Are "green builders" hypocrites?

[yellowdoginGA]

Last night on TV, I saw a special on green buildings and architecture. All of these houses were 4000+ square feet, and built in the middle of nowhere. The land they were built on was beautiful mountainsides, deserted beaches, etc. I'm sure these houses do what they're designed to do in terms of energy savings., that's not the point. Why are these people being being held up for their environmental awareness when they're taking up more space than any reasonable person needs?

[skids]

1. That's what buyers want.

It wouldn't do any good if they built reasonable homes and noone would buy them because they are "too small." And if a TV show preached at these bonehead buyers about buying too much house, they'd just blow the whole idea off and throw the baby out with the bathwater. At least this way it helps the concept gain some "chic."


BTW, the Denver Habitat For Humanity chapter is doing some good work with small energy saving homes for the poor.

[yellowdoginGA]

7. atlantic station in atlanta is built green

it's townhouses and condos and people love them. if you're proclaiming to some sort of enviromentalist (that's exactly what these people were doing), why clear an acre of trees on a mountainside and build a virtual mansion?

[skids]

9. We have bigger fish to fry.

Attacking these people isn't going to help, really. So they chop up some woodland -- at least there's an offset. At least they throw money into the market and stimulate the renewable/conservation technology industry so real environmentalists can afford it sooner.

In the meantime, we have much more serious polluters and energy consumers to deal with.

[rwenos]

2. Not Hypocrits - Mercedes Liberals

I always thought "Mercedes Liberal" was the most accurate, and the most cutting phrase ever written. And it's more often leveled by the left than the right. As it should be -- we need 'em, but we should be suspicious of them.

[yellowdoginGA]

4. exactly

this is a free country and they should be allowed to live where they want, but to expect so sort of praise is more than i can take.

[Crazy Dave]

6. Well that "Mercedes Liberal" might be a strong supporter of....

socialized health care and civil liberties.

[yellowdoginGA]

8. what if that mercedes liberal

has undocumented nannies and housekeepers that they don't pay taxes on or provide with health benefits? would that be ok too? where would you draw the line?

[Crazy Dave]

12. "where would you draw the line?"

I can't so I don't. It is immature and stupid to think we know everything about someone and what they're all about just by what they drive, where they live, etc. What about the Kennedy's and the Kerry's with their private jets, mansions and yachts? Do they send their kids to public schools? Like I said, you don't know what or who that person is or what they contribute to society.
You never know. That person in that Mercedes could be a doctor that donates his time every Friday at a free clinic and gives thousands of dollars to charity or a lawyer who donates his time to fight for a poor family's civil rights, all in all a pretty decent people but if you choose to hate everyone in a big car, a big house and make all those assumptions then I think you are practicing the same kind of bigotry and hatred as is shown towards others for their religious beliefs or their social class. I worry about myself more than I worry about others.

[yellowdoginGA]

15. i would draw the line

if these people said that they built green to offset some of their other choices i wouldn't have gotten mad. the " look what a caring steward of mother earth i am" angle to the show made me want to puke

[Crazy Dave]

20. It's good that you saw it for what it really was and you can make...

...your own choices and opinions based on it. As Poppyseedman pointed out Bab's big house, and just like when Kerry said he didn't own any SUV's or minivans but when people pointed out that he did in fact own a few, he said they belonged to his wife and daughters, not him. I don't have a good opinion of him for hypocritical shit like that and he is a public figure where we get to see it. I can't say the same thing about the guy next to me in traffic or who lives next to the river two blocks down the road. People like the Kerry's, the Kennedy's and Bab's may think they're fooling some of us but not all of us. ;)
It's why I fight against them in the primaries but go with the party in the election as we are always and purposely forced to pick between the lesser of the two evils.
A nice cozy and convenient duopoly they have themselves in Washington don't you think?

[Crazy Dave]

3. I agree as I hate wasted space

Our house is currently too big for my wife and I but we still had kids at home when we bought it and it is also a 48 year old house. Instead of buying or building a new home, this was a better option for us at the time. A recycled home you might say as a couple of families have used it before us I'm sure.
Oh yeah, we have six kitties and two dogs that share it too so I guess it all works out.

[yellowdoginGA]

5. nothing wrong with that

[illflem]

10. Could it be

that these houses are only green because they are far from the grid, which often goes with beautiful places?

[Poppyseedman]

11. You mean like this hypocrite ???

When Barbara starts living like she thinks we ought to live, maybe I will start to listen

[yellowdoginGA]

14. nice pic

didn't she also try to block access to the public beach?

[Poppyseedman]

16. I'm not sure about the beach access, but she did sue to have

these pictures of her home taken out of the public domain

[yellowdoginGA]

17. i heard that too

[TNDemo]

13. My husband is a member of the Green Build Council

and is certified in LEED (I think that is Leadership in Environmental Engineering Design). Green building standards are becoming a big thing in commercial buildings. A lot of hospitals are requiring green building standards because people who are immune compromised cannot take any more challenges from environmental hazards. One building here was under construction and the air quality was measured and the next day it was way high and they found out one of the construction workers ran out of glue and got some Home Depot for the underside of the carpet and it really screwed everything up. Carpets, paints, glues, plastics, etc. have a huge amount of off-gassing. A lot of office buildings are being constructed green for the health of their workers. Some of them even have green roofs. If you need more info you can see www.usgbc.org.

I don't really have a comment on the size of the houses. I didn't see the spot and didn't see how many folks would be using it but sometimes I guess some folks don't know when to stop. At least it was green!

[pinto]

18. Green building standards will pay off in large projects, commercial app's

apartment buildings and moderate priced housing.

I didn't see the TV show, so can't speak to that. Though it does sound a little ironic.

In general though, if someone wants to build a mansion and uses green standards, I'll separate my personal opposition to the mansion from the benefit of green construction being used anywhere, anytime. And publicized as a viable option for builders.

I think the technology will be a long term benefit. Shooting the messenger doesn't change the message.

(on edit) Oooops, meant this in reply to the original post.

[NNadir]

19. Many of these schemes are guilt salve for rich people.

The entire solar PV industry is largely that.

[jpak]

21. Obviously not a subscriber to Home Power magazine

Wherein one would discover otherwise....

And who benefited the most from the activities Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force and last year's "Energy Bill"?????

Poor people????

:rofl:

[NNadir]

24. Nonsense. The Solar-Buzz price obviates reality.

www.solarbuzz.com

California went bezerk when prices rose half as high as that.

http://ca.lwv.org/lwvc/edfund/citizened/natres/energy_upd_12-01.html

http://www.energy.ca.gov/electricity/weighted_avg_retail_prices.html

I note that all forms of industrial energy, as reported by the International Energy Agency are 5 times less expensive (ignoring external costs, of course):

Coal:

http://www.iea.org/textbase/nptable/Levelised%20costs%20of%20coal%20generated%20electricity.pdf

Gas:

http://www.iea.org/textbase/nptable/Levelised%20costs%20of%20gas%20generated%20electricity.pdf

Nuclear:

http://www.iea.org/textbase/nptable/Levelised%20costs%20of%20nuclear%20generated%20electricity.pdf

http://www.iea.org/bookshop/add.aspx?id=196

Note that the solar industry is not even considered, since it is too small to matter. Even so, if one looks at the price listed by a solar advocacy group, solar buzz, and one has in one's skill set the ability to compare two numbers, the facts are rather starkly drawn.

Including external costs, nuclear energy is clearly to anyone who can add and subtract, the cheapest form of on demand energy known.

It the solar fantasy were economic, with all the good press and fantasy promoters it has generated in 50 years as parlor entertainment, it would produce significant energy.

The unit of significant energy is the exajoule. The solar PV fantasy has not produced a single exajoule in its failed existence.

The solar PV industry is not prepared to take on global climate change; it is still largely a tool to assuage the guilt of rich boys who can afford rich boy toys.

Solar PV, unfortunately, is a hobbyist's game, not a serious enterprise that registers on the scale of the global climate catastrophe. That it is a game is promoted by the fact it has a bunch of puerile comic books like Home Power Magazine. It's nice to read comic books for fantasy, but the global climate change is not the Green Goblin and neither Spiderman or "Solarman" really will save us. There wouldn't need to be a magazine if solar systems were everywhere and everyone could see them.

The solar cell was invented in 1954, three years before the first commercial nuclear plant went on line and still the solar industry has no significant presence beyond hobbyists. There has never been a single year in the last 50 where solar power has even produced a 1% fraction of the nuclear industry going back to 1957. This is a telling statistic, since the when the Shippingport reactor went on line in 1957, it was only rated at a relatively tiny 72 megawatts.

Bell Labs engineer testing solar battery in 1954 - from Bell Labs website

In 1954, G.L. Pearson, C.S. Fuller, and D.M. Chapin created an array of several strips of silicon (each about the size of a razor blade), placed them in sunlight, captured the free electrons and turned them into electrical current. This was the first solar battery. It could convert only six percent of the sunlight into useful energy...

...Their demonstration inspired a 1954 New York Times article to predict that solar cells would eventually lead "to the realization of one of mankind's most cherished dreams -- the harnessing of the almost limitless energy of the sun...''

http://www.bellsystemmemorial.com/belllabs_photovoltaics.html

Time to put up or shut up? Put up, yes. Shut up? Unfortunately that seems too much to expect. One expects the solar "predictions" to go on for as long as the predictions of the imminent return of Jesus.

:eyes:

Here is corporate ad about that marvelous invention:



Now the kid in that picture is a very old man.

There has never been a year in which the price in kilowatt-hours of solar PV energy has been equal to or lower than the cost of nuclear energy, even fully loaded to include both internal and external costs, although misinformed radiation phobics continually carp about how, in their silly imaginations, nuclear power is "too expensive" but solar is not too expensive.

It is economics that determines why this statement is true: The increase in annual US nuclear power production in the period between 1980 and 1990, 1.17 exajoules per year, easily outstrips the entire historical production since 1954 of the solar PV game.

Of course, if the solar PV industry somehow becomes prepared to address global climate change, no one will impede it. It still has great breathless press. There has never been a demonstration against a solar facility. I would never dream of participating in such a demonstration. I would love it if it worked. I would love it if the industry would shut me up by bringing on the promised Nirvana. Therefore all the solar industry needs is to produce. And that's the problem, isn't it? The industry is open to ridicule because it doesn't produce.

Given that the global climate change crisis is on a scale that boggles the imagination, one cannot repeat too often the truth:

There is no such thing as risk free energy. There is only risk minimized energy. That energy is nuclear energy.

[Odin2005]

22. "guilt salve for rich people"

QFT

[Peace Patriot]

23. There are a couple of problems with "green building"--not that it's a bad

idea, in general, but in how things work out, in reality.

1. Rich people can buy de-regulation, where there might be protection of wild lands, for instance. I've seen them do it--building these mansions, on supposed "green building" principles, in areas that shouldn't be built in--or on a scale that shouldn't be permitted. I've seen them not just break local laws, but break entire wild land protection programs, because they have the money and the lawyers and the political influence. And the same is true of developers, real estate agents and sometimes architects themselves--building too big, and in places that shouldn't be developed, whether with "green" building methods or not.

2. Some of the materials--especially any kind of wood (except recycled wood)--are simply not "green." There is no such thing as "green logging," for instance, no matter what anybody tells you. The only certifiers of logging operations that ever had any credibility--the Forest Stewardship Council--have entirely sold out to big industrial loggers, who do massive clear-cuts, use poisonous pesticides, kill off endangered species, invade ancient and virgin forests, build extensive road systems, and pollute watercourses, and are doing this all over the world, including in critically impacted forests in the Amazon--all with an FSC label. There may be some tiny and very limited operations--a few family and Native American enterprises--who could be said to be logging "sustainably," but even there--in the bigger picture of the world right now--it is a false belief. In the last 100 years, we have entirely destroyed or severely damaged EIGHTY PERCENT of the world's forests. This is a major contributor to global warming and climate instability, among other impacts. Forests are the "lungs" of the planet, and they are almost gone. (There are also problems with steel and concrete, and other materials--the issue of materials is a big one, and one that needs a whole lot of creative thought and effort by society in general.)

--------

Building practices have been...what is the word for it?....NUTS!? You visit Southern California these days, and you see miles and miles and miles and miles of new housing developments, over all the hills in the L.A. to San Diego region, all framed with the last trees on earth. All hooked up to a grid of ever more expensive and polluting energy. None with solar panels. None with any concept of using natural breezeways, or thick walls, for temperature control. All with air conditioning and heating systems. And all impacting the last of many endangered species, the last of wild areas and green spots, the last clean water supplies, fisheries and aquifers. It's just crazy. So one can't help but applaud builders, architects and homeowners who try to do things right--using sun power, going off the grid, using design elements to lessen environmental impacts, etc. There is a method called "permaculture" that recycles EVERYTHING (all water use, all energy, all waste)--although it's not yet widespread. But the combination of the impacts to the last open, natural areas--including the impacts of rich peoples' mansions--the busting of environmental regulation and public interest values, and the sheer scale of housing and other development, is so big and so lethal to our planet that a few, special "green built" houses is not going to solve it, and the architectural IDEAS behind them--fine as they are--CANNOT transfer into the general marketplace fast enough to save our planet.

I can only hope that our human cleverness and adaptability will kick in to save OUR species--perhaps with artificial biospheres, or new understanding of genetics. We are quickly killing off all others, and the ecologies of which they are a part. We will have to BECOME "Mother Nature" (which may be beyond our capacity) in order to survive, and it's pretty certain that the quality and methods of our survival will be nothing as beautiful, rich and bountiful as "Mother Nature" has given us.

Or....there are many, many, many, many, many things we could do--that would not necessarily be hard on anyone, and could be quite lovely and beneficial, and even good for business, part of a healthy new idea of trade--IF...IF we, the human citizens of the U.S., are able to restore our right to vote. The U.S. COULD BE the key to the planet's survival, and to restoration of our planetary environment. We are the biggest consumer of the world's natural resources. We are also very creative and energetic people. Give us a problem--say, putting men on the moon--and we really get to work, and SOLVE IT. Opinion polls show that 80% to 90% of the American people want strong environmental protection. Why aren't we getting it? Where is our leadership on these issues?

They are off slaughtering other people and stealing the world's last oil reserves! Is that what we WANT them--or us--to be doing? No. Then why are they doing it? Because they now have control of our elections--with "TRADE SECRET," PROPRIETARY programming code in the new electronic voting systems, controlled by Bushite corporations. It's very simple, really. Our election system has become non-transparent, and highly manipulable by people who have no vision--merely takers, greedbags, and powermongers. We need to restore transparent elections and our sovereignty as a people, and demand a nationwide, accelerated program of environmental conversion and protection. We have the ideas. We are that kind of people. We could implement such a program, and really and truly change the world, tomorrow, if our government were acting in the public interest.

But WITHOUT transparent elections, we can do little or nothing. We can try to live sustainably ourselves, but we can't influence policy, and control the larger forces at work--the global corporate predators and war profiteers who are running things.

My environmental prescription: Throw Diebold and ES&S election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor' NOW! And, once we do that, we will see a revolution in this country like we have never seen before, on environmental policy and everything else.