Trim Tab v.6 - Summer 2010 by Michael Berrisford

CASCADIA’S MAGAZINE FOR TRANSFORMATIVE PEOPLE + DESIGN

TR A NSFORM ATION A L THOUGHT

The Third Age of Green Building TR A NSFORM ATION A L DE SIGN

UNIVERCITY’S CHILDCARE PROJECT TR A NSFORM ATION A L ACTION

FSC FIGHT AGAINST CLIMATE CHANGE TR A NSFORM ATION A L PEOPLE

DENIS HAYES: A VISIONARY IN THE ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT A L SO:

Leadership In The First Year of The Last Decade: Deep Roots Burning Questions Climate-Conscious Building Design

issu e 006 cascadi agb c .org

SUMMER 2010

Editor in Chief

A dv er t i sing

Contributors

T R A N S F O R M AT I O N A L action b y core y b rin k ema

Joanna Gangi joanna@cascadiagcb.org

Erin Gehle ering@softfirmstudios.net Joanna Gangi joanna@cascadiagcb.org

Jason F. McLennan jason@cascadiagbc.org

M a n aging Editor

C r e at i v e D i r ec t o r

T R A N S F O R M AT I O N A L design b y j essica w ooliams

Jessica Wooliams, Donald Davies, Paul Werder, Bill Reed, Corey Brinkema, Patti Southard, Michael N. Nagler, Sarah Costello, Jason F. McLennan

For editorial inquiries, freelance or photography submissions and advertising, contact Joanna Gangi at joanna@cascadiagbc.org

Departments 04

By JESSICA WOOLLIAMS

Back issues or reprints, contact info@cascadiagbc.org

SU M M E R 2 010 , I s s u e 6

Trim Tab is a quarterly publication of the Cascadia

Suite 195, Portland, OR 97209; 410 Occidental Ave South, Seattle, WA 98105; 1100-111 Dunsmuir

TR ANSFORMATIONAL PEOPLE: Denis Hayes: A Conver sation with A V isionar y in The Environmental Movement B y j oanna gangi

Green Building Council, a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization. Office locations: 721 NW 9th Ave

TR ANSFORMATIONAL DE SIGN: Univer Cit y Childcare: Could It Be Canada’s Fir st Completed Living Building Challenge Project?

TR ANSFORMATIONAL THOUGHT: The Third Age of Green Building: Growing Pains & The Green Movement B y j ason f. mclennan

TR ANSFORMATIONAL ACTION: Forest Stew ardship Council ’s Fight Against Climate Change B y core y b rin k ema

Summer 2010

contents S U M M E R Q u a r t er 2 010

T R A N S F O R M AT I O N A L P E O P L E b y j oanna G angi

T R A N S F O R M AT I O N A L thought b y j ason f. mclennan

Features

Lead With Your Heart!

Envisioning The Living City

Leadership in the First Year of the Last Decade

B y patti southard

By jason f. mclennan & sarah costello

B y Paul Werder

Twelve-Year Timeline: Cascadia Through The Years

Nuts & Bolts

Climate-Conscious Building Design

Burning Questions: The Role of Combustion in Living Buildings: Why Prometheus Was Wrong.

B y donald davies

Design and Development BY B I L L R E E D

Moving Upstream: Progress in

Book Review: Anthill by E.O. Wilson

Event Calendar

FWD: Read This!

B y j ason f. mclennan

Column: Fixing Planet Earth: A Not-So-Modest Proposal

Summer Reading List for Regenerative

The Bioregion and Beyond!

revie w B y sarah costello

B y M ichael n . N agler

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T ransformational design

by jessica woolliams

UniverCity Childcare: Canada’s First Complete Living Building Challenge Project? SM

The project team’s primary goal in developing UniverCity is to create a model sustainable community. Trying to design buildings that meet the Living Building Challenge is not just part of a story they tell, it’s part of how they judge their success. SM

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Project highlights: >> Aiming to be the first project in Canada to meet all seven petals of the Challenge >> Designed for net zero energy through solar thermal and connection to a neighborhood energy utility >> Operated by a not-for-profit © Hughes Condon Marler Architects

childcare operator >> A childcare delivery demonstration model in partnership with Simon Fraser University Faculty of Early Childhood Education featuring play areas that are custom locally made artistic pieces This diagram shows the many features that are incorporated into the building to address the requirements of the Living Building Challenge.

In Jeremy Rifkin’s latest book The Empathic Civilization, the idea of reaching global empathetic consciousness is stressed as a crucial mindset in order to advert planetary collapse. If we are to evolve past our current economic and ecological crises, now is the time that tomorrow’s leaders – today’s children – should be allowed to connect with the natural world and with the ecosystems that supports us.

verCity Childcare project. The new childcare facility will be part of the UniverCity community on Burnaby Mountain in British Columbia. Construction starts in July and the project is aiming to meet the Living Building Challenge (the Challenge). SM

UniverCity on Burnaby Mountain sits next to the Burnaby, British Columbia campus of Simon Fraser University, and was conceived as a “model sustainable urban hilltop I can’t help but think of Rifkin’s book when I hear Dale community.” The first phase of the development is comMikkelsen, Manager of Planning and Sustainability plete, and more than three thousand residents now call at SFU Community Trust, speak about the new Uni- UniverCity home. Its awards and accolades include the

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The team went to great lengths to engage the children themselves, holding two charrettes with as many as 20 three, four and five year olds, engaging them in play and discussion about the elements that will make the building an effective teacher and a fun place to be.

2007 Urban Development Institute Award for Excellence in the “Innovations in Creating a More Livable and Sustainable Region” category as well as the 2008 American Planning Association National Planning Excellence Award for Innovation in Green Community Planning.

When talking about the evolution of UniverCity Childcare, Mikkelsen notes that the daycare center was initially developed as part of a larger project and was first intended to occupy the roof of a LEED Silver, mixed-use development that included residential and commercial, as well as a parkade. “The mixed-use project was eventually shelved, but the child care facility was still a priority for the Trust and so we reconceived it as a stand-alone building on its own site. This created an opportunity to design a building that would be a demonstration of the most advanced standards of sustainable building; the Living Building Challenge is that standard and we wanted to achieve it.”

The new daycare will be built on a roughly half-hectare parcel of land owned by Simon Fraser University. The work will consist of site development and construction of a new 5,690 square foot, single storey plus mezzanine daycare. It is anticipated that the facility will achieve the 16 prerequisites of the Living Building Challenge version 1.3. The construction will be standard concrete

foundations and slab, reinforced concrete shearwalls (both interior and exterior) and extensive glazing and roof overhangs. Roof construction is steel frame, pinebeetle decking and TPO roofing. Other critical project elements include stormwater management, greywater and blackwater treatment systems, regional building materials, adherence to the Materials Red List, and a solar thermal power and geothermal heat exchange system operated by Corix Energy Services. The preliminary construction budget is $2.6 million.

space2place design developed an outdoor space that aims to connect the children to natural systems through an environment that provides a variety of imaginative and learning and physical experiences.

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Elevation diagrams; 1. South elevation, 2. West elevation, 3. East elevation, 4. North elevation

Mikkelsen continues, “It is our goal that this will be the first building in Canada to meet all seven Petals of the Challenge. Our primary goal in developing UniverCity is to create a model sustainable community, and so trying to design buildings that meet the Living Building Challenge is not just part of a story we tell, it’s part of how we judge our success.”

about the elements that will make the building an effective teacher and a fun place to be.”

If any building is going to bring out Rif kin’s “empathic sociability” in our next generation of leaders, it is this one. Dale speaks about the Reggio Emilia approach to learning, considered to be the most innovative model of early childhood educaMikkelsen feels fortunate to work with Karen Mar- tion in the world: “It is an inquiry-based learning ler and her team at Hughes Condon Marler Archi- approach that engages the children to find topics tecture. “They take our vision for this building that interest them and to discuss and examine these very seriously and have assembled a team that has topics over an extended period of time. In order to addressed our needs along with the technical chal- do this, the approach relies on three teachers, the lenges incredibly well. They have also worked with educators themselves, the community, and the surthe staff of the SFU Childcare Society who will rounding environment, both indoors and out. This be using the building to care for and educate the is a natural fit with the Living Building philosocommunity’s youngsters. And they went to great phy. The building and the grounds of the facility lengths to engage the children themselves, holding will be designed to provide unique opportunities two charrettes with as many as 20 three, four and to explore water, light, air, gravity, vegetation and five year olds engaging them in play and discussion seasonal change.”

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perspective. Their only requirement was demonstration that the design of the UV system met provincial water quality standards prior to issuance of an occupancy permit.”

What better building to start with than a daycare, where our future leaders’ most formative experiences will teach them that we can, in fact, establish a positive relationOne day before the deadline for this article, Fraser Health ship with the ecosystems that support life. had to revoke its earlier decision given a recent water study report that they received showing a worrisome microbe This all seems even more relevant now, given the that appears to be controllable only by chlorine (with theme of our next Living Future conference (Van- their current information). As a result, SFU is no longer couver in 2011), “Our Children’s Cities: Visualizing allowed to treat its own water on-site and must have a a Restorative Civilization.” In fact, this project is al- potable water connection for sinks and faucets. Because ready educating more than just the parents, children the project first engaged the authorities and pursued all and staff of the daycare itself. From the beginning, the options, but was not allowed legally to move ahead with project team has coordinated with regulatory officials. the full requirements of the water petal, this still allows As a result, the daycare center received a green light to the daycare to achieve Living Building status. The Living generate all potable water on site without chemicals. Building Challenge is dedicated to promoting exactly this Shortly before press, Fraser Health reversed that deci- kind of dialogue. It is also critical to note that municipal sion, but while we still have work to do before ecologi- water will only be used for sinks and faucets, not for toilet cally sensitive water treatment plans are fully accepted, water, landscape water or HVAC water. The project team the UniverCity process itself has been a victory. will continue to push for the right to treat the waste on site, and everyone involved in this project will continue Mikkelsen spoke about the process shortly before the to get educated about the myriad complex technological, recent reversal: “Fraser Health noted to us early on that chemical, policy and human dimensions of institutional the treatment of water on site would be a challenge giv- change towards sustainability that are required to strive en their requirements that all water is potable in a child- towards a Living Building Challenge project. care facility or any facility under their jurisdiction. Our consultants, Cobalt Engineering, worked diligently Key to allowing others to learn from and replicate the with Fraser Health making a strong case for the safety successes of this project is the fact that it is affordable. of the water based on the intended use of a UV treat- As Mikkelsen observed, “We believe that the cost savment system. This, coupled with their strong support ings inherent in this type of building balance out the for Pat Frouws and the track record of the SFU Child- cost premiums, to an extent that we’re making it our care Society, Fraser Health agreed to the process.” goal to deliver this project as a Living Building for only a 1.5% cost per square foot premium over a base con“We did have to make one compromise, and that was to struction building. So far, we are pretty confident that test the water monthly to ensure it meets provincial wa- we will achieve this goal.” ter quality standards. This was a very workable outcome as the testing will just become part of operating plan for The project certainly hasn’t come without any challenges. the building and represent only a nominal cost given op- When asked what has been the hardest thing about workerating savings in energy efficiency in other areas.” ing on this project, Mikkelsen doesn’t hesitate: the materials petal. “It is surprising how difficult it is to source local In the approvals process, it isn’t just the Fraser and non-red-listed materials. We often found ourselves Health Authority that has jurisdiction. “The City of able only to find non-red-listed items out of the radius, Burnaby took their cue from Fraser Health, noting but we can find red-listed items easily accessible within that they would not stand in the way from a code the radius. It is also a challenge to prove that materials are

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Since children will be the primary users of the building they were engaged in the design process.

The reaction is similarly quick, however, to the question of what has been the most valuable thing about choosing to use the Living Building Challenge. Mikkelsen explains: “Simple – the buy-in and support we’ve received from other stakeholders. The principles of the Living Building Challenge resonate with people. When we say that we are trying to build a building that is as minimally impactful on the environment as possible, people get that. Our goal to be first Living Building in Canada is also something that gets people excited and makes find-

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ing partners for this project that much easier.” He notes that they are overwhelmed by the number and variety of groups who have shown their support for this project. If it is true, as Jason F. McLennan, CEO of Cascadia says, that “this is the first year of the last decade to make fundamental changes necessary in creating a living future”, then we will need many more new and existing Living Buildings and Communities. What better building to start with than a daycare, where our future leaders’ most formative experiences will teach them that we can, in fact, establish a positive relationship with the ecosystems that support life. © Eckert & Eckert

simply not available in order to rationalize material substitutes or non-radius exceptions. Also, manufacturers are not often fully aware of the full material supply chain of their product and can’t, or won’t, provide a full break-down for verification as there is little or no demand for this. We are working closely and cooperatively with International Living Building Institute on these and a number of other items and they are very interested in our process.”

jessica woolliams works for Cascadia Green Building Council as the British Columbia Director.

T ransformational P E O P L E

by J O A N N A G A N G I

TRANSFORMATIONAL PEOPLE:

DENIS HAYES Forty years ago our nation began making major environmental shifts toward creating a sustainable future. Major legislation was passed including the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the EPA was created and, among other things, we celebrated the first earth day. This all happened before I was born and I ask myself – have we done enough? What needs to happen in my lifetime in order to make our planet a happy and healthy place for future generations.

environmental foundation in Seattle dedicated to safeguarding the natural environment in the Pacific Northwest. Hayes has witnessed many of our environmental achievements in the past 40 years and he has also witnessed some of our missed opportunities in the movement.

In this interview, Hayes speaks to Trim Tab about his experiences in environmental leadership and energy policy making. He gives us his view from the front lines on where we’ve come in the past 40 years and where we still Denis Hayes was on the front lines of the ma- need to go in order to reach true sustainjor environmental achievements of the 1970’s. ability. He speaks about how environmental He organized the first earth day. He went on problems are global problems and people to become the director of the National Renew- throughout the world must unite in order to able Energy Laboratory. He now serves as the reach a sustainable future, a future where President and CEO of the Bullitt Foundation, an our children and grandchildren can flourish.

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ological zealots, and we alienated the rest of the world ary achievements in the environmental movement in on global warming. The jury is still out on Obama, but he has made some terrific appointments like Lisa Jackrecent years? son, Steve Chu, and John Holdren. If this Administration produces a revolutionary impact, it will probably DENIS HAYES: Let me put it this way: Between 1969 be in renewable energy. and 1975, we passed NEPA, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, OSHA, Superfund, RCRA, FI- TT: What have been some of our missed opportunities? FRA, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and created the EPA, NOAA, and CEQ. Environmentalists organized the most sweeping changes in the public sector, DH: We have not set a price on carbon, created a Manthe private sector, and individual values and behavior hattan Project for renewable energy and energy storage, built a smart electrical grid, established tough since the New Deal. national building energy performance standards, conIn contrast, during the eight Clinton years, we strength- nected our major cities with high-speed electrified ened diesel emissions standards. During the eight Bush railroads (like EVERY other industrialized country in years, the environment deteriorated at the hands of ide- the world), reformed the agricultural extension service TRIM TAB: What have been some of our revolution-

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to promote organic farming, created strong environmental curricula in every school so that kids will make informed decisions when they grow up and start voting. The United States launched modern environmentalism, but it hasn’t been the major leader since 1980.

about “ending our addiction to oil,” the only President to go beyond rhetoric was Jimmy Carter. But if the Gulf spill keeps pouring oil into the sea for several more months, perhaps Washington DC will finally get serious.

The environmental movement has been trying to tie the Gulf spill to the climate legislation; my hunch is TT: The disaster with the BP Deepwater Horizon well in that that is too complicated to mobilize much support. the Gulf of Mexico happened just as millions of people But everyone understands the connection between oil world-wide gathered for the fortieth anniversary of Earth and cars and airplanes. And everyone knows that the Day. The first Earth Day, which came on the heals of the nation is head-over-heels in debt. If we were ever to Santa Barbara oil spill and the burning of the Cuyahoga pass a tough gasoline tax, now is the time. River, created a focal point for the environmental movement and helped spur the creation of the EPA, Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act. Do you envision TT: You are on record as a strong advocate of family plansimilar landmark legislation emerging from the devasta- ning to reduce population growth. At this year’s Living Fution in the Gulf? ture, James Howard Kunstler argued that human behavior will not change; instead, disease, war and famine will bring human population down to sustainable levels. What’s your DH: The BP-caused carnage in the Gulf is already much response to this grim point of view? worse, and has received more national attention, than the Santa Barbara Spill received, but the overall situa- DH: He could be right. Humans and our domesticated tion today is quite different. animals now comprise 97 percent of all land-based animal life on the planet. Just by ourselves, humans weigh But remember, the Santa Barbara spill occurred before eight times as much as all the wild animals combined. American oil production had begun to decline. Amer- People have reproduced in numbers that are way beica still had oil import quotas to protect the domestic yond the earth’s carrying capacity, if every human were industry! Most Americans thought that we were float- to achieve the lifestyle of, say, the average Swede. ing on a sea of oil. When something cannot continue, it will stop. Unless Forty years later, we recognize that—unless we reduce our species proves smart enough to dramatically redemand for oil—banning drilling in one place just duce its population through voluntary means, Mother causes the multinational industry to go elsewhere. Oil Nature will do it for us. I chose, for environmental reafrom Nigeria and Indonesia causes far more environ- sons, to have just one child, and my daughter and sonmental damage than drilling in the US. Oil from the in-law have made the same decision. My life has been Middle East sends hundreds of billions of dollars each enriched, not impoverished, by that choice. year into nations that don’t like us very much. Western Europe, Japan, and China have shown—in The appropriate response to the BP spill is not a simple their own, different ways—that whole societies can ban on drilling but a “bank shot,” such as doubling the change. It requires not just family planning but womfuel efficiency of automobiles, trucks, and aircraft, and en’s education, micro-lending, something akin to Social perhaps quickly phasing-in a $3/gallon gasoline tax. Un- Security and perhaps tax incentives for small families fortunately, despite all the political posturing since 1973 (instead of deductions—or even public subsidies—for

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large families.) Africa, India and South America lend credence to the Kunstler point of view. But the outcome will not be decided by fate; a sustainable population level can be achieved only through national policies, often over the fierce opposition of religious, racial, and ethnic interests.

TT: How do we apply the principles of ecology into the way

we do things (build, manufacturing, etc)?

DH: Ecology, just like economics, is founded on a pre-

sumption of scarcity. In ecology, the primary driver is for plants and animals to acquire energy just as efficiently as possible. Energy comes, directly and indirectly, from TT: We’ve just launched a Living City Design Competition the sun. Plants capture it at less than one percent efto spur the creation of compelling, photorealistic render- ficiency, and there are losses as animals eat plants and ings of communities to achieve all 20 Imperatives of the are in turn eaten by other animals. If lions cannot fairly Living Building ChallengeSM 2.0. We hope that Competi- consistently hunt antelope using less energy than they tion results in a library of practical visions for how cities can obtain by eating the kill, lions will disappear. world-wide might be retrofitted to achieve true sustainability by 2035. What do you think will be most impor- With the industrial revolution, humans abandoned that tant for bringing about this level of sustainability for our paradigm and began substituting cheap abundant enchildren and grandchildren? ergy for materials, for muscle, for creativity. Now that the end of the fossil fuel era is nigh, we need to return to DH: Well, having practical visions of what they might those ecological principles and begin using energy ullook like—and showing them as attractive places to tra-efficiently. The best way to do this is to dramatically live—is an essential first step. We are making spectacu- boost the price of energy through carbon taxes, gasoline lar advances in energy technology, building design, inno- taxes, oil import taxes, etc. None of these is popular povative public transport, integrated community farming, litically, but political leadership does not consist of just bioswales and other permeable surfaces, and other de- doing what’s popular. Either we will raise energy prices velopments that may transform the nature of cities as the and phase ourselves into a new, super-efficient society world goes through the next giant wave of urbanization. or we will race off the edge of the cliff. My sense is that the best architects and building engineers are already aboard and are hungry for new ideas. The key obstacles to implementation may well be developers, financial institutions and realtors. We would be well-served by new laws and codes that make it in their financial interest to invest at the frontiers of sustainability. The toughest nut to crack will be discount rates and other accounting assumptions that assign a present value of zero to anything 50 years in the future. As a result, it is essentially impossible to find financing for investments to extend the life of a building, or a neighborhood, beyond 50 years. Buildings have become one more aspect of a throw-away culture. Two key qualities of a sustainable future are quality and durability.

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TT: Cascadia CEO Jason McLennan has called 2010 the

first year of the last decade to avert the worst effects of climate change and other environmental risk factors. As a veteran of many landmark environmental battles, what do you see as our biggest leverage point right now? DH: The biggest leverage point for environmental prog-

ress is always an aroused public. The “inside-the-beltway” game is dominated by huge financial interests— oil companies, coal companies, chemical companies, defense contractors, financial interests, etc.—who are prepared to spend whatever it takes to preserve the status quo. Without energetic, even emotional, public support, environmental groups will always get rolled.

President Richard M. Nixon said, “The great question of the 70’s is: shall we surrender to our surroundings or shall we make our peace with nature and begin to make reparations for the damage we have done to our air, to our land, and to our water.” TT: Do you think he was asking the right question? What

do you see as the great question of our decade?

DH: I’m not sure what President Nixon thought he was

saying. This may have been a case of too many speechwriters confusing the message. “Shall we surrender to our surroundings?” sounds like an alternative to a clarion call to subjugate nature to human will. But instead he then posits making peace with nature and making reparations for damage we’ve done. Rather than an either/or structure, we need to acknowledge our surroundings, make peace with nature and repair the damage we have done to healthy, functioning ecosystems. We have been breaking lots of little laws over the last few centuries, and now the big laws – nature’s laws – have caught up with us. We are seeing the consequences in the forms of climate changes, mounting extinction rates, dead zones at the mouths of all major rivers, major fisheries falling by 90 percent, endocrine disrupting chemicals through the global food chain, etc. It seems to me, though, that the great question of our decade is something quite different. The most important environmental problems facing us now are global problems than cannot be solved by any one nation. So the big question is whether the human species, increasingly linked through the Internet, can come to view itself as united in a quest to save the planet. If we continue to seek special advantages for individual companies and individual nations, we will never make the universal changes needed to create a sustainable future. Joanna Gangi is empowered by the fantastic beauty of nature residing in Seattle where she works at Cascadia Green Building Council.

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by jason f. mclennan

Transformational TH OUGHT

The Third Age of Green Building: Growing Pains and the Green Movement

“Adolescence is usually typified by an unanswerable

— Alice Thomas Ellis

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image via visibleearth.nasa.gov

combination of innocence and insolence.”

here comes a moment in every person’s development where there is a rude awakening: A moment when it becomes apparent that things are no longer the same as they once were, and it is time to grow up. Usually this change happens when you leave the nest and have to fend for yourself –whether it is at the end of high school or college or when you get your first job or even when you buy your first house. Sometimes such awakenings happen earlier due to a personal tragedy or other circumstances that cause an individual to grow up early. Yet some people, as we all know, never grow up.

because we ‘wish’ them to. Being grown up implies a willingness to face personal demons and tough issues. It implies understanding that hard work is required for most things worthwhile achieving. It implies having a sense of empathy for others and a wisdom and appreciation about the preciousness of life and the true value of family and community and the lesser importance of material things, fame and money.

Movements, like people, go through stages of growth. There is always an infant stage, followed by adolescence, then youthful growth, teenage angst and change and finally – hopefully – maturity. Like people, some Being grown- up implies the ability to accurately assess movements never make it out of one stage or another who you are as a person and to understand your cur- – and they continue to struggle with issues common rent situation in the world– and the ability to develop to that stage of development. Some flash into existence a realistic sense of what it will take to get to a differ- and are gone as quickly as they came. Others evolve, ent situation if desired. Things don’t change merely mature and become integral parts of society. Move-

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We are at a pivotal moment in our movement’s history. It is the summer after our last year of high school – and it’s time to grow up.

ments that stay or ‘have legs’ are those that learn to grow up – yet these are few and far between. For the last two decades I’ve been an observer of the green building movement – okay more than an observer, also an active participant, instigator and leader. I have watched our movement grow, shape, evolve, and I’ve seen the focus of companies, organizations, government agencies and individuals shift and change. I’ve watched the perception of our movement in the public realm and listened carefully in the boardrooms of fortune 500 companies, mom and pop start-ups and government agencies at all levels. I’ve also had the good fortune to have worked with many of our movement’s first leaders – the pioneers and visionaries like Pliny Fisk, Sim Van Der Ryn and Bob Berkebile to name a few. Through them I have learned a great deal about where green building began

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– in strands of history that reaches back even earlier to individuals like Buckminster Fuller and Frederick Law Olmstead. From them I’ve received a good sense of where we’ve been and where we are now heading. In a few short decades, green building has morphed from an idea in its infancy to a powerful and active movement that is literally reshaping the way we design, build and operate our buildings and communities. Yet to call our movement mature would be very inaccurate. At best, the green building movement is a teenager. Full of energy and angst and uncertainty – at the edge of adulthood but yet to face the true awakening of maturity. It is my belief that we are – this very year – at a pivotal moment in our movement’s history. We are at the beginning of what I call the Third Age of Green Building. It is metaphorically the summer after our last year of high school – and it’s time to grow up.

The First Age of Green Building: 1960’s through mid-1990’s

ning, and before the movement even found its name, it got its first big boost during the energy crisis of the early seventies, a period after which green buildI describe the first age of green building as the youth- ing entered its ‘toddler’ years. ful period of our movement, stretching from its infancy in the sixties and early seventies, to a kind of Much as two-year-olds are singularly focused, the neglected childhood in the eighties and nineties. In green building movement focused almost excluthis period greenbuilding was not taken seriously by sively on energy efficiency and solar power even the mainstream. Our impact was marginalized and though there were clearly other issues to considthe wind was in our face. Many believe that Rachel er. Well-intentioned designers created what they Carson started the modern environmental move- thought were environmentally responsible strucment in 1962 with the publication of Silent Spring. tures, only to usher in “sick building syndrome” and Although Carson died in 1964, many green pioneers a wave of aesthetic and performance disasters that who were inspired and inf luenced by her work are set the movement back many years. Our youth and still alive and involved in the effort. Others peg the inexperience as a movement led to some interesting first high-profile oil spills and the rising environ- early developments, but for the most part, very little mental activist movement. Regardless of the begin- lasting change.

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Image via jimmy carter library and museum

President Jimmy Carter stands before the solar panels he installed on the White House during his administration.

The eighties and nineties that followed were dark days for green building – symbolized by Reagan taking the solar panels off the White House and the jubilant return of commercialism and consumption as summed up by the era’s popular catch phrase: “whoever dies with the most stuff wins”. House sizes mushroomed, suburbs bloomed, inner cities rotted and a host of energy and water wasteful practices took over. Architecture moved into its post-modern era of excess and waste and the US and Canada led the world in per capita resource use, trash and pollution. Environmentalists began to warn humanity that the present course was unsustainable and fraught with danger and a world of future impoverishment – warnings completely ignored despite the first earth summit in 1993 and success of the Montreal Protocol to address ozone-depleting chemicals.

US and Canada would have stopped altogether. These individuals kept evolving – broadening the definition of green building to now include issues of indoor air quality, materials conservation, water and site impacts. The movement became more inclusive – growing out from the architecture professions to other sectors of the industry. It was in this period that many notable institutions and initiatives were formed, the AIA Committee on the Environment, Environmental Building News and the US Green Building Council to name a few. Slowly, as with adolescence, a sense of what the movement would shape up to be emerged. In 1996 we entered high school metaphorically.

The Second Age of Green Building: mid-1990’s through 2010

I describe the second age of green building as starting It was tough to be green for these two decades and if in 1996 – a year notably when the US Green Buildnot for the work of a small group of pioneers who sol- ing Council really started to pick up steam1. Thanks diered on, all progress towards sustainability in the in large part to the USGBC and LEED, green build1. The USGBC was founded in 1993.

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ing started to move from being a fringe topic, to a topic that everyone in all sectors of construction was talking about. Green building was hitting its stride and growing rapidly – like a teen. With each year saw more new practitioners and organizations joining the bandwagon in increasing numbers. By the time the year 2000 arrived, green building could be found in all architecture, engineering and construction publications. It is amazing to think that the first LEED system was not launched until the end of the nineties2 , with LEED accreditation occurring only after 2000. There are now over 100,000 LEED AP’s in the US alone and LEED has become the defacto building standard at municipal and state levels all over the country and beyond. Greenbuild now attracts more people than the national AIA convention – 30,000 people in a single gathering from all walks of life – gathered together for a singular purpose each November. Its latent potential is powerful. As the movement matured, positive strategies like commissioning and a focus on human health emerged due to their role in LEED. LEED Gold and Platinum projects became more common and achieving LEED Silver began to seem easy. Most notably our movement

learned the skills necessary for transformation – the first net zero energy and net zero water buildings began emerging – here and there – showing what was possible. Companies all over began marketing ‘green’ products, racing each other for a piece of this growing lucrative market. Greenwash too was on the rise. Success bred ‘posers’ just like in high school. People and organizations like the Vinyl Institute, Green Globes and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) put a lot of energy into pretending to be what they were not. Products claiming to offer ‘LEED points’ and single-issue non-transparent claims to environmental benefit became rampant. 2005 was a particularly critical moment of change – almost like the start of senior year. Hurricane Katrina, the Inconvenient Truth and broad attention to Climate Change brought green issues and green building squarely into the mainstream dialogue. Everybody was now green – or so they thought. For the first time in history it was seen as a liability by just about every segment of the economy not to be considered green. Everyone began to see that doing better environmentally was also good business – big business. Suddenly oil companies were

2. The first ‘pilot’ projects emerged in 1999 – out of ten, I worked on two of those.

A 20-foot storm surge from Hurricane Katrina on the Mississippi coast

2005 was a particularly critical moment of change – almost like the start via flickr creative commons

of senior year. Hurricane Katrina, the Inconvenient Truth and broad attention to Climate Change brought green issues and green building squarely into the mainstream dialogue. Everybody was now green – or so they thought.

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image via visibleearth.nasa.com

An aerial view of Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico

calling themselves green, banks, coal companies – you name it. 3 More important than actually changing was putting a ‘green sheen’ on everything – like a fresh coat of paint to hide the cracks in the wall. In some ways the changes have been huge – I argue that this was the most rapid period of change in the building sector since the rise of building codes 100 years ago. Simultaneous with the growth of green building during this period was also an explosion of technology. People forget that it was only in this period that cell phones, laptops, 3-D modeling and energy and daylight modeling became the norm. Before this decade, phones had cords, music was bought in stores and much of the technology that we now take for granted was absent. The internet and e-mail were not really in widespread use until the late nineties. The amount of information we now have at our disposal to make good decisions is 3. Famously, BP began calling itself Beyond Petroleum…the world now wishes that its words hadn’t been so hollow.

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mind-boggling4 compared to the first age and the potential for rapid collaboration, sharing and community building is staggering.

Knowledge5 + Unlimited communication technologies should = transformation right? Not exactly…. Like teenagers, our movement during the Second age of green building started believing its own press. We thought we were grown up. “We made it,” many seemed to exclaim. Just use our product and you’ll have a green building, just get a LEED Rating and you’ve reached 4. The exception being material selection where we are still stuck in the first age of green building. 5. Knowledge not only of the depth of the environmental challenges we face – but also the knowledge how to fix the problems. We have both the diagnosis and the solution in hand…. But where is the change?

We have a choice: we can decide to wake up now and make fundamental and transformative change, or we can resign our movement - as well intentioned as it may be - to being marginalized and irrelevant in a word that will struggle merely to survive.

sustainability. During the second age of green building we acted as if we were fully-grown and where we needed to be. But what should be clear is that we were still painfully immature as a movement and currently still unable to take the necessary steps to adulthood.

The lion-share of green buildings have no focus on real performance, verification and continuous improvement. They are almost all using more energy and water than predicted. There is no real accounting for carbon or long-term impacts of our design decisions. Much like a teenager, the movement is currently in a period During this time Green became undeniably cool, but of myopic self-obsession. We are full of personality and we backed up more of our actions with lip service than confidence; we even exhibit the occasional moment deep thought. We’ve been more concerned with de- of maturity. But our cockiness is offset by insecurities fending our hard fought gains than looking to where about our own capabilities. We are afraid to push for big we need to head next. Actual performance be damned, change. We don’t have a realistic sense of self, and that we now ‘looked the part’. It’s like as if we hit puberty lack of clarity is leaving us stagnant. and got stuck there, and – this will be controversial – I’d argue that our movement has barely evolved in mean- Growing up requires getting real with yourself. ingful ways for the last 5-6 years. We have become good at patting ourselves on the back – but we haven’t yet So let’s get real. had the courage to really change and grow up. Green building as a topic is mainstream – green building During this period of rapid green growth and awareness as true practice is still barely non-existent. We need the average house size increased. The amount of energy to wake up to the fact that we are not ‘winning’ but in and water we use per capita has increased. Atmospheric fact we are losing in significant ways. carbon levels rose into the stratosphere and as the green building movement has grown CO2 levels have increased Worse still, the whole notion of what is a sustainable and recently have moved beyond the point where a staor green building has become co-opted, with people ble climate can be assured6. It’s no longer a question of labeling projects ‘ green’ that are filled with toxins and whether there will be significant climate disruptions use a ton of energy and resources. The presence of a few these next few decades – indeed it is only a question of recycled products, mildly better energy performance how severe and destabilizing it will be. We are losing evand a plaque on the wall does not make a project green. ery single major environmental battle on the planet 6. See 350.org

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Icebreaker in Antarctica.

The Living Building Challenge’s true influence lies not in its first few projects per say – but in its ability to change the nature of the dialogue and story around where we need to head as a whole industry. With the Living Building ChallengeSM we begin to show people what’s possible and like an icebreaker in the arctic – to blaze a trail.

– losing on issues around persistent toxins, habitat and species loss, climate, water quality, social justice issues, resource use and more. Worse, each year the problem accelerates and intensifies. The recent BP oil disaster is a shocking reminder that the change we seek and the future world we’d like to leave to our children is slipping from our grasp. Later this year millions of migratory birds will be heading to the gulf for their winter nesting grounds – and landing on ecosystems that are no longer safe. There is a good chance most won’t return.

to being marginalized and irrelevant in a word that will struggle merely to survive.

The Third Age of Green Building: 2010 through 2030

With the shock of a greatly weakened economy we now find ourselves at the beginning of our real journey; we are currently relevant, but we have a long way to go before achieving true success. Do we have the ability to truly lead and inspire change? Can we transform our cities, Silent Spring yet again. homes, offices? The way we build, the way we use energy, the way we move around and the way we make the We have a choice: we can decide to wake up and make things we need? The good news is that we have the techfundamental and transformative change, or we can re- nologies and the knowledge to make the necessary transsign our movement – as well intentioned as it may be – formations necessary. We know how to create buildings

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Piled slash in a clearcut area of Florida.

have to make significant hange. If we don’t act with urgency and boldness now, then the work of our movement for the last forty years will likely have been for naught. Most of our strategies, tools and attitudes focus on incrementalism and baby steps – so jaded are we to real change and so unable to imagine what the end game we The biggest barriers that remain are human-centered: are supposed to be finding looks like. If we don’t take what we value, our worldviews and the way we think – big steps soon (soon is not by 2020 or 2030 in a series of the cultural stories that keep us locked in the current meaningless targets that no-one intends to reach– soon paradigm. We have political processes that distract is now) then the steps that our children and grandchilthe public from any meaningful engagement on these dren will have to take will be perilous at best. We are issues; yet we are primarily an apolitical movement. entering the decade of extreme oil – where every drop is going to be more risky and expensive to extract. The BP The question we need to ask ourselves is: Can the disaster is a prelude. We are entering a planet that crosses green building movement become something larger? Can the 7 billion people mark – heading rapidly towards 8 bilit become truly societal in scale?” lion in the lifetime of most people reading this article. We are entering a world of peak water and peak food. The reCan we redefine the American and Canadian and ality of our 5-planet lifestyles7 are hitting home. ‘Western’ way of life? We better hope so, because we need to ‘scale up’ and quickly. Despite what we know, we are still focusing on the idea that green building and green development can allow This is the first year of the last decade we have to us to keep living in the same way we’ve lived since the make significant change. 1950’s. What we need to understand is that our way of life has to change. The economic times we’ve been facI’ll repeat that – This is the first year of the last decade we ing are merely the first bumps on a much bigger ride for that use 60-80 percent less energy than today – and to make homes and offices powered completely with renewable energy that are resource efficient and healthy and durable. We know how to build Living Buildings. We don’t have to wait for future technologies to save us.

7. See the work of Bioregional and the One Planet Living framework. www.oneplanetliving.org 24

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a society that literally eats oil. What will our economy be like when oil is triple the cost of what it is today? We still celebrate mild achievements like doing 20 percent better than code (codes set many years ago) and getting LEED Silver as if they are big deals. LEED Silver in the year 2000 was a big deal – we should now be talking Platinum and Living Buildings for all construction.

Can the green building movement become something larger? Can it become truly societal in scale?

Moving to a place where our buildings are water and Our organization launched the Living Building Chal- energy independent and largely free of toxins is leaderlenge8 as a shot across the bow to the building industry ship in this third age of green building. in 2006. For us it was like skywriting – “head here” in bold letters. The first Living Buildings being built and certified this year are ‘beacons of hope’ for a realigned and restorI believe that the new version of the Living Building ative relationship with nature. The first projects pursuChallenge (LBC 2.0) is gaining such widespread at- ing the challenge are true trailblazers. And yet, the Livtention because it offers a clear roadmap not just about ing Building Challenge’s true influence lies not in its where we need to go as a movement but also what it first few projects, per se, but in its ability to change the should look like when we arrive. In a March 2009 Green- nature of the dialogue and story around where we need Source article, Nadav Malin called The Challenge “a to head as a whole industry. With the Living Building manifesto in the guise of a standard” and described it Challenge we begin to show people what’s possible and as an all-or-nothing approach “with an idealistic vision like an icebreaker in the arctic – to blaze a trail. Yet we of buildings that do right by nature in every way.” Isn’t are the first to admit that this program is just one tool maturity all about visualizing goals and taking the nec- amongst many needed to create significant change. To essary steps to achieve them? grow up as a movement, we have some extremely hard 8. ilbi.org

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image via flickr creative commons

Limerick nuclear power plant, Limerick Township, Pennsylvania

image via visibleearth.nasa.com

Typhoon Nari off the coast of China and Tapei

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tasks ahead. To that end, I would like to identify ten areas where we need to ‘grow-up’ as a movement:

2. Diversity

The green building movement is primarily a ‘white’ movement. There – I said it. Go to any green conference and it’s over 95% Caucasian. No movement can ultimate1. A Silo Problem ly be successful that ignores the diversity of people and I get tired of hearing people say, “it’s all about climate culture in a society. Somehow we need to build a bridge change” and then proceed to look only for solutions that to communities other than the current ‘choir’. We need reduce carbon emissions, as if nothing else matters. We champions in the Hispanic, African American, Native need to remember the foundational lesson that the envi- American and Asian American Communities. I don’t ronmental movement has taught us for the last forty years: think this is intentional – it’s partly socioeconomic and any problem tackled in isolation tends to produce side effects a symptom of the greater societal economic imbalance just as damaging as the problem we were attempting to solve in – but there is much more we can do. Our movement has the first place. The shortsighted focus on Nuclear Energy as made great strides in gender equity and participation, climate change solution is a prime example of this. Climate and leadership by women is very strong in the green change should be on all our minds, but simultaneously we building world . So now let’s achieve a similar success need to tackle many other issues including water, toxins, and ensure that this movement is truly representative of social justice, habit loss, food production etc. the racial diversity in the US and Canada. They are all interconnected. The way I see it, the movement is still suffering from its insistence on solving individual problems in isolation rather than tackling multiple challenges at once. The green building movement has broadened its mandate significantly since its beginning as an energy movement, but for the most part there continues to be silos where people stick to the issues they know and the strength of our common ground is often lost. Energy people don’t tend to talk to people concerned with toxins in the built environment and water folks don’t often enough reach out to those working to protect our forests. Climate change and water issues, are inter-related. A building’s air quality is directly tied to its energy efficiency. We rarely band together as a unified movement to push for policy changes when there would be strength in our numbers.

Go to any green conference and it’s over 95% Caucasian. No movement can ultimately be successful that ignores the diversity of people and culture in a society.

3. Social Justice

As we address our lack of ethnic diversity, we must also do a better job of extending our reach into all socioeconomic branches of society. Recommitting ourselves to issues of affordable housing, universal access and nature rights will effect broader social change. To borrow from language used in the Living Building Challenge 2.0, “We need to prioritize the concept of ‘citizen’ above that of ‘consumer.’ Equity implies the creation of communities that provide universal access and full particiWe need to expand the movement even more dramati- pation to people with disabilities, any minority group cally than we began to do in the 1990s. Acting with and those of any socioeconomic class.“ urgency, we have to consider the impacts of all of our actions while aligning our efforts with the shrinking It goes way beyond this of course, and we need to fully timeline the planet is facing. Right now there is consid- understand the upstream and downstream implicaerable and deserved focus on climate change, but often tions of our design choices – where materials are times other issues get brushed aside that may be just as made and resources extracted – and how people are pressing to solve in both the near and long terms. affected in communities near industries that support

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Slum in Cape Town, South Africa.

our ‘green buildings’. Polluting factories and poor communities go hand-in-hand and many so-called ‘green products’ have horrible environmental, social and cultural impacts in third world countries and even domestically. Since the act of building creates considerable environmental impact shared by all, there is an inherent responsibility to ensure that any project provides some public good and does not degrade quality of life. 4. Reexamined Values

Our movement cannot have true progress if our goals are out of line with the larger societal value system. To that extent we need to spend more of our efforts on challenging some of the unhealthy assumptions that underlie ‘the American dream’. If fashion trends call for so called ‘green homes’ but market demand is for houses that are two and a half times the size of homes

built in 19509, then we are losing ground. If a building features recycled content furniture but uses an inordinate amount of energy due to expectations for strict climate controls in a narrow comfort band, then we are losing ground. We have to spend more of our time changing what people value – and less of our time trying to sell people on the idea that they can be ‘green’ without having to change their lifestyles. There is too much focus these days on green as an ‘added feature’ and sustainability being used to support consumption. “Buy this useless product,” the marketing claims preach, “It’s green”. The implicit message being that because it has a few good green features you can use it wantonly and consume as much as possible without guilt. Even if something is twice as efficient as it used to be, we are sliding backwards if we are now using four times as much of it. 9. www.nahb.org

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Images on facing page: (top) 1959 bungalow-style home in Richmond, Virginia; (bottom) 20th-century suburban home.

image via the library of virginia

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“Efficient” homes in sprawling exurbs are NOT green.

5. Land Use

For us to address many of the problems we face, we have to get real about land use issues, sprawl and density. Putting a ‘green’ building on a virgin site 30 miles from the center of town is counterproductive. Our community does not put enough focus on the idea of truly ending sprawl through the promotion of fixed urban boundaries and policies that strictly limit infrastructure extensions into the hinterlands. To again borrow from the Living Building Challenge – we need to move quickly to a paradigm of ‘no new sites’. As a species we’ve coopted enough land for our communities. Its time to learn how to properly take care of the land we’ve already impacted. We should be fighting for immediate moratoriums on building on farmland, wetland, prairie and forest and offering stronger incentives to rebuild and repurpose our historic cores. Our sprawl addiction has bankrupted our communities economically and culturally. We need to get serious about density in this coun-

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try to support efficient public transportation systems – including a greater focus on our railways, which will be our only transportation life-line in a post-oil world. To imagine that we are going to keep the automobile dream alive over the next couple decades is foolhardy. Making further investments in airports and highways at the expense of our inner cities and railways is throwing good money after bad. At the same time, we need new and powerful visions of what healthy and truly sustainable cities should look like. To this end we encourage people to check out our Living City Design Competition (www.ilbi.org/livingcity) and to read this article on sustainable density in the previous iteration of Trim Tab. The North American public needs to see that density can be beautiful and safe and that it can improve a city’s quality of life. Only showing visions of forty-story high rise towers disconnected from nature and street life does a profound disservice to healthy density – as found in Barcelona, Amsterdam and Paris.

6. Historic Preservation & Existing Buildings

es brings community. Most cities of the future are picGreen Building awards and publications tend to fo- tured as if they were built in one single timeframe – decus heavily on new construction. Yet it is becoming void of reference, precedent and past. How boring. increasingly apparent that reusing existing buildings is a key part of the future of sustainability. To address Our organization is thrilled to be working with both climate change and to honor the huge environmental Heritage Canada and the National Historic Trust on capital already invested in our existing infrastructure, numerous fronts and pushing forth the understanding we must move beyond our obsession with new build- that we need transformation in both new and old strucings and communicate the beauty of adaptive reuse tures alike. and historic preservation. Often the most responsible approach is to preserve and reuse existing structures, while bringing them up to modern performance standards. This has another– very critical benefit – ensuring that we have a vibrant and rich culture that celebrates our history and culture. It is the evolving tapestry of history that makes a city great – a mix of ages, construction types and approachPVC piping

7. Getting Real about Materials

Let’s get real about the state of our materials economy. In spite of the progress made during the 1990’s to put focus on reducing solid waste, promoting recycling and reducing VOC emissions, we have stalled when it comes to the ecological impacts of our building materials. Following a swell of progress surrounding healthy paints, recycled content carpeting, supposedly nontoxic sealants and other products, we’ve slowed our insistence on environmentally-friendly materials. In fact it’s safe to say that for the most part we have no idea of the true impact of the materials decisions we make. We do our best to make good choices and look for key green features or hope that one of the many green rating systems will give us guidance. Yet the truth is we have a complete lack of transparency in how things are made, what’s really in our products and the upstream and downstream impacts of the material. Our product reps often don’t know what’s in what they are selling and since many materials and ingredients are sourced globally – the manufacturer often doesn’t really understand either. And if they do…well they aren’t talking. Across-the-board product transparency should exist so that designers, builders and consumers have full awareness of what is used to construct the built environment. (See more information about the Pharos Project for product transparency here.) Recent scandals around product safety due to lead, other heavy metals, acids and the like are finally drawing attention to how many plastics are unsafe. But why – after almost two decades of talking about it – is Vinyl still ubiquitous? Why do they still have a booth at GreenBuild? When are we going to get real and phase PVC out? Why aren’t we demanding

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The green building movement needs to focus on an overarching new national water policy for cities and towns that overhauls our attitudes and accepted practices for water use and waste treatment.

more disclosure? More environmental testing? More re- years ago, “when the well is dry we know the worth liance on the precautionary principle before new prod- of water”. Global freshwater scarcity is going to be a ucts or formulations are introduced into the public? paramount concern as we struggle to sustain 7-8 billion people. Here in North America, where freshwaThis is aside from the fact that we no longer make any- ter is relatively plentiful, we are faced with cultural thing in North America. We need to reverse this trend attitudes, mores and institutionalized insanity like quickly. Our economy and way of life depends on hav- ‘Western water law’ that prevents intelligent and sane ing a healthy manufacturing base where we can control choices such as rainwater collection, greywater reuse how things are made and what chemicals are brought and onsite waste treatment. We favor systems built on into our homes and offices. Based on what we are nineteenth-century waste treatment thinking, even learning from the Living Building Challenge we could though these systems lose the majority of their water write a book on all the ways our materials economy is through leaks and that are slowly bankrupting commessed up. Many things we are learning only because munities around the country. We don’t challenge polwe’ve taken such a strong stance on Red List chemicals icies that result in such craziness as allowing people and and because we ask project teams to ensure that all in Arizona to pay less for water than they do in the materials are from a responsible radius to the project. places where their water comes from. For our part, we are going to be much more active and much more aggressive about weeding out greenwash The green building movement needs to focus on an and pushing our movement to a position of leader- overarching new national water policy for cities and ship. It is frankly embarrassing that we are letting SFI towns, one that overhauls our attitudes and accepted — with its lax environmental standards and clear-cut practices for water use and waste treatment. We need to mentality — push their way into the green building revise our land use and plumbing codes and adopt such discussion. How big does our movement have to get rational strategies as composting toilets and rainwater/ to stand up to Big Timber and set clear standards that greywater systems, and we need to mandate at a miniallow for sustainable forestry while protecting habitat, mum dual flush and urine diverting toilets. It is not a species diversity and soil? stretch to say that with concerted effort we could as a nation reduce our municipal water needs – and all the associated costs and impacts – within a single decade 8. Water by 70-80%. When are we going to start? For our part we With all the focus that exists around energy issues, we have been working hard to change water law in Oregon often forget that water security is a paramount issue and Washington and are actively working on efforts to as well. We are entering a world of peak water as well provide tools to local governments and project teams to as peak oil. We waste water like its worth is meaning- see a pathway to water independence.10 less. Yet as Ben Franklin wisely pointed out over 200 10. Read this article on water in the Fall 2009 issue of Trim Tab.

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image courtesy of clivus multrum

A foam-flush toilet at Laurence S. Rockefeller Preserve in Grand Teton National Park (right) and its accompanying composting tanks (above).

The green building movement needs to focus on an overarching new national water policy for cities and towns, one that overhauls our attitudes and accepted practices for water use and waste treatment.

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9. Performance

The reality is that most buildings are deemed green based on the ways they are theoretically performing, not based on how they actually perform once people dwell inside. As long as models form the basis for certification then our true progress is going to be limited. Very few people know how to use energy models effectively, and real performance and modeled performance rarely correlate. An energy model’s true strength in my opinion is as a design tool – providing feedback during the design process of the relative importance of various strategies and options – not as a mere predictor of total specific energy use. There are way too many examples of green buildings using significantly more energy than what they were ‘predicted’ to use. Human beings – flawed as we are – leave windows open, turn on space heaters and do all sorts of things to skew the performance of even the most efficiently designed structures. In addition, quality control, a lack of proper commissioning and last minute substitutions compromise performance out of the gate. On an ongoing basis buildings are not properly operated and there is a broken communication chain from designer to operator. The green building movement needs to put much greater emphasis on actual performance – on continuously monitoring and measuring performance, of awarding certifications based on actual rather than predicted performance and stressing the importance of and providing tools for proper building operations and maintenance – including occupant education.

global ecosystems are in decline and the rate of that decline is increasing. The challenges we face are no longer focused on distant warnings of ‘what might happen’. Predictions on what might happen are now happening. And yet, so many in the green building community act as if we have all the time in the world. We continue to focus on solutions that are incremental at best and amount to nothing more than rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic. Worse still, in our fear of making people uncomfortable, the real issues are quickly brushed aside and people only focus on the positive and sexy solutions – giving people a false hope and distorted picture. Only showing the negative side of an issue can be stifling and de-motivating for sure, but a mature and nuanced approach, which we try to model at the Living Future conference held each year in Cascadia, is one where the urgency of the situation is not brushed aside or watered down and at the same time solutions – real solutions – are offered and discussed. In many ways what we need to be working on is the idea of changing our stories – having people understand both the need for transformation to a restorative/ regenerative future and the beauty and opportunities that could exist once we get there.

Cascadia Looks to the Future

Over the past few years, our organization, Cascadia, has had its own maturing to do. We’ve transitioned rapidly from a small regional organization – simply a chapter of the US and Canada Green Building Councils to a robust and dynamic organization in its own right with an 10. A Sense of Urgency independent and critical voice in the greater movement. Underlying all our efforts needs to be a sense of criti- We’ve evolved from being simply an education provider cal urgency. Our movement has created an enormous to an organization at the crux of numerous key issues amount of attention in the popular media and individu- and national and international debate. Through our efals are interested in contributing to the movement from forts we’ve helped change water law in two states; we’ve all sectors of the industry and beyond. But as the Union published groundbreaking research; we’ve created one of Concerned Scientists has pointed out repeatedly – all of the most important conferences in the industry (Liv-

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Envisioning A Living Future Our Mission: “To lead a transformation towards a built environment that is socially just, culturally rich and ecologically restorative.”

ing Future) and of course we have launched the Living Building Challenge and spun off the International Living Building Institute, which now has influence in a growing list of countries world wide. Through our efforts we seek to be what we call a ‘trimtab’ organization like the magazine in which this article is published. Recently we honed our focus even further and made some significant changes to the organization in order to become even more effective heading into this third age of green building. On a subtle note we dropped the word ‘region’ from our name –acknowledging, as some already know, that ‘region’ is implied with the word Cascadia. Our new name is the Cascadia Green Building Council. More significantly we launched a new mission statement that sums up the core of our efforts. Our mission is: “To lead a transformation towards a built environment that is socially just, culturally rich and ecologically restorative.” This mission statement is coupled with a new tagline– ‘envisioning a living future’ that ties our work to the idea of future leadership.

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Cascadia’s efforts going forward will focus more specifically on initiatives that lead the movement to transformation with a strategic focus on existing buildings, materials and materialism, issues of equity and toxicity in the built environment. Underpinning it all is a broadened focus, on community and cities. We know we have a lot of work to do to fully define how we’ll achieve our new goals and focus and we are excited by the participation of the hundreds of volunteers and members from around the region and beyond who will help us get there. Perhaps together we can bring the movement from its current teenage angst to a place of maturity – effectively able to tackle the most pressing issues humanity is currently facing.

jason f. mclennan is the CEO of both the Cascadia Green Building Council and the International Living Building Institute. He is the author of the Living Building Challenge and 4 books including the Philosophy of Sustainable Design.

T ransformational A C T I O N

by C O R E Y B R I N K E M A

TRANSFORMATIONAL AC TION We urge you to demand that green claims be substantiated and call out misleading claims in the forest products marketplace.

As we move into the third quarter of 2010, we at the Forest Stewardship Council – United States (FSC-US) find the world of forest conservation evolving at an astonishing pace. The forest management contribution to climate change has finally become widely appreciated, and serious concerns are being raised about what is really necessary to protect biodiversity from Canada’s boreal forest to Cameroon’s tropical rainforest. NGO’s, the marketplace and even governments are recognizing that major and rapid actions are required now to deal with these and other crucial forest conservation issues. FSC believes that the next two to three years will be decisive in creating fundamental change and seeks the engagement and leadership of the green building community in the following activities and action items. Consumer education: To date, most of FSC’s market success has derived from responsible producers and corporate buyers committing to FSC-certified products, applying what is known as a market “push” strategy. However, to ensure that a wide spectrum of commercial interests remains committed to forest stewardship, FSC is convinced that the average consumer must begin to actually demand products from responsibly managed forests. Such a “pull” strategy is viable only now that a wide variety of FSC-certified products have become available. FSC-US has recently embarked on a major education and branding initiative to bring FSC home to the US consumer. Action: we encourage you to share your ideas on effective consumer outreach and work with FSC-US to implement the consumer education tools created during this initiative. Please contact Andrea Carlson, acarlson@fscus.org, for further information on consumer education tools and to share your ideas.

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Image courtesy of Ecotrust Canada.

Iisaak Cutblock, an FSC certified forest in Clayoquot Sound, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada.

Exposing misleading claims: It is clear that conventional timber producers and their commercial allies will fight hard to maintain the market share of status quo forestry. Competition between progressive and conventional producers is perfectly appropriate, even welcomed, but recent false claims and misleading market communications by the conventional industry make it difficult for consumers to understand what’s truly green and what’s industrial forestry repackaged.

other threatened species and the earth’s single largest carbon storehouse. In the agreement, the Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC) committed to setting “on-the-ground application of the existing FSC National Boreal Standards” as the benchmark for ecosystem-based forest management. If fully implemented, this agreement could become a tipping point for FSC and forest stewardship in North America.

Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement: News from Canada last month rocked the conservation world, as Canada’s largest timber companies and nine environmental groups agreed to comprehensive ecosystem protections for 178 million acres of boreal forest. Forests that are home to the woodland caribou and

Family Forests: More than 60% of the wood harvested in the US comes from small family-owned forests. Forest stewardship cannot be achieved on a broad scale without engaging these landowners. While we have succeeded in bringing nearly 40,000 such landowners (comprising almost 3 million acres) into FSC

Action: we must increase specification of FSC-certified Action: we urge you to demand that green claims be sub- lumber and panel products to support full implementastantiated and to call out misleading claims in the forest tion and encourage more American timber producers to products marketplace. adopt FSC forest management standards.

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T ransformational A C T I O N

forest certification, this is only a start. With a new FSC-US Family Forest Standard expected to launch this summer and producers and retailers seeking new sources of FSC-certified wood, now is the time to conduct aggressive outreach to family forest owners. Action: encourage family forest certification by specifying local FSC-certified products where available, especially from smaller distributors and mills. Regional initiatives: FSC recognizes that the success of the FSC is built on the initiative and achievement of local leaders. To better support and build upon these local efforts, FSC-US is developing regional networks, beginning with the Pacific Northwest. The FSC Pacific Northwest network is still in its infancy but has already begun to break down barriers in the regional supply chain and identify opportunities to expand local market demand. Action: Join the FSC Pacific Northwest network and get involved in local market development and local forest conservation efforts. Improved FSC Standards: The heart and soul of the Forest Stewardship Council is embodied in its multi-stakeholder membership governance and in its international forest management standard based on 10 Principles and 56 Criteria (P & C). Both the international P & C and FSC-USâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; National Forest Management Standard will conclude major revisions this year and both efforts have brought together our diverse members and other stakeholders. It is FSCâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s membership that is the most important driver of standards and policies that enhance conservation and community benefits and develop a more effective and credible certification system. Action: become a member of FSC and have a direct stake in forest conservation at home and around the world.Â Corey Brinkema is President of Forest Stewardship Council US.

Summer 2010

Visualizing the Future of Civilization The International Living Building Institute invites the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most talented and daring designers, planners, artists and animators to create a new global vision: a breathtaking, compelling model for the future of civilization. All entries must comply explicitly with all 20 Imperatives of the Living Building Challenge SM 2.0.

Prizes totaling over $125,000 available along with extensive media coverage. For details and full contest rules, go to: www.ilbi.org/livingcity.

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH:

MEDIA PARTNER:

COMPETITION PRESENTED BY:

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Cascadia’s mission is to lead a transformation towards a built environment that is socially just, culturally rich and ecologically restorative.

Out of difficulties grow miracles Jean De La Bruyere

WE THANK THE FRIENDS OF CASCADIA FOR THEIR STEADFAST SUPPORT

LIVING

PLATINUM

GOLD

SILVER

CERTIFIED

www.cascadiagbc.org

by Paul W erder

Leadership in the First Year of * the Last Decade Deep roots The urgency is real. The scientists we trust have warned us that we have ten years before it will be too late to reclaim our planet’s sustainability. Speakers at Living Future, Cascadia’s annual UnConference, challenged us to “be outrageous and make a commotion.” We need to do that: hasten our pace, work harder, and more insistently raise our voices. On one level it feels right to make some noise and rev up our activity level. On another level, I have never found it possible to work hard enough or fast enough to achieve what seems impossible. Yes, tons of hard work is necessary. But what is the active ingredient in the historical moments that have changed the course of civilization? Real

leaders are thoughtful and strategic. They engage people’s hearts and inspire excellent actions among large numbers of influential people. Think Abraham Lincoln, Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. Their “way of being” was what moved society in a new direction. It was not about what they did as individuals. It was the depth of their conviction and willingness to withstand adversity that ignited the hearts of their people. Real leadership is like an amazingly beautiful tree with enormous branches that provide delicious fruit. It only thrives when we have roots deep enough to allow us to blow away the belief that the sky’s the limit. When our roots are deep enough, we discover that there are no limits.

jason f. mclennan, ceo of cascadia and the

international living building institute, coined trim tab

this phrase at living future

2010 in seattle, wa.

Our way of being can not be hurried, casual or superficial. It must be deep, profound and enduring. To become a person with deep roots you will need to be reflective. Cynics call this endeavor of slowing down to be reflective “navel gazing” and consider it a waste of precious time. Mystics call it “knowing.” It is a visceral experience of understanding universal truth so strongly that you have no choice but to act upon it. It is profound enough to have you rise above your mind’s usual obstacles and focus on your mission above all else. It is inspiring enough to attract others to rise above their own day-to-day concerns. Synchronicity occurs as the strategy unfolds from your heart just when you need it. You simply take one step after another, while being totally present to your mission.

Share Your Story We would love to hear about your successes and use them in future articles about leadership in the green building movement. Please send us 100 words or less that describes:

How you’ve deepened your leadership roots

What you’ve done to make a positive commotion

What you’ve accomplished as a result

In today’s society we have ample evidence that millions of people crave this way of being. For decades we’ve lined up at the box office for movies like Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings and Avatar. For six years we’ve sat spellbound in front of our television sets watching Lost. We crave heroic leadership that prevails over the darker aspects of humanity. Unfortunately, we can never get enough of what we don’t really need. We do not need fictional heroes. We need to find the heroic way of being that is buried deep within each of us. We need to touch into our own hearts.

the core of our existence. Using this approach allows us to remember that we have infinite resources within to draw upon. We need only to remember that to ask our hearts to talk to us and sustain us as we expand upwards.

To do this work well we must slow down and find our hearts on a regular basis, not just for a few moments at the movie theater. We must fill our hearts with insight, inspiration, creativity, strength and wisdom on a daily basis. We must surrender our personal agendas every day to a way of being that unleashes the treasure chest of virtues that are buried in our hearts. To consciously expand our hearts in this manner, we must remember who we are underneath all of those frantic thoughts and feelings that render us ineffective.

To become the Lincoln, Ghandi or Mandela of your time you will need to spend time in reflection. There are many ways to do this and finding a trusted teacher is a good idea. We teach a powerful practice called “remembrance” that assists leaders to find, open and expand their own hearts. It begins an indescribable journey for people who choose to become their own heroic version of themselves. These people are not satisfied with getting a vicarious dose of heroism from their favorite fictional characters.

If this approach to leadership is foreign to you, I am not surprised. It is very uncommon and only embraced by a few rare people. It requires being self-actualized enough to realize that our own powers are insufficient to make our full contribution to the world. It is an approach to leadership that relies on developing a personal and intimate connection to the mystery or life-source that is at

The remembrance is a practice you use to call upon the All That Is Within You. It allows you to bring forth much more than your full contribution. You simply choose a word or name that represents the Oneness at the core of our existence. It is your word that is sacred to you and consistent with your understanding of the mystery of life. You focus your attention on your heart conscious-

Summer 2010

Let’s blow the lid off! Send your submissions to Paul Werder at paulw@lionhrt.com!

Real leadership is like an amazingly beautiful tree with enormous branches that provide delicious fruit. With deep enough roots we discover that there are no limits.

ness and repeat your word quietly. If your mind continues to chatter or tries to debate the value of your practice, you simply notice this mental distraction and continue to deepen the recitation of your sacred word. With sincere effort over sufficient time your heart will receive more positive energy than you expect. With dedication, you will develop a way of being that is deep, profound, enduring and more powerful than you ever imagined possible. You will become a real leader. Perhaps you will become well known or maybe you will continue to work without that burden. Either way, if you slow down and develop your heart, you will get there faster. You will make a surprisingly bigger impact on your immediate world that genuinely is outrageous. You will make the right kind of noise, at the right time and in the right way. If ten of us are successful at this endeavor, it will be huge; if a hundred of us do so, it will be miraculous; and if a thousand of us make this way of being our own, we will perhaps change the course of history. I invite you to be an exceptional human being with deep roots. Begin your journey of heroic service in an entirely new way by finding the strength within…to slow down…reflect…and prove that what really matters is not impossible. Paul Werder, CEO of LionHeart Con-

sulting Inc, is the author of Mastering Effectiveness. You can reach him at paulw@lionhrt.com.

Twelve-YEAR TIMELINE NEXT >

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Twelve-Year

Timeline: cascadia through the years

2001

2002

USGBC launches the LEED Accrediated Professional Program.

Cascadia is awarded its first grant by The Russell Family Foundation to develop educational programming and a model communities program.

Cascadia’s branch network grows to include Vancouver, BC.

Cascadia hires Glen Gilbert as the first staff and CEO.

2004

2005

CaGBC launches LEED in Canada.

WA State legislature passes green building legislation requiring all state-funded new construction to be certified at the LEED Silver level – the first statewide legislation of its kind in the nation.

Cascadia’s branch network grows to include Tacoma/Olympia, WA.

Cascadia plays a l

Cascadia grows to

Cascadia’s branch Inland Empire hea

2007 The first Living Future UnConference is held in Seattle, WA.

First Living Building Challenge project begins design. Cascadia launches Research Department. Branch networks grows to include Vancouver Island branch.

2009 International Living Building Institute is founded.

The Living Building Challenge 2.0 is launched.

First Living Building Challenge project finishes construction.

Branch network grows to included High Desert Branch and the Klamath Falls leaf.

First International Living Building project is registered.

1999

2000

Cascadia is founded as part of the Northwest Region Sustainable Action Plan.

Cascadia deploys the branch network beginning in Seattle and Portland. USGBC launches Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system.

2003 The Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC) is officially incorporated. Cascadia hires its second staff.

2006

lead role in this effort.

o 4 staff.

h network grows to include the adquartered in Spokane, WA.

Cascadia, already a chapter of the USGBC, officially becomes a chapter of the CaGBC, making it the first international chapter. Cascadia hires Jason F. McLennan as CEO. The Living

2008 Cascadia expands to include the State of Alaska. Cascadia publishes research on building codes and financial barriers to the Living Building Challenge.

Cascadia grows to 17 staff. Branch network grows to include Kootney Rockies Leaf in BC.

2010 Cascadia announced its new strategic direction and mission statement. Cascadia grows to 20 staff. Certification of the world’s first Living Building Challenge project expected by year’s end.

Cascadia’s mission is to lead a transformation towards a built environment that is socially just, culturally rich and ecologically restorative.

Building Challenge SM , gifted by McLennan to Cascadia, is launched at Greenbuild. Branch network includes Thompson Okanagan, BC and Eugene, OR.

by D O N ald D AV I E S

CLIMATE-CONSCIOUS BUILDING DESIGN: New approaches to embodied-carbon optimization

Summer 2010

The building sector is responsible for 48% of US Energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. 1

Carbon modeling can be an important tool for measuring a proposed building’s impact on the larger environment, and aiding in decision making processes. The US Green Building Council, the International Living Building Institute, and others, are starting to include this modeling as part of a project’s certification process. While this is definitely a worthy effort, the embodied carbon involved in the design and construction stage is frequently over-simplified to the point of meaningless results. In other instances, the variables are so overwhelming, teams wonder: why bother? Meaningful, but not over-burdensome, embodied carbon modeling is possible. The process has to be focused on the areas of relevance, and it needs to be accurate enough to deliver credible and useful results. The information must also be timely and embedded into current design efforts. This article describes an approach for measuring and then optimizing the embodied carbon in a structure, and explores several of the very important lessons that have been learned along the way. Through carbon optimization, sustainability and cost savings can go hand-in-hand.

Background Over the next few decades, the world will undergo significant changes in climate, which will impact almost every aspect of the world’s environment, economies and societies. The building sector is responsible for 48% of US energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions – with even higher global percentages.1 In many countries, both developed and emerging, it is the largest emissions source. These emissions come from a combination of “Phase 1” embodied emissions to construct the building, “Phase 2” emissions of building operations and “Phase 3” emissions of deconstruction. Multiple organizations, including the Sustainable Building Alliance (SB Alliance) and the United Nations Environment Program’s Sustainable Buildings and Climate Initiative (UNEP-SBCI), identify buildings as the single greatest area for potential reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. They identify the largest emissions in the building sector as coming through the use of fossil fuels during the Phase 2 operational phase. As a result, the green building movement has focused much of its atten1 http://www.architecture2030.org/current_situation/building_sector.html

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Structural Relevance Phase 1 embodied carbon is affected by a very large number of variables. It is a difficult, and in most cases impractical, goal to say that all Phase 1 embodied carbon can and will be directly measured. However, by identifying, and then focusing on the largest carbon sinks and sources in a building, it is possible to estimate a carbon footprint with statistically relevant accuracy. By tracking this information, it becomes possible to both influence industry production processes holistically, and to make project specific carbon reduction decisions in a meaningful way.

Phase 1: Embodied carbon (MKA Hotel case study findings) image courtesy of Magnusson Klemencic Associates

tion on measuring and reducing building operational carbon consumption. Buildings have become more energy efficient, thanks in part to the widespread uptake of LEED and other rating systems and incentive programs. Government bodies have also begun to set higher energy performance targets for the built environment and are probably the most effective forum for immediate Phase 2 carbon reductions. Most aggressively, netzero energy is one of the Living Building ChallengeSM 2.0’s twenty Imperatives. There is still considerable work to do in the energy efficiency of buildings and it is by no means a “solved” issue, but progress is definitely occurring. As buildings become more energy efficient and Phase 2 operational carbon is reduced, the Phase 1 embodied carbon becomes a much larger percentage of the life cycle carbon footprint of a building. With little current attention being focused on the Phase 1 embodied carbon, this as a critical and next frontier in the quest for carbon-footprint reduction in the building industry.

Summer 2010

Prior carbon footprint studies have shown that the structure has the single largest embodied-carbon footprint for new construction projects. (See diagram on this page.) Given the limited number of materials and industries that produce the structural frame for a building, focusing on optimizing those materials becomes a very high-value area to invest time and energy.

Optimization in Design The embodied carbon of a structure varies widely depending upon material selection, building function and efficiency of design. Realities in life-safety requirements can also influence the structural alternatives available for carbon optimization. The classic example: buildings over five stories typically require noncombustible materials for their primary structural frame (i.e., no wood). Today’s “typical” building designs rarely take advantage of carbon optimization techniques. One of the biggest opportunities is to determine the right “big idea” within the structural concept. Structural systems need to work in harmony with the architectural function and building expression. The best examples are when the structure and expressed architecture are one and the same, with the structure performing multiple duties, such as supporting the building, serving as an exposed finish, and contributing thermal mass to cut peak cooling and heating demands. Systems should

include minimal load transitions, as forces are brought to the ground. Materials should be used for their most efficient purposes, such as concrete for all conditions of compression and steel for all conditions of tension.

Embodied-Carbon Accounting Most embodied-carbon modeling approaches currently available are based on a one-time building review, lacking the detail for a truly accurate picture of the carbon embodied within a project. The best exception we have found to date is a hybrid modeling approach, which is now gaining more attention.

It is important not to stop at the initial economic carbon estimate. The footprint of large carbon items, such as cement, can vary by over 100% depending upon where it is sourced and how it is produced.

“Hybrid” carbon modeling starts with an economically derived carbon estimate, based upon a contractor’s cost estimate. That first model provides a “fuzzy first picture” of all building components but lacks detailed accuracy. It does, however, provide sufficient detail for the smaller and harder-to-track items, as well as guidance on where to focus a more detailed investigation for the biggest embodied-carbon sources.

Within this above framework, Magnusson Klemencic Associates has developed a process for a more detailed examination of carbon embodied within a building’s structure. From earlier case studies, the structure of commercial construction projects typically represents 28% to 33% of the overall embodied carbon of the project. Thus, the structure definitely qualifies as one of It is an iterative process of increasing accuracy. As these areas worthy of a more detailed investigation. the project cost model is refined and project materials are sourced and measured during the normal This involves a six-step process: evolution of design, the embodied-carbon modeling can also be refined. With less than 15% of the materi- Utilize BIM modeling and material quantity definition als initially evaluated typically producing over 85% for the structural frame. This also creates the platform of a project’s embodied carbon, this economic model for carbon modeling of the fully integrated project. shows where to invest further effort. Track the material pedigree. Recycled content of the material, travel distances and shipping used (CO2/ Hybrid Cost Modeling ton/mile), and understanding the processes used in It is important not to stop at the initial economic car- fabrication are the key variables. bon estimate. The footprint of large carbon items, such as cement, can vary by over 100% depending Determine the energy required to produce the mateupon where it is sourced and how it is produced. These rial. MKA has developed an energy required datalargest and most statistically relevant carbon sources base of structural materials, which started with an require a more detailed investigation for a relevant car- internal investigation of material production by spebon footprint model. The hybrid modeling process is cific U.S.-based rebar, steel, and concrete suppliers. being promoted by several organizations, with varying It has been further supplemented by references to degrees of detail in how they model for the embodied- Europe’s Inventory of Carbon and Energy, or “ICE,” carbon footprint. This is a viable broader framework as produced by the University of BATH, 2008; and Athena, 2009. for effective embodied carbon accounting.

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Identify the carbon footprint of the energy used in production. Identify the fabrication plants energy consumption (gas fired, electric, or other), including any on-site co-generation processes. Gas and coal fired processes can be directly estimated for their carbon emissions. By relying on research done by others, it is also now possible to estimate a carbon footprint of the electrical energy supplied to any one location. This is often the biggest variable and energy need. Track and report the findings. By quantifying the total embodied carbon within the structure, it is easier to identifywhere to go for optimization potential. It also helps to establish a baseline condition from which to track a project’s ongoing design progress.

Case Study Lessons Learned Case studies to-date have included high-rise hotels, residential towers, parking garages and office buildings. These investigations have revealed important lessons learned and identified carbon optimization opportunities. Some of these lessons include:

Relevance of the Material Pedigree Even when material quantities and costs appear to be the same, there can be a significant difference in the carbon footprint for these structural building materials, which historically have very high energy-production requirements. Materials such as concrete, rolled steel shapes, light-gage galvanized metal, and especially aluminum can all have highly variable carbon footprints. It is important to require a pedigree that can be tracked back to the fabrication and points of resource extraction for these base building materials.

depends. More impactful than the choice of a concrete or steel frame is how the steel and/or concrete is sourced for the project and the degree to which both are optimized. The most carbon-optimized design actually includes a blend of both materials, utilizing each for their best-performing characteristics. Within a building, few materials can achieve the same function as concrete. Further, because concrete can often serve multi-function purposes, such as building frame, thermal mass heat reservoir, acoustic and vibration isolation and exposed architectural finish, it can often reduce a potential project’s carbon footprint over other alternatives. However, it is also frequently the single-point source of the largest volume of materials and the largest carbon footprint in a building. It presents the best opportunity for optimization and reduction in the embodied-carbon footprint. Implementing new techniques that improve a batch plant’s quality control for the production of concrete have shown cement savings of 20% to 50% – or more – for same-strength mixes. This is an area in need of further study and improvement within the building industry. “Complementary cementing materials” (or CCMs – flyash, slag, rice husk ash, etc.) can further reduce cement content requirements, but can impact the performance of the concrete in ways that need to be evaluated. Up to 100% cement-replacement concrete is possible with CCMs, but it is not always practical and not appropriate at all locations in a building. CCM’s are an important part of the discussion, but their use needs to be carefully considered.

Thermal Mass – Myth and Reality

In choosing material types and where to put them, Analysis of Steel versus remember that thermal mass only helps reduce operational energy demands at locations where the Concrete Frames temperature actually changes. For buildings without Which is less carbon intensive, a steel- or concrete- operable windows and thermally controlled enviframed building? What seemed like a simple question ronments that don’t change daily, the floor system turned out to have a very complex. Short answer: it building mass doesn’t effect the energy requirements

Summer 2010

The mentioned embodied-carbon accounting efforts much. However, with operable windows, and espewere initially developed out of a frustration of not cially with surfaces exposed to high temperature being able to accurately account for the structural changes, such as the exterior cladding on southern components of embodied-carbon modeling. It has exposures, thermal mass plays a much larger role. become a step forward in the evolution of information for Phase 1 embodied-carbon accounting, but it Conclusions remains only one part of a larger goal of full cradle-tograve life cycle carbon analysis. Todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s building teams invest more sustainable-design brain power considering waterless urinals or where to I welcome sharing the findings of this work as part of put bike racks than embodied carbon optimization. the larger greenhouse gas and carbon-reduction disThese other items are important, but embodied carcussion. The future development and industry-wide bon analysis can represent a significant missed opporacceptance of consistently followed standards and tunity when tackling the issues of climate-conscious processes for full-project embodied-carbon modelbuilding design and greenhouse gas reduction. ing and evaluation will bring great benefit. Embodied-carbon optimization does not mean adding costs to meet a sustainability goal. In fact, it likely means just the opposite. Carbon optimization and material optimization are one and the same. As Phase 2 operating carbon reduces through more energy-efficient buildings and lower-carbon energy supplies, Phase 1 embodied carbon becomes the next and most significant source of carbon to address.

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donald davies is a Principal with Magnusson Klemencic Associates in Seattle, WA.

by J A S O N F. M C L E N N A N

BURNING QUESTIONS The Role Of Combustion In Living Buildings: Why Prometheus Was Wrong.

Summer 2010

The Living Building Challenge (the Challenge), like any organic entity, is evolving. Already in its second generation, it continues to adapt to the changing nature of green building and accommodate the shifting realities of design and construction. As more living buildings emerge, we learn from them, passing our expanding knowledge onto a growing number of project teams eager to get involved. SM

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While design and construction innovations and our ever broadening mandate help expand the scope of the Living Building Challenge and present opportunities for new exceptions and even Imperatives, the core principles of the Challenge will never change: Living Buildings are intended to strive for the highest level of environmental performance currently possible, using nature as both metaphor and measuring stick. Which means that combustion has virtually no place in them.

Buildings must be superefficient to be able to afford the renewable power they need. Doing away with combustion forces design teams to be better at what they do.

A Common Problem

Petal Intent

One of the most common questions we get from registered projects: “why don’t you allow combustion?”1

The intent of the Energy Petal is to signal a new age of design, wherein the built environment relies solely on renewable forms of energy and operates year round in a pollutionfree manner. In addition, it aims to prioritize reductions and optimization before technological solutions are applied to eliminate wasteful spending – of energy, resources, and dollars. The majority of energy generated today is from highly unsustainable sources including coal, gas, oil and nuclear power. Large-scale hydro, while inherently cleaner, results in widespread damage to ecosystems. Burning wood, trash or pellets releases particulates and carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere and often strains local supplies of sustainably harvested biomass. The effects of these energy sources on regional and planetary health are becoming increasingly evident through climate change, the most worrisome major global trend attributed to human activity.

I wrote this article to explain our reasoning. Once a project team begins the Living Building Challenge process, its members quickly learn just how difficult it is to produce a net-zero energy structure, one that works within the specific ‘carrying capacity’ of its site. Inevitably the project team turns to the idea of using combustion since it would mean lower upfront costs and an easier path to success. They then ask us to change the rules to make the Challenge easier for them– forgetting that it is a challenge – and that there are numerous reasons why combustion does not represent the ‘best’ we can currently do. Still, teams insist that they can introduce gas or other biomass fuels into their project in ways that are safe, inexpensive and ecologically sound. In all of these cases, we praise the teams for seeking reasonable energy efficiency and generation solutions. But we always return to the language and intent of the Challenge, which clearly stipulates that Living Buildings may draw only from renewable energy sources generated on site unless our scale jumping protocol is used.2 1. Except in a few limited cases explained further on in this article. 2. Scale jumping allows for district or neighborhood sized systems to apply provided that all requirements are met at that scale instead of each building or project having to meet the requirements individually.

Summer 2010

Ideal Conditions and Current Limitations

The Living Building Challenge envisions a safe, reliable and decentralized power grid,

founded on renewable energy that supplies incredibly efficient buildings and infrastructure without the crutch of combustion in the process. Although there has been considerable progress made to advance renewable energy technologies, there is still a need for a greater yield from these systems and new ways to store the energy they generate. These, together with the current cost of the systems available, are the major limitations to reaching our goals. Net-Zero Energy

One hundred percent of the project’s energy needs (including all electricity, heating and cooling requirements and excluding backup generators; system may be grid-tied or off the grid) must be supplied by on-site renewable energy on a net annual basis. Renewable energy is defined as photovoltaics, wind turbines, water-powered microturbines, direct geothermal or fuel cells powered by hydrogen generated from renewably powered electrolysis – nuclear energy is not an acceptable option. No combustion of any kind is allowed. From the Living Building challenge SM 2.0 Energy Petal

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exploring the reasoning

So why are we such hard-asses on this one? The Living Building Challenge’s anti-combustion guidelines are neither arbitrary nor excessive. 3 Like all elements of the standard, they define how to conform to the ideal for building. And, consistent with the overall concept, the choice to design without combustion is voluntary. If you feel like your project has to have combustion, you may still register and apply for certification under the other Petals – just not Energy. Many combustion technologies have come a long way and burn quite cleanly and make use of local and relatively sustainable biomass or offer highly efficient co-generation possibilities. These should be encouraged and used wherever possible in place of traditional, highly polluting energy generation technologies – but they do not represent the best we can do. They are transitional, not ‘living’, strategies, and have no place in our standard since better solutions exist. Here are some of the reasons why: Return to our roots. The Living Building Challenge uses nature as both the metaphor and the measuring stick for a structure’s ideal performance. In the nat3. Indeed – we are proposing that our species follow the same rules that every other species follows – what is excessive is how we currently generate energy.

ural world, ours is the only species that deliberately burns things in order to get what we want. Janine Benyus calls this “Heat, Beat and Treat”.4 Humanity applies the same solutions universally. We distribute fuel great distances, always introducing waste and inefficiency into the equation – as well as potential dangers – and then burn it, causing pollution. Every other species sustains itself by using chemical processes to generate energy from current solar income or from calories through digestion. To minimize energy demand, nature adapts its strategies and structures to each ecosystem differently, thereby producing incredible biodiversity and resilience. In short, nature’s energy generation is always intensely local and always non-polluting. This is a metric we need to aspire to.

There is an abundance of alternatives to combustion – the sun and the wind5 being the two most dramatic and effective examples – available to help us obtain heat and energy. Photovoltaics, solar thermal and wind turbines are advancing rapidly with new innovations released to the market each year.

4. From the book Biomimicry.

5. An in-direct form of solar energy.

Feel the burn. Combustion, even in its most efficient forms, always produces gases that contribute to global warming and create particulates that impact human and other ecological health. The most efficient and advanced cogeneration technology still contributes to poor air quality. Can a building really be designated as “living” when it has a chimney that exhausts particulates and global warming gases?

The bottom line is that onsite incineration increases the level of danger to any project, while true living buildings are inherently safer to occupy.

Summer 2010

Keep These Things in Mind When Applying The Living Building Challenge’s Anti-Combustion Guildelines

Return to our roots.

Feel the burn.

Think globally, act locally, cough deeply.

Remember the challenge.

Keep things closer to home.

Consider carrying capacity.

In addition, combustion of any form also introduces other hazards such as a greater risk of fire, explosions and suffocation. If something goes wrong, people die. The bottom line is that onsite incineration increases the level of danger to any project, while true living buildings are inherently safer to occupy. Think globally, act locally, cough deeply. This is a great opportunity to apply the “what if everybody did it” test. You may argue: “we have a really ‘green and sustainable’ source of fuel.” But think through the question: What if each structure in a given community used your strategy for its energy needs? Not only would local air quality suffer, potentially very seriously, but the demand for fuel would quickly turn your ‘sustainable fuel source’ into a highly unsustainable one. In contrast, if everyone used renewable options to match the specific carrying capacity of their sites, air quality would be fantastic and there would always be enough energy to serve your needs. Once a project has invested in some sort of combustion system for heating or other function, it requires an ongoing source for fuel. There is no guarantee that even one year later that fuel will be ‘green’, or that the supply will be available or maintained. It would be a contradiction if a certified Living Building Challenge project relied on virgin wood or shipped pellets from a hundred miles away to perform.

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Remember the challenge. The whole point of the Living Building Challenge is to challenge the industry to meet the seven-petal ideal. Yes, it can be difficult to work around combustion to accommodate a structure’s energy needs. But that difficulty is intended to inspire rather than frustrate. Working within the boundaries nature provides will lead us to better, healthier, saner solutions rather than always simply assuming we can get what we need from somewhere else. Increasingly, we are discovering that there is no ‘somewhere else’. The project team has options: either choose to create a project that meets some of the standard’s performance goals and be happy with that impressive feat; or challenge yourself to achieve the standard in its entirety by exploring new answers to age-old questions of architecture and engineering. Either way, remember that the Imperatives are challenging by design. The no-combustion requirement provides a framework for innovation as project teams strive to reduce loads and create buildings that use less energy than any others that exist today. Without combustion, we must rely on more expensive firstcost alternatives like photovoltaics and wind power. This translates to maximizing energy efficiency into all elements of a building – via ground source, solar thermal, triple-pane windows, greatly reduced lighting and plug loads, etc. In other words, buildings must be super-efficient to be able to afford the renewable power they need. Doing away with combustion forces

The intent of the Energy Petal is to signal a new age of design, wherein the built environment relies solely on renewable forms of energy and operates year round in a pollution-free manner.

design teams to be better at what they do. We typically see teams setting stringent goals of 60 to 80 percent reduction in energy use because of the Energy Petal’s no-combustion rule. Without it, we lose the ‘stick’ that drives incredible innovation and we can guarantee that performance efficiencies will decrease. Keep things closer to home. Drawing from on-site renewable energy sources exclusively releases us from any foreign energy dependence, while encouraging the rapid proliferation of solar and wind technologies. Remember, the Living Building Challenge is also a market transformation tool and we are trying to drive the market towards renewables as quickly as possible.

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As alternatives become more mainstream, costs will go down for all projects. As costs decrease, demand will increase. These projects play a role in demonstrating the viability and acceptability of renewables and help to make it more easily achieved for the next project. The Living Building Challenge™ alone will likely triple the number of Net Zero Energy commercial buildings in the US and Canada within the next 3 years. This is something that should be supported, not lobbied against. Consider carrying capacity. Relying more heavily on renewable resources will require that we design our built environment according to place. A site will yield

a fixed amount of solar or wind energy, so the structure must adjust to that reality just as nature would. We should really question giant projects that inherently require energy and water to be from somewhere else. This component of the standard is designed to remind us to adapt projects to nature, rather than the other way around. Just because we can build a certain way doesn’t mean we should. Currently we confuse tall buildings with sustainable density – where research is showing that true sustainability is actually compromised once a project gets too tall. 6 Density high enough to trigger walkable pedestrian communities occurs easily with buildings that are under 6 stories. For example, the average population density of Barcelona is 2.8 times more than Atlanta despite an average building height of only 3 to 4 stories. Looking for Loopholes

We hear from designers and builders every day who are committed to sustainability and to the Living Building Challenge but who question the rigidity of 6. See Trim Tab Issue 002 (02 Quarter 2009) for more on the relationship between Density and Sustainability.

the no-combustion rule because they realize they may not succeed without it. But failure implementing the standard in its entirety does not necessarily mean failure! Projects that come close to achieving the Energy Petal will also be recognized and celebrated as models to inform future developments. The Living Building Challenge is not merely a certification program – it is a philosophy of design, and using it on a project can result in enormous benefits. Going through the process of trying to produce a net zero building may result in unpredicted performance gains. All strategies and technologies need to be ‘on the table’. Sometimes these synergies result in lower costs – or at least make us revisit our preconceptions about how much building we really need and what is essential. We’ve seen projects become much more space efficient because of the standard’s requirement, reducing first costs, financing requirements, operation and maintenance expenses and more. Conventional thinking is turned on its head. The lesson? Don’t give up or lean on ‘green fuel sources’.

Nellis Solar Power Plant, North America’s largest photovoltaic power plant.

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Q&A

Here are some of the most common questions we get related to combustion, along with our typical responses and suggested considerations.

What if my project uses locally harvested green fuel (such as scrap wood from nearby site clearings) for its combustion needs? Surely this is a good use for it?

Fuel sources can readily change, and there is no guarantee that what is available to your project today will still be there tomorrow. Once a combustion system is in place, it will require fuel whether or not the green options remain available. You can control the built system; you cannot control the permanent supply of green fuel. When a building gets sold – will they still use the same fuel? What if your source of fuel changes on you without your control? This happened on a recently proposed project where the team felt certain they would have a ‘permanent’ supply of municipally derived scrap wood. However, a few months later the vendor had shifted to a new contract and the salvaged wood fuel source was no longer feasible.

How can I keep my project and long-term energy costs down using solar or wind-powered electricity, which are more expensive sources of energy than combustible fuel?

It’s true that solar and wind have high upfront costs. However, the greater the demand on alternate approaches, the lower the costs will trend over time. It is up to our community to innovate

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and prioritize these green solutions in order to break our dependence on fuel-driven energy. In addition, a well-built structure will require far less overall energy over its lifetime, which means lower ongoing energy costs. If you want to lower costs however – always start by lowering demand. Question all your assumptions about what you really need. Can you make your project smaller? Can you reduce the number of appliances or things that use energy? Can you use technology to aggressively shut things down when not needed? Can you super-insulate or ‘right-size’ your glazing? Can you use free energy sources for heating and cooling? Working backwards from a maximum energy budget is a paradigm shift.

Is co-generation an acceptable middle ground?

Co-generation is just that: a middle ground. It is definitely a more ecologically desirable alternative to full-combustion energy approaches but it still falls short of the ideal. To obtain true sustainability, we must innovate our way to a built environment that is free of flammable fuels. See all the other reasons outlined in this article.

But doesn’t it take combustion to make renewable energy systems?

Yes, currently it does take significant non-renewable energy to make photovoltaics and wind turbines – although it doesn’t have to stay that way. Renewable energy can be used to make renewable energy systems and it likely will power the manufacturing process in the near future. Regardless, there is an obvious discrepancy between a one-time combustion use that then results in a few decades of clean green power and a daily use of combustion to feed the same demand. The Living Building Challenge™ addresses the Embodied Carbon Footprint of building products in the Materials Petal. Consider this: It takes energy to make a bicycle too – but a bicycle is a vastly better solution than the ‘greenest’ gas hybrid car on the market.

Do you ever grant exceptions to this rule?

Life is filled with exceptions, so combustion has been allowed in a few instances where their use was intermittent and fundamental to the project and the actual ecological impact was miniscule. We currently allow restaurants to use gas cooktops for cooking – but the fuel may not be used for anything else. Bunsen burners are permitted in school chemistry labs where they are an essential part of the curriculum. In the rare places where we allow development in L1 and L2 wilderness and rural areas,7 we allow a single woodstove or fireplace since ecological impacts 7. L1: Natural Habitat Preserve is comprised of land that is set aside as a nature preserve or is defined as sensitive ecological habitat. It may only be developed in limited circumstances related to the preservation and interpretation of the landscape as described in Imperative One: Limits to Growth. L2: Rural Agriculture Zone is comprised of land with a primary function for agriculture and development that relates specifically to the production of food as described in Imperative One: Limits to Growth.

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are minimal, intensely local fuel supply is guaranteed and there is a strong cultural legacy of the ‘hearth in the wilderness’ that contributes to the feeling of Hygee (a Danish word conveying coziness or tranquility) in locations where humanity is not otherwise present. Other exceptions might emerge over time.

What about back-up generators? Can they use combustion?

Emergency Generators are not installed in most project types. However, if the program of a project requires an emergency generator, we encourage the use of battery back-up power – though at this time do not limit what can be used due to the infrequent need. So – technically we do allow combustion for back-up situations. This back-up equipment may not be included in the project’s strategy for operation and should not be used to make up for any energy demand throughout the 12 month verification period for certification. It must truly be a back-up emergency option.

by michael n . nagler

Fixing Planet Earth A Not-So-Modest Proposal Only a nonviolent revolution, like the one led by Gandhi, can meet the challenge of the climate crisis.

Mahatma Gandhi is widely regarded as the father of the Indian nation, which he was. But the founding of the nation was not his only aim. He was, as he freely admitted, using India to demonstrate to the whole world how nonviolence could change history. The swell of mostly nonviolent revolutions that has followed in the last 30 or so years would seem to indicate that his bold scheme worked.

South Africa, the Philippines, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere—only to see the same injustices come back with different faces (or even, as in the Ukraine, the same old faces). As a passionate participant in the Free Speech Movement in the incredible 60’s, I was deeply shocked to see, as time went by, that not only did our inspiring movement lead to few lasting changes, it indirectly propelled Ronald Reagan into the presidency. Similarly, we have seen ecological successes here or We need to be no less daring now, in the face of the there dwarfed by the ongoing deterioration of Earth’s coming climate chaos. To rebalance and stabilize miraculous life-supporting systems. In some of these the planet’s climate, which we probably have to do cases, e.g. whaling or offshore drilling in the United in the present decade, is daunting; but it doesn’t go States, even apparent successes proved to be tempofar enough. We need to do it the right way, and we rary. The only permanent fix for any of these problems need to unleash a domino effect that will end up— is a deep and broad solution for all of them. maybe by the end of the century—eliminating not just human-caused climate change, which is the most And it might just be possible, because that’s not the urgent problem, but many, if not all, of the problems only thing that’s happening. Nonviolence has increased linked to it. remarkably as Gandhi and King’s ‘ocular demonstration’ has told on the imagination of peoples around the Let me explain why I think this is necessary world. According to one calculation, more than half the and doable. world’s population now lives in a regime that has seen a major, usually successful, use of nonviolence (rarely In the years since Gandhi and King, Jr. we have seen reported in the mainstream media). As time goes on, many insurrections overthrow unjust regimes—in these movements are starting to get more sophisticat-

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F IXIN G PLAN ET EAR TH

ed. Participants have added new institutions to their repertoire, like Unarmed Civilian-based Peacemaking (UCP), that places trained nonviolent internationals in zones of serious conflict around the world. They are waking up to the need for training and education, some of it embodied in organizations like my own Metta Center for Nonviolence Education, the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC), or the Center for Advanced Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS) founded to impart best practices wherever needed—from the successful Otpor Rebellion of 2000 in Serbia to similar insurrections in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. A fascinating body of theory is being gradually developed that draws on eye-opening new findings in several branches of science.

In short, we are beginning to unpack the Gandhian legacy. And there’s no reason to think that the methods that can overthrow a regime cannot be globalized—that they cannot be so extended as to replace a dysfunctional civilization with a new, nonviolent world. A secret of nonviolent power is practitioners’ ability to maintain an unwavering respect for the person of their opponents while resisting the latter’s misdeeds. When Martin Luther King urged his followers not to hate their white brothers, he not only made it easier for the latter to give in, to a degree he was rehumanizing the entire culture—think of the difference that could make as we continue the legacy. A mature nonviolent movement does not get stuck on a single technique—typically on protest—but can adjust its approach to the stage of the conflict— starting with petitions and votes, going on to civil disobedience if that doesn’t work, and finally being ready to make major sacrifices if even that fails.

An array of constructive activities, such as building community gardens or installing solar panels, need to be part of the push towards a climate friendly world.

the truth, if necessary by taking on some of the suffering in an unjust situation rather than inflicting it on others. This is Satyagraha. And in the enormous ‘tea party’ climate of irrationality and self-righteous rage that prevails today, the climate that Noam Chomsky has rightly called pre-fascist, nothing less will work. As Gandhi said, “Things of fundamental importance to the people must be purchased with their suffering. You must be able to appeal not only to reason, but to the heart also,”—in other words by your willingness to risk injury if there’s no other way to reach your opponent. He also explained, with great insight, that... What Satyagraha in these cases does is not to suppress reason but to free it from inertia and to establish its sovereignty over prejudice, hatred, and other baser passions. In other words, if one may paradoxically put it, it does not enslave, it compels reason to be free.

In other words, it is a form of deep persuasion, and Let’s talk about that for a minute. While there will that is crucial. Those who are coerced look for the be a continuing place for legislation to curb climate first chance to bolt; those who are convinced are abusers, if we want a lasting solution the major bur- with you for the long term. den of change will have to be carried by persuasion. In nonviolence, persuasion is not limited to sitting But the campaign we need—and it’s within our around a table. There is a much deeper kind of per- reach—would have a whole other dimension. It suasion happening when someone bears witness to would deploy an array of constructive activities as

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With that exception, note that all the elements are already in place for a sustained, effective campaign that could—and must—reverse climate disruption and go on to complete the job. All we need to do is become aware that they are the potential ingredients of the great movement we have been looking for.

A secret of nonviolent power is practitioners’ ability to maintain an unwavering respect for the person of their opponents while resisting the latter’s misdeeds. well—education, community and farming experiments, etc. As King would put it “cooperating with good” and “non-cooperating with evil.” What is more—now this is really new—there will be some kind of strategic overview to help us decide when to do which. It is the “constructive programme” (as Gandhi called it) that will guarantee the continuity of the campaign; the “obstructive program” (my term for protests, blockades, etc.), held in readiness and used when needed, will guarantee its effectiveness. Ten years is not much time to awaken a civilization. But it can be done. It is not clear where, in this anti-authoritarian climate of ours, this strategic vision and leadership would come from. It could well be reached by a kind of self-organization, or we could even—why not?— see the emergence of a visionary and effective leader. However it is achieved, the movement will have to have coherent direction and enough inspiration to hold on to its nonviolent standards (including a way to win over or, failing that, neutralize would-be disrupters). Virtually all the nonviolent episodes since King and Gandhi have been either constructive or “obstructive,” but rarely both, and almost never with a coordinated strategy of the kind Gandhi achieved over decades of work in South Africa and India.

To make climate the number one priority doesn’t necessarily mean dropping whatever else we’re doing. It means understanding how what we’re doing relates to that core project. I’m a nonviolence educator, and what I do is help people find the tools they need to do this job properly and permanently; you could be working on anything from corporate accountability to saving seals, which are all parts of the new paradigm (unless there’s a way to do it without corporations at all!). All of us have to be psychologically and otherwise ready to put our “own” project on hold if the opportunity arises for a direct push for climate legislation or against coal plants, knowing full well that when the climate is secured we will be able to get back to them if necessary, while if the climate is not secured there will be no one to work on anything! In short, we need to address climate change with the full power and vision of nonviolence, and we need to stay the course. We are “using” climate change as Gandhi used the liberation of India, to address an even deeper change, a spiritual revolution that will liberate us from addictive materialism and move us on to beloved community, so we need to come out of our campaign with not only a stable physical climate but a method and a community of practitioners who can go from success to success until we—or our children—have the world we want.

Michael Nagler wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Michael is professor emeritus of Classics and Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley, where he co-founded the Peace and Conflict Studies Program, and the founder of the Metta Center for Nonviolence. This article originally appeared in YES! Magazine on June 3, 2010. http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/fixing-planet-earth-anot-so-modest-proposal.

Summer 2010

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B Y PAT T I S O U T H A R D

In recent weeks I heard columnist and TV show host Donny Deutsch criticize President Obama on his handling of the Gulf Oil Spill. It was not the tactics he was criticizing but the manner in which the president communicated his ideas. He said that President Obama was not leading from his heart, that he had become too mechanical. I pondered: had Obama not gotten the message, that this is the first year of the last decade to make change? And how can we help make this change? On May 5, more than 250 government leaders from the Cascadia bioregion came together for an â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;unconference,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; and the most poignant part of the feedback we received from this event was the about the organic and original way we had all come together. We had come together to lead from our hearts, and for one day we were able to do that as a tribe, so to speak, a family of green leaders not just a collection of delegates from individual jurisdictions. The occasion was the third-annual King County GreenTools Government Confluence and it was held at Bellevue City Hall in conjunction with the Living Future 2010 Unconference. It was a sold out event with an incredible turnout and featuring speakers representing 67 different jurisdictions and organizations, including 14 elected officials from two countries, two states and 12 cities. Attendees had the opportunity to hear from keynote speaker Bill Reed, Principal of Integrative Design Collaborative, an internationally recognized leader in sustainability efforts. He shared his expertise on how to shift the practice of building and community planning into an integrative, whole-systems design process.

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Bill Reed discusses living integrated systems.

Dr. Dickson Despommier, from Columbia University, conveyed cutting edge approaches to urban food production and vertical farming. A panel of highly skilled green building experts during lunch presented successful examples and tools to implement municipal green building programs. This included Lucia Athens, Nick Hartrich, Bill Reed, Ric Cochrane, Jessica Wooliams and, yours truly, Patti Southard.

GreenTools was honored to co-host this audience with Cascadia Green Building Council and to kick start a vision that spans the entire region. The feedback from many King County cities and beyond has been extremely positive. Dale Mikkelsen of Simon Fraser University Community Trust said it best:

“At the end of the day, I noted that not only was it perhaps one of the best ‘government’ events I’ve attended Bill Reed inspired unconference attendees to do and presented at, it was also one of the best single day more systems thinking, not just Living Buildings, sustainable events I’ve been too in recent memory!” but about living integrated systems. Reed taught the audience that there is no separation between The event resulted in cross collaboration and netwhere we live and nature, but that we are nature. If working from King County cities, Oregon, Washthis is truly the first year of the last decade to avert ington, British Columbia and Alaska. In particular, the worst effects of environmental degradation, we the event energized local governments in moving need to lead with our hearts and lead for other spe- forward with or starting green building and sustaincies because without them there is no human race. ability efforts within their own jurisdictions. Work initiated by the Confluence will continue through The Cascadia region has a gift of strong leadership, the GreenTools Roundtable trainings and Cascadia and at times we beat ourselves up for not doing enough. Green Building Council as we enter this first year. Those of us in government get frustrated about the slow pace of change in our arena. For those of us lead- You can find more information about plenary and ing the charge with green building initiatives, the real workshop presentations at the GreenTools website. call to action has become more about climate change and less about the boxes we call buildings. Salmon don’t know or care whether they are in King County or Multnomah County, so why should we make that distinction? True collaboration comes from sharing information and tools across borders.

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PATTI SOUTHARD is Project Manager of King County GreenTools and creative director for the internationally acclaimed EcoCool Remodel Tool. Patti is currently president of Northwest Natural Resource Group, and board member for the EcoVillage in New Orleans, LA.

by J ason F. M c L ennan and S arah C ostello

ENVISIONING THE LIVING CITY Close your eyes for a moment and think of the cities of the future. What do you see?

Close your eyes for a moment and think of the cities of the future. What do you see? Vast stretches of gleaming skyscrapers connected by speeding trains or hovercraft? Dark, crowded streets whose only greenery comes from the weeds that assert themselves in untended pavement? For over a century, novelists and filmmakers have helped define our visions of the future, shaping our dreams and our assumptions about what is possible.

about tomorrow’s cities run the gamut from hopeful to despairing, from silly to deadly serious; yet all reflect a profound sense of ecological dislocation. We seem to take it as inevitable that the cities we bequeath to our grandchildren will be massive and developed without reference to the ecosystems they inhabit. Exactly how these cities will be powered, how their inhabitants will secure food, water, and clothing, is anybody’s guess.

Think of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis or Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner – or even the cartoon future of The Jetsons. Our dreams (and nightmares)

We have grown used to predicting an increasingly mechanistic future, but what we have forgotten is that a future that crowds out the natural

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world is not simply bleak: it is impossible. A world without a healthy and vibrant natural biosphere simply cannot sustain human life. We currently stand at a tipping point. The planet is warming rapidly. Toxic chemicals permeate our air and water. We as a species are consuming resources at a rate that far exceeds the Earth’s carrying capacity. Exacerbating the problem, our cities, suburbs, towns, and villages rely on infrastructure and systems that are fundamentally unsustainable—and rather than correcting our course, we seem compelled to re-invest in these sunk costs.

We know that we must radically alter our current practices if we are to reverse these planetary stressors. But a general sense that we are headed in the wrong direction is not the same thing as a map that shows us where we need to go. Unfortunately, when we look for models of a truly sustainable future to serve as a guide, we are met only with vague notions and impractical utopian schemes.

building movement has already made manifest.

With the Living City Design Competition, we invite the leaders of the design, engineering and urban This is where you come in. planning communities to use the framework of the Living BuildThe International Living Building ing Challenge 2.0 to visualize Institute asks you to help create a the city of a LIVING future: the powerful counter-vision, an inspir- tomorrow we hope for, not the fuing but realistic model for future cit- ture we fear. To learn more about ies. As Sim van der Ryn has argued, the competition, please visit us at â&#x20AC;&#x153;the environmental crisis is a design www.ilbi.org/livingcity. crisis.â&#x20AC;? With this in mind, we call upon the design community to help The Living City Design Compe- us find our way. We need powerful tition arose from our belief that conceptual designs for the cities of we can remake our cities by tap- the near future, the cities that we will THIS ARTICLE originally appeared on ping into the collective wisdom retrofit for our children to inhabit metropolismag.com/pov on Thursand technical skills that the green and our grandchildren to inherit. day, May 6, 2010.

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The International Living Building Institute joins forces with The CLINTON Global Initiative The International Living Building Institute was recently invited to join the Clinton Global Initiative. The International Living Building Institute will collaborate with global leaders seeking solutions to pressing global environmental and social justice issues.

Congratulations to the Alaska Branch for recieving the Alaskans for Litter Prevention and Recycling (ALPAR) 2009 Leadership in Education award, for “exemplary efforts to raise awareness and educate Alaska’s design and building industry about LEED building standards and incorporating recycling and reuse practices.”

(L to R): Ruth Fitzpatrick (branch chair), Lauri Strauss (former board member), Mary Fisher (ALPAR), Mark Masteller (Cascadia)

clintonglobalinitiative.org | ilbi.org

image via flickr creative commons, cn reviews

It’s in everything we do. From manufacturing processes and material choices, to product designs and the way we conduct business. Many of our products are SCS Indoor Air Quality Certified, achieve BIFMA’s e3 Sustainability level™ and Furniture Emission Standards, and contribute to LEED® credits. Plus a large number are manufactured regionally in our Pacific NW ISO 14001 facility. Learn more at www.kimballoffice.com.

Sustainable. It’s more than a word. It’s a way of life.

LIVING FUTURE

2011

SAVETHEDATELF2011 Vancouver, british columbia APRIL 27 – 29, 2011

Our Children’s Cities: Visualizing a Restorative Civilization

www.cascadiagbc.org/living-future/11

by bill reed

summer reading list for regenerative design and development Editor’s note: At this year’s Living Future, Bill Reed’s session, “Integrating the Whole System: The Practice of Regenerative Design”, sparked conversations that carried over into the hallways and helped shape discussions in later workshops. Over the course of his two-hour presentation, Reed frequently stopped to recommend some of the books or articles that have shaped his work. So we invited him to share some of these “must reads” with our Trim Tab community.

The future of sustaining human life will depend on our rediscovery of how the whole system of life works at the community and planetary scale. Our success depends on integrating two threads of thinking: human-centric and biocentric. Combining the two into an intentional whole-and-living system is the mental model shift required over the next few decades.

Currently we work with human shelter, food, communities and ecosystems in an additive way – fixing waterways, energy use, social systems, habitat and so on. This is a start but we must also learn to look at our places and watersheds as living organisms– not simply a summation of parts. Think of the difference between Eastern and Western Medicine – one works with the whole body as an energetic organism, the other solves for pieces and diseases. Both points of view are important, yet by leading with the health of the whole body, the work on the pieces becomes easier and requires less effort. To make this mental shift, we must re-emphasize empathy, essence patterning

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and story telling to communicate the complexity of life. Once we make this leap, we discover that it is actually easier to engage in regenerative development than to add thousands of pieces together to create a sustainable condition. Right now, much of the work on “regeneration” is in the realm of regenerative design: humans doing stuff to or with nature. Biophilic Design and Biomimicry are aspects of this and are shaped by the questions, respectively, ‘how is nature beneficial to humans’ and ‘how can humans emulate nature’s best biological ideas.’ A more whole approach is regenerative development – working with the whole socio-ecological system of life in a place – as an organism. Regenerative Development works on “the creation of new potential” (a synonym for evolution). Evolution in scientific terms is always going on, (except, with humans, it has recently been de-volution). The major question in play with regenerative development is: what is the role of humans in creating greater diversity, resiliency and stability? More significantly, what is the role of humans in participating in co-evolution with greater potential and evolution for all? Regeneration is not “technical” in nature – it is life. Its literal definition is to “create anew , and to be borne of a new spirit.” This is hard to get our heads around when we are coming to it from a “repairman’s point of view.” Yet, it is this spirit in our communities and places that must be reborn, and what better way than by becoming a healer of the places we live? It’s a great jumping off point to reunite community spirit and purpose. A good discussion can be had around this. I selected the following very abbreviated list of articles and books because they are touchstones for us in our practice and because they may be less well known to you. No one book is available that defines the nature of this whole practice. The common thread through these recommendations is the need and practice of developing a new spirit of caring and understanding of human purpose and our interrelationship with all life – the true meaning of regeneration.

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indigenous perspectives on whole systems Being Nature’s Mind: Indigenous Ways of Knowing and Planetary Consciousness By Mary Jane Zimmerman pdf available here Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California’s Natural Resources By Kat Anderson University of California Press, 2005

new mind required A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future By Daniel H. Pink Riverhead Trade; Rep Upd edition, 2006 My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey By Jill Bolte Taylor Plume; 1 edition, 2006

patterning, permanent culture and permaculture The Gift of Good Land: Further Essays Cultural and Agricultural (Chapter 9, “Solving for Pattern” in particular) By Wendell Berry North Point Press, 1981 Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability By David Holmgen Holmgren Design Services, 2002 Permaculture: A Designers’ Manual By Bill Mollison Tagari Publications, 1988

newer perspectives on design and architecture Regenerative Design for Sustainable Development By John Tillman Lyle (Not exactly a developmental systems practice but close.) Wiley, 2008

The Nature of Design: Ecolog y, Culture, and Human Intention By David W. Orr Oxford University Press, 2004

The Web of Life: A Scientific Understanding of Living Systyems By Fritjof Capra Doubleday, 1996

The Nature of Order (Specifically chapters “The Phenomenon of Life,” “The Process of Creating Life,” “The Luminous Ground,” and “A Vision of A Living World”) By Christopher Alexander CES Publishing, 2001

Whole Systems Thinking as a Basis for Paradigm Change in Education: Explorations in the Context of Sustainability By Steven Sterling Thesis for PhD University of Bath, 2003

the role of humans / humans’ interrelationship with nature The Great Work: Our Way into the Future By Thomas Berry New York : Bell Tower, 1999 The Gift of Good Land: Further Essays Cultural and Agricultural (Chapter 9, “Solving for Pattern” in particular) By Wendell Berry North Point Press, 1981 What are People For?: Essays By Wendell Berry Counterpoint; Second Edition edition, 2010

Discordant Harmonies: A New Ecology for the Twenty-First Century By Daniel Botkin. Oxford University Press, 1990 The Forgotten Pollinators By Stephen Buchmann and Gary Paul Nabhan Island Press 1997 What I Learned in the Rainforest By Tachi Kiuchi pdf available here Resilience, Adaptability and Transformability in Social–Ecological Systems By B. Walker, C. S. Holling, S. R. Carpenter and A. Kinzig Ecology and Society 9(2): 5, 2004 pdf available here

living systems thinking Living Systems Approach to Design AIA keynote given by Bill Reed pdf available here Living Systems, The Internet and the Human Future Presented by Elisabet Sahtouris pdf available here Living Systems in Evolution Presented by Elisabet Sahtouris pdf available here

Summer 2010

BILL REED is an internationally recognized practitioner in sustainability and regeneration. His work is to lift building and community planning into full integration and co-evolution with living systems – through an integrative, whole and living system design process. The purpose of this work is to improve the quality of the physical, social and spiritual life of our living places.

living building challenge

In-the-house Designed for your needs, delivered to your office.

Living Building Challenge SM In-the-House is an in-person introductory workshop designed to share the tenets of the Challenge with advanced practitioners throughout the United States and Canada. Learning Objectives:

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Identify the key components of the Living Building Challenge

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Describe the Living Building Challenge Community resources and certification process

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Discuss the rationale for restorative design principles

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Understand successful strategies for compliance with each performance area (Site, Water, Energy, Health, Materials, Equity, and Beauty)

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Recognize financial, regulatory and behavioral barriers and incentives related to hight performance design

Please contact info@cascadiagbc.org for inquiries on pricing and further information.

Approved for 6 AIA Learning Units and 6 GBCI Continuing Education hours

A Visionary Path to a Restorative Future.

Moving Upstream making progress? Do you have a lead on cutting-edge green building progress in the region? Contact joanna@cascadiagbc.org and put “Moving Upstream News Lead” in the subject line.

The First Living Building Challenge Project Begins in Australia. In May work began on the Gold Creek School’s environmental learning centre in Canberra, Australia. This is

the first project in the southern hemisphere to register for the Living Building Challenge . Way to go Australia! SM

THE FIFTH COMPLETED PROJECT PURSUING LIVING BUILDING CHALLENGE OPENED ON EARTH DAY Designed by Toby Long Design, the EcoCenter at Heron’s Head Park is a collaborative project between Literacy for Environmental Justice, the Port of San Francisco, San Francisco Environment and the Cali-

fornia Coastal Conservancy. Nearly every feature of this 1,500-square-foot facility will be used to educate

the public about renewable energy, pollution and greenhouse gas reduction, wastewater treatment, ‘green’ building materials and the green economy.” Congratulations!

Summer 2010

How Can a 6-Acre Meadow Survive in One of the Most Dense Cities in North America? Learn how the Vancouver Convention Center is paving the way for

preventing habitat loss in cities by innovative green roof strategies. “The green roof gives some land back to animals in the urban

core, while also addressing issues like the heat island effect and stormwater runoff.”

Will the United States go on a Low Carbon Diet? Learn how the Na-

tional Academy of Sciences

recently urged the U.S. to take swift

action on curbing greenhouses gases.

“Even with aggressive policies to limit the mag-

nitude of climate change, the NAS reports find some

shifts will be unavoidable and will require society to adapt.”

Can the U.S. change and adapt?

How Can Consciousness Change in History? Watch this interesting video from Jeremy Rifkin on the evolution of empathy and how is has shaped human society. “Can we extend our empathy to the entire human race and to the bioshpere? If so, then we may be able to save our species and save our planet.”

Is enough being done to protect us from chemicals that could harm us? Read why companies are moving away from PVC. “Our

concerns about the ways in which PVC can be disposed of,

Imagine Eco-villages For the Homeless. Learn how a Fresno architect is fighting the city’s homeless problem by bringing together different people in the com-

munity, engaging students as advocates for the homeless

and teaching architecture and sustainable building. A pretty revolutionary model.

Major Project to Begin This Summer to Restore Oak Woodlands and Savannas in the Willamette Valley. The restoration is being funded by a grant from the Oregon

Watershed Enhancement Board. This will also help meet the recovering plans of the Fender’s blue butterfly and the Kin-

caid’s lupine and help protect over 200 oak dependent plant and animal species.

Affordable Housing Meets LEED Platinum. This impressive 66-unit apartment building has many great

green features. And it is affordable with 85% of the apartments are reserved to people making 30-60% of the median income in the area.

Small Wind Turbines Sales Soar in the U.S. Despite the economic downturn small wind turbine industry

recognized more than 15% year over year growth. 95% of the turbines are produced in the U.S. as well.

The Majority of Large Firms Increase Spending on Climate Change Initiatives.

burned for example ... caused us to begin eliminating PVC

70% of firms with revenue of $1+ billion say they plan to increase

Way to go Hewlett-Packard!

porate executives are changing their behavior on climate change.

from our products,” Hewlett-Packard’s Tony Prophet said.

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spending on climate change. Check out how large firms and cor-

by sarah costello

BOOK REVIEW:

ANTHILL BY E. O. WILSON

Norton, 378 pp., $24.95 USD

In the Prologue to Anthill, E.O. Wilson describes his first work of fiction as the story of three parallel worlds. Not surprisingly (given Wilson’s storied career as an entomologist) one of these worlds is inhabited by ants, whose “picnic ground epics” are stories of perpetual conflict. “War is a genetic imperative of most,” Wilson writes. “The colonies grow and struggle and sometimes they triumph over their neighbors. Then they die, always.”

minefields. The biosphere never gets this focused attention. Yet, ultimately, it is the silence of this last and largest world that gives Anthill its emotional punch.

We encounter humanity through Raphael “Raff” Cody, whose childhood love of the Nokobee Tract (a swath of Alabama wild land) shapes his adult life. His deep desire to save the tract leads Raff to Florida State University, where his research on Nokobee ants secures him a Human societies comprise the second world, and de- place at Harvard Law School. Raff’s work on ants also spite the many differences that separate us from ants, our gives us “The Anthill Chronicles,” a story about the cycles mirror theirs. As Wilson tells us in the Prologue, rise and fall of several of Nokobee’s ant colonies and a “Homer might have written equally of ants and men, book-within-a-book in Anthill. Zeus has given us the fate of winding down our lives in painful wars, from youth until we perish, each of us.” The ants of the “Anthill Chronicles” are driven by pheromones and genetic imperatives: defend the queen and These first two worlds give Anthill its narrative shape, the nest; safeguard the colony’s territory; and, when and each is described with loving detail and a fair de- possible, capture the neighboring colonies’s territory. gree of gore. It seems strange at first, then that the third Each ant’s identity is fully merged with that of her coloworld, “the biosphere, the totality of life,” remains si- ny, and any ant from outside of the colony is understood lent throughout. Wilson brings the reader inside ant- to be an enemy. While there is no mercy to be found in hills and allows us to hear the riotous chemical conver- this world, there is balance. The colonies hold each othsations that crowd an ant’s brain. He introduces us to er in check and contribute to the richness of their ecocountless humans as well, bringing his naturalist’s lens system. The tension in the “Anthill Chronicles” comes to bear on Alabama’s gentility and Harvard’s political with the rise of a Supercolony – a strain of ants that ac-

Summer 2010

Wilson brings the reader inside anthills and allows us to hear the riotous chemical conversations that crowd an ant’s brain. cepts multiple queens and quickly generates an unstoppable army. The Supercolony decimates its rivals and threatens to consume the Nokobee Tract – that is until a much more powerful force of nature comes into play. their own, attack each other and remain oblivious to the forces of nature that surround them. As Raff discovers in his quest to preserve Nokobee, the Supercolony is not the only example of the havoc that Raff’s ability to keep his love for the Nokobee Tract in can be wreaked by unchecked ant nature. On his first the forefront of his mind ends up being the key to his abilday at Florida State, Raff goes to meet Fred Norville, a ity to transcend his own ant nature: to embrace comprofamily friend who is both Raff’s professor and the book’s mise and eschew all political posturing. But his personal narrator. A lawnmower rides by Norville’s window evolution leaves him without a colony to call his own. and he thinks: “Well, there they are together, the twin symbols of our middle-class culture: noise and lawns. Anthill ends with the stories from the worlds of ants and They’re eating up what is left of the natural world.” men resolved in their own terms, but it does not offer any reassurances about that final and largest world, the Raff is surrounded by people who seem compelled by biosphere that contains us all. The reader is left with their belligerent and all-consuming ant nature to align the uncomfortable sensation that that story may not themselves with one side and against all others. Politics, end well at all as long as Raff stands alone. religion and class do for them what pheromones do for the ants. From the “Gaians” he travels with during his SARAH COSTELLO is Development stint at Harvard, to the hard-right evangelical ChrisDirector for Cascadia Green Building tians he angers in Alabama, Raff finds that the desire to Council. win – to conquer new territory, to best an enemy – contributes as much to people’s motivation as whatever it is they claim to be fighting for. Like the ants, they defend

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Event Calendar: July – September 2010

Workshops, lectures and other opportunities throughout the bioregion Transformational Lecture Series Clark brockman Tacoma, WA – 7/28 david korten Vancouver, BC – 09/30 (lunch lecture) Victoria, BC – 9/30 (evening lecture)

other events & Workshops Presented by Cascadia Seattle Branch Quarterly Workshop: Transparent and Socially Equitable Materials Economy Seattle, WA – 09/09

Living Building Challenge Road Show San Francisco, CA – 09/16

Living Building Collaboratives Check the ILBI calendar for further details. Other Events LEED Canada Documentation Course Victoria, BC - 09/09 Seeking sustainable solutions workshop Seattle, WA – 09/14 LEED Canada for New Construction Workshop Vancouver, BC - 09/23

For complete details, please visit www.cascadiagbc.org/calendar

Summer 2010

fwd: read this! SUBJECT: The National Geographic Water Issue

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If you missed this issue check this very moving, chilling and informative issue about our most precious resource.

SUBJECT: The U.S. Department Of Energy is Ramping Up Retrofits and Focusing on Local Level.

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SUBJECT: Not just oil: US hit peak water in 1970 and nobody noticed

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Have we run up against the limits of waters use? Read to learn that not only can there be a peak water, but the US passed this point around 1970,Â apparentlyÂ without anyone noticing.

In April the DOE announced that they are putting more money in the pot towards energy efficenciency projects in 25 communities around the country. Read how this may reach your community. Portland and Seattle are among the list!

SUBJECT: Photos of Gulf Coast Oil Spill

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Marine life, local economies, seafood industry, entire ecostytems devastated.

SUBJECT: Need an Art Studio or Personal Space? Use an Old Shipping Container.

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Learn how shipping containers can easily and stylishly be converted into a great personal space.

FWD: READ THIS! If you have something that should be included here please send it to us!

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