Climate Scoreboard

We score everything.....I thought this was interesting.

What If We're All Wrong?

With the Copenhagen Climate Conference wrapping up, and as we head into another Montana winter, a colleague sent out this cartoon from Joel Pett in the Lexington Herald-Leader and it couldn't be more timely.



It happens every year as we dip below zero here in Montana and snow starts to fall (like today.) I'll inevitably have a few jabs to the tune of "Hey, where's your global warming, now!" I'm going to carry a copy of this around with me so I don't have to endlessly debate anymore. What if we are all wrong? What if we do create a better world for nothing? I could live with that.

Green Salad Dressing???

I just saw a great video post from author and psychologist Barry Schwartz on the Paradox of Choice, and how in our western society the sheer number of choices we have are more paralyzing then they are liberating. When he talked about the fact that we have 175 different kinds of salad dressing available at the grocery store and the dilemma this causes for some people in making a choice I couldn’t help but think about the sheer number of different green building choices and programs that are available today.

It’s not 175 yet, but herein lies what I think is one of the greatest challenges in the green building movement to date. Now that green building is no longer a niche market in our industry how do we tell what’s real and what’s greenwash? More importantly, how does our consumer? I did a quick search for green building certification programs and just on the first two pages I came up with a pretty long list… NAHB Green Home Building Guidelines, LEED for Homes, The ANSI ICC National Green Building Standard, Energy Star, Northwest Energy Star, Earthcraft Homes, Builder’s Challenge, Earth Advantage…and this doesn’t even start to take into account the number of local and regional programs that add an even greater number of programs and choices for builders and consumers.

I can see it in the eyes of some of the builders I talk with and with many of the clients as well. They’re paralyzed with choice and in their inability to make what they perceive to be the absolute right decision they make none at all. The guiding principles of green building are pretty concrete. When I look at the criteria of all of the different green home certification programs the same principles; Lot Design, Resource Conservation, Energy Efficiency, Water Conservation, Indoor Environmental Quality, and Operation and Maintenance are the core of all of them. Even the Chinese Ministry of Construction recently released their own green building evaluation standard and their categories…yep…you guessed it, the same six basic criteria areas.

The differences lie only in what is considered to be the right amount of energy, resource and water savings, which air quality standard must be followed for a product to be considered low-VOC, what the acceptable percentage of permeable pavement should be installed and other hair splitting that only seems to undermine the whole process. I find so many people firmly entrenched in the belief that the program they use is the best and all others are unacceptable that they refuse to even look at another program.

So how do we keep from become salad dressing and putting so many different products out there that we effectively paralyze our consumer? I see great signs of moving toward a consensus on what green building is and how to talk about it, but the competing programs keep moving further and further apart in the battle for supremacy.

For those of us who've been around around long enough, I know you can remember the early 1990's when we had multiple, competing building codes. Groups including Building Code Administrators International (BOCA), The International Conference of Building Officials (ICBO), The Council of American Building Officials (CABO) and the Southern Building Code
Congress International (SBCCI) all had developed their own set of building codes. It took over four years, but these legacy groups worked to form what we now know as the International Codes Council (ICC) and develop the International Building Code (IBC). The IBC includes what homeowners know as the International Residential Code (IRC,) and this code has now been adopted in 48 states and continues to be THE benchmark for building safety, structure and fire protection.

When will we have only one green building standard and what will it look like? Sorry did I say all of this out loud?

Fireworks and Carbon Output.

"What better way to celebrate your country's Independence by blowing up a small part of it."- Apu from The Simpsons circa 1994


I really tried to find some good data on the carbon and pollution emissions from fireworks, I thought it would be neat to find one of those "equal to this many cars off the road" comparisons. Like, not lighting off 1,000 Whistling Moon Travelers would be equal to removing 10 cars from the road for one year, .................. but I couldn't find any.

The only real empirical data I could find was an abstract on the atmospheric pollution release caused by the burning of fireworks during the Beijing Lantern Festival. As interesting as it was for a short time it didn't have the catchy analogy that I was hoping for.

In any case, have a safe and happy holiday and make a point to offset all of those carbon, sulfate and nitrate emissions from your fireworks this weekend in any way you can. Walk...don't drive, choose local produce and foods for your BBQ, guzzle lots of organic beer, use cups, plates, and utensils that are recyclable or are made from recycled content, use a woodless stove, and perhaps my favorite suggestion, make your margaritas with your own pedal powered blender!

Enjoy!!!

How's Your Global Warming Now?

I recently had the fortune (misfortune?) to be seated on a flight next to a very chatty and opinionated traveler for a 2 1/2 hour flight. Before we even left the ground he had already grilled me for where I was going and what I was doing.

When I told him I was traveling to teach a class on Green Building I got both barrels on what he thought about Green and everything involved. A little back story for those of you not blessed with living in Montana like me, this year winter started sometime shortly after Halloween and aside from a few nice days in April it lasted clean into May, ending sometime after 2PM on May 23rd to be precise.

Armed with this, he laughed and said, "Where's your Global Warming now? There's no way you can claim it's happening, I even saw where the glaciers are getting bigger in Argentina," he continued, "How can you even think that Green Building is a good idea now?"

I was at that fork in the road where I could have smiled, shrugged and not bothered to fight it but all I had to read was the skymall catalog and I knew I couldn't fain enough interest in it to just ignore him and start reading. Besides, I thought, if I let him have it back it might just upset him enough to dislike me and then he won't talk to me for the rest of the flight, either way should work.

I think my first line was something like, "Wow you really have no idea what green building is do you?" It froze him and I started in to tell him that no matter what's happening with global warming green building is still a good idea. Forget about carbon emissions, glacial ice melt, rising sea levels and all the associated fears of rising earth temperatures. Green building is about much more than that.

Conserving the finite resources we have, including water, natural gas, all of the fossil fuels. Building a home that is designed to last longer, require less maintenance, and maintain a healthier quality of air. This is what green building is all about. Global warming be damned green building is nothing more than building better and building smarter and anybody who thinks that doesn't make sense just doesn't get it.

As it turned out we spent the next 2 1/2 hours talking about what green building is, but more importantly much more about what green building is NOT. I keep hearing the same themed, recurring myths of green building..."It's expensive."..."It's too hard to figure out."......."It's straw bales, solar panels and wind power."......."It's ugly."....."It's just a fad."......"It's just about global warming."...Etc., Etc. Etc. They're all wrong and they're all bred from the same misinformation or total lack of information that many great myths come from and we still have a long way to go to dispel them. (The earth IS round by the way, despite what Friedman says)

We parted ways and both learned a lot in the time we spent together. He learned a lot about the guiding principles of green building and definitely had a small change of view, and I learned that we still have a long way to go in the education process before the consumer, builder, and everyone else understands and are on the same wavelength on what green is and is not. On the return flight by the way, I had an empty seat next to me and was quite happy for the peace and quiet.

Windows in Short

I recently started doing a Green Building question and answer "advertorial" series for a local newspaper and sponsors. It's already clear with the first round of solicited consumer questions that many people want the answers to green building questions to be as black and white as the newsprint. Sorry, it just doesn't happen that way.

I thought it would be good to repost the questions and the answer here. Believe me I also realize that it saves me a tremendous amount of time and with just a little cut and paste I have posts in two places. Efficiency at its' best!


Question: I am going to do a large addition to my home. What the best window is to use? From F.N., Missoula, MT.

John: The simple answer to the question is to use the best and most efficient window that your budget will allow. All windows are rated for energy performance by the National Fenestration Rating Council (NFRC.) They are rated in five different categories, but the U-value (the amount of heat loss through the window) and Air Leakage rating numbers mean the most to me. A window with a low U-Value (The current minimum for Energy Star and also available tax credits is .35 and the lower the better here.) and also a low Air leakage rate will keep the warm air in and the cold air out in the winter, and the reverse in the summer.

Windows with low U-value and low air leakage rates are available from a number of quality manufacturers in several types; wood clad, vinyl and other composites and all can perform very well. Once you’ve identified a window type and several manufacturers within your budget, ensure that the window you select has Low-E reflective coating to keep winter heat in, durable construction and hardware, and that the manufacturer has a solid warranty backing their window.

After selecting the best window that you can within your budget, it is equally important to make sure that the window is installed properly. For greatest efficiency and moisture protection, the window needs to have proper flashing and a good air sealant on the exterior and adequate insulation around the interior of the window. Following these simple guidelines will give you the best performance and most return on your investment no matter which type or brand of high performance window you choose.

Water, Water, Every Where

“Water, water, every where, nor any drop to drink.” Taken from The Rime of The Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, surely everyone’s heard one form or another of this old verse. Looking at this recent picture of the Bitterroot River outside of Hamilton Montana, and with many of the rivers in Montana running near or over flood stage, it’s hard to imagine that we could ever be in a position with out enough water for all of our needs.

In fact, looking at the earth itself and the incredible amount of water we see, someone might wonder why we even care about conserving water and place so much weight to it when talking about green building today.

The fact is that even though over 70% of the earths’ surface is covered by water, 97.5% of it is salt water, leaving only 2.5% as fresh water. Further, of the remaining fresh water, over 70% of it is locked in icecaps, more is located deep within the earth in unreachable aquifers and even more is in the form of soil moisture, leaving only what amounts to having less than 1% of all the earths’ fresh water available for direct human uses.

The amount of usable fresh water, the stuff found in lakes, rivers, reservoirs and the aquifers that are shallow enough to be effectively tapped into, makes up less than .007% of all the water on earth. It’s hard to really understand how little that is, but if you think of all the water available on the planet in a full 55 gallon drum, the amount that we can access for use is less than three teaspoons full. This is the only water that we have available on a sustainable basis that is regularly renewed and regenerated by rain and snowfall, and this amount will not increase.

Considering this, it’s easy to see why one of the key guiding principles in green building focuses on conserving the water we have and protecting it from runoff, sedimentation and all other contaminants. If we don’t, the fight over those last three teaspoons could be devastating, and the words from the old mariner in the tale will ring true for us all.