, in large part, because so many scientists have failed to reasonably assume their responsibilities to science as well as to sensibly fulfill their duties as scientists.
Rather than do what I have been doing over the past 7 years by extolling the virtues of good science, today I am going to try something different.
What follows is a brief artistic expression that is intended to convey a symbolic meaning parallel to but distinct from, and more significant than, the literal meaning.
Please consider an allegory: that a titanic struggle between human beings and the natural world is in the offing. It seems this struggle is fulminating now precisely because too many leaders of the 6.7 billion {soon to be 9+ billion} members of the human family generally do not share the distinctly scientific, evidence-based perspective of many within this community. Many too many of our brothers and sisters, especially those with great wealth and power, pompously and erroneously believe that human organisms are separate from, and somehow superior to, life as we know it on Earth.
At least to me, it appears that an epochal contest is taking shape on the far horizon between the `team' of "mother culture and father profit" on one side and `Team' Mother Nature on the other.
This could be the greatest show on Earth in 10,000 years.
The team of "mother culture and father profit" appears adamant in its willful intentionality to stay the same old business-as-usual course of recklessly overconsuming limited natural resources; relentlessly expanding large-scale production and distribution capabilities without regard to physical limitations of the natural world; and overpopulating our planetary home, come what may for children and coming generations, biodiversity, the environment and the Earth's body.
Team Mother Nature simply is.
Which team will likely be seen by reasonable and sensible observers as winning the contest for success in 2012, 2020 and 2050, if the human community continues its idolatry of distinctly human overconsumption, overproduction and overpopulation activities by choosing forevermore unbridled overgrowth activities just as we are doing now?
If the leaders of the family of humanity do not choose change, do you have any ideas about which team will prevail and when will the outcome of the colossal contest no longer be in doubt?
Sincerely,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilityscience.org/content.html?contentid=1 ...
http://literature.lalisio.com/oai.html?o.0.au=Salmony%2C+ ...
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Sam Wells Posted 2:53 pm
23 Nov 2008
Nowadays it's like a school or cult or something, and highly "technical."
Recycling all that old stuff probably saved more energy than much of the new techniques, like building hay-stack, recycled concrete for blocks, and some of the other expensive and wacky things we built over the years. It is true that 25 years later you have get very efficient appliances and utilities that we didn't have but the beginnings were back then - we tried.
The best job we did was almost a disaster. It was mostly recycled with some new wood stud and rafter construction with organic cellulose shot by this machine into the bays of the studs and such. Entire sections of it looked great and then went "ploof" and all of it fell on the floor like wet paper mache. Massive piles of it, really. So I got the bright idea to buy a few gallons of Elmer's glue to re-mix and re-shoot that puppy, seemed the "green" thing to do, and it worked. Once covered up in energy-zapping drywall and bead-board (sorry), it was possibly the tightest house we ever constructed, especially with my expert messy but sufficient caulking job.
What bothers me are all these high-dollar consultants who want to "evaluate" houses to certify them green, LEEDS, city energy goals, state energy grants, organic, or even non-poisonous - yes, I built a house for a woman who was allergic to EVERYTHING. Heck man we just did it, no fear.
Last story ... one lady was so happy with a house built on a poor-man's budget that she asked if we could please (she asked so nice) please install her Swedish porcelain wood stove in her kitchen. Us dudes thought that was mighty strange, but so far she had paid off like a slot machine (my back remembers this, it was so heavy). It was a very pretty stove, white, artsy, and chrome, maybe small but very functional with an oven; we did the pipe job for her too by knocking out a window pane in an upper 6-light colonial window.
Coming back to get the final check, money you know, it had lightly snowed. I was greeted at the door and took my rather nasty boots off and ... it was warm in there. "Look at this," she said, "this stove is so efficient I can throw knots of grass in there and keep the house 70 degrees." She explained that she had only burned three clumps of hay all night - clumps of dry field grass balled up like the size of your fist. She was beaming, so happy.
I knew there was a little smokestack outside, with the emissions from that grass - and probably more than just a few handfuls! But I truly think the net effect was better than some of the crap we design today. -sammie
Onward through the fog
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