While sitting in on a recent Green Building Code workshop this summer I felt this sickening feeling wash over me. It reminded me of the time I was trying to learn to surf in Australia. I was having a great time but getting a little tired trying to ride each wave I could. I turned around to see what was coming next and slam, I was run over by a rouge wave and was fortunate to bounce along the bottom and be washed up on the shoreline and not out to sea.
That feeling made me think of the huge wave of information washing over designers, builders, owners and regulators. We have been recovering from a serious case of new code blues and and now green codes. It seems like everyone is promoting "green" products. Love him or hate, Al Gore has opened the debate (that the David Suzuki helped start 30 years ago) on what we are doing to planet. Some now are sounding off against the "tree huggers" saying that it really is not so bad and it's a natural cycle. If you've seen the movie "the Inconvenient Truth", I would find it hard to think that this is "natural". But even if we are reading too much into this, I really believe, for my kids future, that we are better off erring on the side of cleaning up our act for the next generation.
So what do we do as a building industry and home owner. I think the most important thing is to become educated on the topic and research what is coming at us. Knowledge is Power! There are hundreds of organizations out there that are leading and other that are blurring the lines. Some of the good ones can be found on the Green Solutions page of our website.
Stay tuned for further discussion in later newsletters.
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