GREEN ENVY: What are the true environmental benefits of the "green" house movement?

"Green building" is the feel-good trend of the moment. Cities stipulate it, builders market it and home buyers supposedly demand it. Who could be against it? It's the panacea that will combat global warming, prevent sprawl, revitalize our downtowns, contribute to the region's economic growth and keep California on the leading edge. So everyone is embracing green building as if they were French kissing George Clooney. It always sounds easy -- you just get some low-VOC paint, some linoleum, some wheatboard cabinets, make your garden gate out of cast-off Volvo parts, and presto! -- greenness is achieved without any serious thinking about the real effects of your choices on the planet. The reality is far more complicated. The "easy" choices are a cop-out -- not that you shouldn't do them -- but they won't balance out that SUV you're driving.

Building or remodeling uses up resources, even if those resources are recycled or salvaged. The greenest thing you can do is continue the life of an existing building, whose resources have already been extracted. Retrofitting an existing building for better energy efficiency, lower water use and so forth is greener than building new.

There is an all-too-common practice of demolishing a small existing building in order to throw up (I use the term deliberately) a larger "green" building, as though the small building had volunteered to be the virgin (timber) sacrifice on the altar of "smart growth." Often it is promised that materials from the building will be reused, but I guarantee there is one thing that never gets re-used: lath. A small pre-World War II house contains several thousand linear feet of lath, all sawn from old-growth timber, which, even if recycled, will simply end up as mulch. We dutifully recycle our aluminum cans, yet demolishing 10,000 square feet of old buildings wipes out the environmental benefit of recycling 2,688,000 aluminum cans, according to figures compiled by Donovan Rypkema of Place Economics in Washington, D.C. We are also assured that these "green" replacement buildings will prevent farmland from being paved in the Central Valley, though really the only connection between these two things is a different kind of green -- the kind with dead presidents on it. Erecting a green building in the city will not prevent even 1 square foot of farmland from being developed as long as there is money to be made in doing so.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/05/13/CMGA7PCMDH1.DTL

The green movement is becoming the next fad diet type gimmick in America, good and bad at the same time. Lots of companies and industries are cashing in big time on the green fad.
My main issue is on the alternative fuels hype going around versus fuel conservation. The idea that you and your only child have the right to drive around in a monster SUV so greener fuels and cheaper fuel prices are your God given right. That's what I see between the lines.
When it comes to homes, mine is over 50 years old so it has been recycled many times with many families benefiting from it. I did have to put in more energy efficient windows and attic insulation which dropped my energy bill about 20% at the time.

"wipes out the environmental benefit of recycling 2,688,000 aluminum cans"

Wow. Striking statistic, I had often wondered. :/

I live in a high growth area - lots of new neighborhoods. Several are touting energy-efficiency, environmentally friendly construction, but truth is no construction is environmentally friendly. And when you look at the size of the average new home it's sickening. Houses keep getting bigger. We bought our 1500 square foot house 15 years ago. When we bought it we had no kids - we now have 3. Everyone comments on how could we possibly live in a 3 bedroom house with 5 people - like we're freaks. Thing is, when I was growing up, my house would have been an average home. It's unbelievable. Everyone thinks every child needs their own room. And the latest trend around here is each child getting their own room and their own play room. We have no intention of moving anywhere. My kids will share a room like my sister and I shared a room. They will learn that the earth does not revolve around them and their wants - that sharing and conserving is what is best. Every year we do more to improve our energy efficiency. Every year we plant more trees and greenery in our yard. We spend most of our time outside anyway (reducing our energy consumption even more). People spend way too much time in their homes as is. I wonder if anyone has stopped and figured out how much our moving from an active society to a sedentary one has effected the environment?

Just like they ask you how can you and your family can live in such a small house, in Europe they too raise families with two or three kids in smaller homes and they don't have or need (or make excuses) a massive tank sized vehicle to drive their kids around. I even heard someone on NPR last week justifying their need for an SUV being that they lived where it snows. Again I point to countries abroad with longer winters and more snowfall. You still don't see the massive vehicles for personal use and their societies seem to do quite well with the smaller cars and using public transportation.

A year or two ago, corporatist media would have had you believe that "green housing" was a fringe market only crackpots and hippies were into, and there was no way it would ever "catch on" (subtext: so don't bother, and pay it no mind, just buy our chemical infused McMansions.)

Now suddenly it's a "feel-good trend" -- and a threatening one at that. I guess they couldn't discount it any more.

While it's true that knocking down an old building to build greener is in many cases a bad idea, not all buildings qualify. Some are environmental hazards in their own right, sickening their occupants as much with black mold as the new McMansions do with offgassed VOCs. Many, many green houses are built on land that does not have a pre-existing structure. And yet we are led to believe that any "green building" necessarily was poorly thought out. After all, we know it's a "fad" now and we all know "fads" are stupid.

Oh and then there's the telltale swipe at CFLs, in typical pathological skeptic fashion getting the facts wrong or distorted. (I mean, CFLs are manufactured in China so we should buy those good old US manufactured incandescents? Where ya think those are made?)



And like people aren't knocking down old houses to build electricity guzzling McMansions. Seems to me the only thing that's changed is people want to have some south facing windows, some panels on the roof, and not breath carpet glue fumes for the rest of their natural lives -- to me that sounds like change for the positive.

So why are the corporatists so scared of this? Hint: nothing at all to do with the environment. What terrifies them is the prospect of a family living without being completely dependent on power from a large corporation. We wouldn't want that. They might get uppity and start saying stuff like "why should I let company X build that giant transformer station across the street from my house?" Can't have an uppity consumer population. That's just trouble. That's why we must make all products disposable. All needs must be ongoing, never fully satisified by a good product purchase.

Which is why it's quite amazing that this article actually steps out of character for a corporatist and points out that our modern day industry can't make a decent window frame because they cheap out and use vinyl. That I can readily attest to from where I rent -- these window frames are sagging so bad it's laughable. I'm informed they are relative new.

But it's funny how that standard applies to double-paned windows (which would just plenty long if people took the time to buy quality ones) but they don't apply to lightbulbs. No you are not seeing double there really are two standards in use here. I guess window manufacturers and home improvement products aren't on the inside of this particular old boy's network. Either that or there's one journalist who's going to get an email from the boss -- "look, your article was great, but Home Depot really didn't like the part making fun of vinyl windows. So to make it up to them, why don't you do an article about how pool decks are really cool."

Feh. What a bought-out, phoned-in waste of bandwidth. Now I recall why sfgate isn't on my list of sites to visit.

...132 gallons of gas per year.

http://www.solarhouse.com/

The TV crews invited to "tour" this bit of wishful thinking - at the invitation of the very, very, very, very, very proud owners - have heaved more crap into the atmosphere than this 12 year old consumer fantasy will ever save.

It is a heap of shit to pretend that "green building" is a threat to the corporate world. They eat this stuff for breakfast. It's candy.

The brazillion dollar golden parachute the CEO of Home Depot just received is made of this stuff.

A) You only calculated electricity and did not take into account their solar space and water heating.

B) You shouldn't compare energy equivalents to gallons of gas, because as you well know, gasoline is usually burned in an internal combustion engine which has a maximum efficiency of 40%ish

What about the regular tour groups? At one point 30 architects flew in from Austria.

I am simply noting that the energy gas burned hyping this McMansion exceeds the energy produce by the system.

The fact is that the thing is a toy. Were it otherwise, it wouldn't be famous. This is a consumer fantasy.

If this were a serious energy strategy, no one would find it interesting. I assure you that PBS is uninteressted in my gas heater.

God knows how many construction trucks were invovled in that McMansion.


It's pure middle class greenwashing.

A lot of new power infastructure is being built in order to connect wind and solar thermal sites to existing power infrastructure.

The electricity doesn't magically fly from the wind farm to downtown LA, ya know.

CFLs are a good example of it. Compact Fluorescent lighting is a beneficial technology, but it's just one piece of an overall strategy. Yet it is being promoted in such a way to provide a compartmentalized, feel-good "solution" that mainly distracts attention from the enormity of the task.

MOST of the bourgeois environmental movement is corporate-driven. "All we have to do" is use CFLs, build a couple of high-tech windmills, Go Vedge, shop at Eddie Bauer, turn off the lights when we leave a room, and keep the thermostat at 68°F -- and we can continue to have a civilization with profligate waste and stupidity built into it, forever.

It just ain't so.

I'm not even certain where I'm coming down in relation to what you're arguing. I'm arguing that by presenting small, individual practices as any kind of solution, we're convincing millions of people that the cascading energy and environmental crises can be trivialized, minimized, and eventually marketed out of existence.

As for the corporate world, it is possible to commoditize ALL things, even dissent. And when the actual cost of what we need to do is presented to the public, you can be sure that a huge chunk of change will be earmarked for the profit-takers.

--p!

...they don't get market penetration. This has been the conclusion drawn by virtually everyone who's studied the subject.

So no, the marketting of CFLs is not a corporate-driven venture to sell CFLs. It is, in fact, an deliberate push by non-corporate organizations. (I think it's pretty evident that the corporatists actually oppose CFL use, actually, given how much time and energy they spend trying to sew FUD about them -- they would rather bully us into letting them mine more coal.)

Even getting people to start thinking in terms of conservation and long term consequences is a positive. It sounds like you've noticed but they generally do not. That same profligate waste and stupidity you hate so much? Examples of it: not eating enough vegetables, not turning the lights off when you leave a room, and overheating the house during winter instead of putting on a damn sweater.

Greenwashing is quite a different thing than what you describe. It's purposefully doing the bare minimum, usually something entirely nonproductive, to be able to make an environmental claim. Usually it applies to corporate activities, and rarely is your average citizen smart enough to actually pull off such a stunt, even with their seeming cleverness at rationalization.

So that term doesn't apply. What you are getting at is not greenwashing, but rather simple denial. Acknowledging the need to do something is the first step the population needs to get over in moving out of that state, even if the first actions they take are not very effective (although CFLs are pretty darn effective I must say.)

As far as marketing goes, whether it is a boon or an ill depends entirely on what exactly it is that you are selling. If you are selling something that is a worthwhile purchase for the advertisee, improves their life, and does not create much of a depency, then marketing is a good thing. If you are selling something that offers no real value and serves only as a way to trick the consumer into an ongoing purchase pattern, then it's pretty evil. You know the old saying, "give a man a fish..."