Building Scientist Geeks stop speaking Geekese!
November 20, 2010
I was part of a guided bus tour of Urban Infill, Affordable EarthCraft Virginia projects at the Virginia Governors Conference on Housing in Richmond, Virginia last week. One of the tour guides, a young man who I have a great deal of respect for, stated in explaining the EarthCraft philosophy, “That we(EarthCraft) are all Building Scientist Geeks.” Of course I mouthed back, “Speak for yourself.”
It was strange, because the young man who made the statement, original involvement in the field was working for a small volume builder. He had hands on experience, but like many in this evolving “Green” Sustainable, Energy Efficiency building movement, admitted that he is evolving into a building scientist geek.
What does that have to do with anything? Who cares? Well I care and so does the mass majority of people in the United States. Why do I say the vast majority? Without the vast majority of consumers buying into sustainability and efficiency efforts, the movement will remain at the fringe of society’s concerns. Yes, it will continue to be embraced by Engineering, Architectural and Building Scientist Geeks speaking Geekese amongst themselves about the importance of what they are doing and why, but the good old average American, just living life, will go on as usual until emergencies force them to do something. I don’t blame them.
What is the consumer to believe. They are inundated with an overload of Green information on the web, the newspapers, TV, radio, etc. There is so much technical information out there, that it takes people involved in the business hours daily to stay up. Do any of us actually believe consumers are going to try and stay up with all this techno information? Do any of us really believe that the consumer cares one iota if vapor contained in an air mass penetrates the exterior shell of a building? Come on. They care about what the net result is to their life, their business, or their budget, not the technical mumbo, jumbo or “Geekese.”
Green to most consumers, whether they be building owners, home owners, developers, business owners has to do with the biggest Green in the world–the Green dollar. Most people, contrary to what may be said verbally, do not make a decision based on saving the planet. They make a decision based on dollars. Those dollars have to have a return on investment, usually shown in lower utility costs, lower tax rates, tax credits, lower operational and maintenance costs, longer longevity, and more residual value at the end of a time period. If it doesn’t make economic sense, it isn’t going to get done.
Now maybe the Gates, Buffets, Pitts, Jobs, and DeCaprio’s of the world have the dollars to expend on saving the planet and taking it Green. But the rest of us, we have to watch how we spend money and we aren’t into spending it foolishly. Most of us are not interested in having bragging rights at a cocktail party filled with raised pinky martini drinkers over who has the best solar system. We go to work, we provide, we come home and we live life. We control what we can. If someone can show us how to save energy, that will make it easier for us to cover our monthly expense nut, we can buy into that, but we aren’t buying into what happens 10 years from now, we have to live today.
If we don’t start explaining this sustainable effort in common sense, value terms, this avalanche of the Green movement, might just disappear, excepting that which is written into Building Codes, when this recession/depression ends. If we don’t start explaining to people that commons sense sustainability and energy efficiency makes economic sense and they can see it in the results, our efforts will go the way of the energy revolution of the early 80′s.
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