Where are we going with this Green, Sustainable, Energy Efficient, Healthy Building Movement?
July 4, 2010
Where are we going with this Green, Sustainable, Energy Efficient, Healthy Building Movement?
I kind of lost some interest in blogging and tweeting the past few weeks. Main reason is I periodically get overwhelmed by the amount of daily information I am inundated with regarding Green Building. I have to constantly ask myself, “What are you going to do?” I mean how and what do I contribute to the over-abundance of information out there. Then I laugh and say I don’t know, on one day I have answers and the next day I have doubts. Many days I feel stuck in limbo or purgatory. The amount of information, for someone in tuned to this movement, to absorb or understand is staggering. Someone unsophisticated to this field would be overwhelmed.
I do know this: The only thing I bring to this field is common sense, field application and good and bad experiences of over 30 years in the building business.
Why do I feel this way? I am a boots on the ground individual. I work daily with affordable non-profit builders and Low Income Housing Developers trying to get them to apply Energy Efficient and Sustainable Building practices sensibly and cost effectively to their multi-family and single family projects. Because what very few seem to understand, it is still about money and common sense applications. There just isn’t enough money laying around to go for out there ideas and product. At the moment in the world of for-profit building, there is not only no money, there isn’t any building, by normal standards, even going on.
There are a couple of things that haunt me in this world I work in.
1. Many urban, low income and affordable housing occupants aren’t embracing this movement. Why? Too technical for them. Not being explained simply. Not applying the Keep it Simple Stupid(KISS) rule.
This group is about reality. What does it do for me in allowing me to survive life? Many redevelopment and housing agencies spend thousands of dollars on upgrading apartments and building new efficient housing, but the occupants are not educated about how to live in one or what the benefits are. They are just given the keys, crank the heat up to 80 or the the AC down to 65 and go about life.
2. The information put out by the web, magazines, social media, e-mails and newspapers is daunting to the man on the street. It is dominated by Building Scientists, Architects, Technocrats, Bureaucrats, Engineers and the dominant organizations in the movement(USGBC, RESNET, Energy Star, DOE, EPA, NAHB, Enterprise Foundation to name a few..)
I see very little information put out by hands on people. The people who can tell you what is right, what works, what doesn’t work, what is cost effective and what is pure baloney. The people you have to convince this makes sense, so they will support the evolving processes, and we haven’t spent all kinds of dollars just to watch this movement stagger along blindly.
I additionally see very little participation in this critical movement by Hispanics, Blacks, and Blue Collar Workers. When I attend conventions, training sessions, classes, seminars, design charrettes, developer meetings I scan the audience to see about the ethnic mix and sad to say it is predominantly white Americans or highly educated Europeans and Asians.
I know this, until you commonize the language, the approach, the goals and relate it to the man on the street in terms they can understand, this movement will continue to be the property of an educated society. The money thrown at it will be like a front end loaded investment fund or non-contributing non-profit, the majority of dollars will sustain the overhead and operation, but the real work will be minuscule in application because of a lack of an understanding and dedicated work force.
Comments
Got something to say?