Don Fitz, the editor of the Green Party’s magazine, provides ten ways in which “green” building is often not actually environmentally friendly:
1. It ain’t green to ignore perfectly good homes.
2. It ain’t green to build massive homes.
3. It ain’t green to encourage urban sprawl.
4. It ain’t green to build as if space for homes has nothing to do with transportation.
5. It ain’t green to ignore advantages of multi-family homes.
6. It ain’t green to pretend that there is no advantage to building underground.
7. It ain’t green to not know what the word “green” means.
8. It ain’t green to protect the environment with one hand while destroying it with the other.
9. It ain’t green to build homes that will not outlast our grandchildren.
10. Voluntary green ain’t green.
The tenth item particularly surprised me, but Fitz does a good job of defending it.
My wife and I recently visited a EarthCraft certified model home just outside of Charlottesville and we were enormously unimpressed, for a few of the reasons cited here. It was your standard McMansion, but greenwashed. The back yard had a deep, freshly-carved ravine running through it from poor storm water management practices. Most rooms in the house were unreasonably large — it’s bound to cost a fortune to heat and cool the thing. “Green” was a slap-on improvement, like it’s a three-car garage or a patio. The whole affair just made EarthCraft look lame.
I agree. If new construction is unavoidable, then a green building is great, but it frustrates me that so much existing old housing stock is left to rot because people want something new. That’s not such an issue in C’ville, but in old rust belt cities like Buffalo, gorgeous Victorian (and older) houses are literally crumbling into the ground while the circle of sprawl gets ever wider and people drive further to work.
I feel guilty about building a new house for that very reason. That, and I prefer the idea of an old house, one with some character and that somebody thought through already. It’s just easier. But since my in laws gave us a perfectly good chunk of their family land, one without a house on it, build we must.
It’s been fun watching y’all work on your house. You’re certainly practicing what you preach.
That’s disappointing. It sounds almost like it is false advertising to claim that it is one thing, when it really isn’t at all.
I grew up in a turn-of-the century farmhouse in the Shenandoah Valley, and my wife grew up in an 1898 brick townhouse in Savannah, GA’s historic district. Our parents still live in these 100+ year old houses. (The Savannah townhouse is a gem.)
Neither of us can imagine living in anything constructed in recent years, especially those slapped up in mass developments. After living in houses as solidly constructed as these (beams, plaster walls), most recent construction comes across as flimsy crap that’ll be lucky to outlast a mortgage.
When we moved to New Mexico a few years ago, we bought an c. 1860 adobe place. There wasn’t a right angle in sight, but it was a solid house (2+ foot thick walls) and outstandingly energy-efficient. (Cooling was via a swamp cooler instead of an air conditioner, despite the routine 100+F summer heat.)
Our house here in Charlottesville is c. 1955, with solid wood sub-floors, plaster walls and ceilings, etc.; it’s about a young a house as you’ll find using those “dated” building methods. And it’s very well insulated, making it surprisingly “green” despite its age. I’d stack it up against most of what’s being passed off as modern green construction, efficiency-wise–and I assert that this house is more likely to still be standing 50-100 years from now.
Please pretend I actually proofread my previous post before I submitted it.
Being “green” is just like every other virtue in life — easy enough to apply a veneer of it for marketing purposes, but requires actual critical thinking by individuals to happen in practice. And there are always, always tradeoffs.
For example, I bought a 1,000sf house (green) that’s 10 miles from where I shop (not green) for fresh local produce (green). But heck, I work from home, so I don’t have to go into town every day (green), although that duplicates a use of resources already happening at my employer’s office (not green). I’m about to replace my HVAC system with something way more efficient (green), but I’ll be scrapping a system that might have a couple of years of life in it if I spent a chunk of that money instead to patch it up (not green).
Am I making green decisions? Sometimes yes, sometimes no, but hopefully the overall balance is a good one. If the people buying those EarthCraft homes might otherwise have bought a typical one, then the world is slightly better off. If the EarthCraft marketing hype encourages other local builders to learn more about green building methods in order to compete, it’s a start. The waste of space in those houses is silly, of course, but free market economics will not yet support a radical shift in our perceived standard of living (i.e., that more is better) — that kind of change will take generations, if it’s possible.
It ain’t green for aging rockers to fly halfway ’round the world on a private jet in order to tell the little people to trade in their second-hand Subarus and get on the bus.
You’re right, it wouldn’t be green “for aging rockers to fly halfway ’round the world on a private jet.” But, in fact, the entire show was arranged such that as little travel would be required as possible for any musicians to travel anywhere. They selected the acts in part based on who was located closest to the venues. Those who did have to travel worked with the event’s multiple staffers who were dedicated to reducing and offsetting the emissions generated by the show and the transportation pertaining to it.
You’re absolutely right about that, fdr. What I find frustrating is that EarthCraft (apparently) sets the bar so low. No doubt there’s a significant market for people who are in no way committed to environmentally friendly construction, but would like to feel good and maybe save a little money on their power bills. That’s a market need that should be met, and apparently is being met. But there’s such a yawning gap between that and real green building (as I think of it) that I’m left without even a term, since “green” is now taken, and devalued.
I guess it’s like people who are opposed to same-sex marriage, because they feel like it devalues the word, and then wonder what word will they use to describe their marriage, which they view as being stronger and more real than gay unions.
The term you’re looking for might be “light green”.