I just returned from the USGBC Greenbuild conference in Phoenix, AZ, and it was great! Roughly 28,000 people attended the three day conference, and there were over 1,000 exhibitors. I will spend the next few weeks posting about the sessions I attended, but first I want to relay a funny and poignant story.
Al Gore was the keynote speaker, and he has a new book out (Our Choice: A Plan To Solve The Climate Crisis). He is a very gifted speaker, and told the following anecdote.
Mr. Gore spoke with the US representative to the upcoming climate conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. When Mr. Gore asked the representative how he thought the conference would go, the representative said “we’ll be fine.” Mr. Gore found this remark quite unsettling and used a joke he once heard from the famed Minnie Pearl to bring home the point. Here’s the joke…
A farmer was involved in a car accident and sued the other driver for the farmer’s injuries. The opposing attorney was cross-examining the farmer and said, “Sir, isn’t it true that at the scene of the accident you stated you were ‘fine’?”
The farmer replied. “Well, I was driving down Martin Road when the fella over there…”
The attorney interrupted. “Did you, or did you not say that you were ‘fine’?”
The farmer, patiently paused and then started again. ”Well it’s not that simple. See, I was driving down Martin Road when the fella over there came into my lane and hit my truck and trailer. My horse and I were thrown, and we were lying there on the road. After some time, a policeman came up and saw my horse writhing in pain. ’This animal is suffering,’ said the policeman. ‘I’m gonna shoot him to put him out of his misery.’ Well, that’s just what the policeman did, and then the policeman turned to me with that gun still smokin’. ‘How are you feelin?’ the policeman asked. I told that policeman ‘I feel fine.’
The moral of the story is one I think we all can see. It’s easy to say everything is “fine” when you have a gun pointed at your head, but the truth is there may be a lot of hurt hiding.
There was plenty of “feel-good” praise going on at Greenbuild, and I guess that’s better than the pain of facing the daunting numbers associated with climate change. Mr. Gore hit the nail on the head, however and drove home the idea that it’s not enough to just be involved in the solution. The United States has to make real progress, and now. The US government can not go on saying things will be fine without tackling climate change aggressively at all angles.
The angle we promote here at the CGBB is that we need to fix our buildings. If our buildings are efficient, then we won’t need foreign oil to heat and power them. You don’t even have to believe in climate change, and this is not a question of political allegiance. Dependence on foreign oil jeopardizes our national security, and that is a non-partisan issue.
The current version of the climate change bill before congress doesn’t even address building inefficiencies, and buildings are the single largest producer of greenhouse gasses in the world. The disconnect between political pressure and reality is real and vast. The original Waxman-Markey bill contained a national building code to address energy efficiency. Let’s hope the climate change bill that eventually makes it to a vote gets back to that priority.
Stay tuned for more information from Greenbuild…..In the meantime, contact your congressional representatives by clicking here, and tell them you want energy efficiency guidelines and mandates in a national building code!
Steve Sacks
