You can forget local control

Take a look at the proposed "green codes" of the building trades, and note they are to be "international." When I see the struggle we have here at tiny Lakeside with issues of private (but poor) taste, preservation, dues, taxes, and costs, I really wonder what you can do with an international building code for sustainability, except keep the 3rd world from developing, and the developed world in complete chaos.

When passed by the International Code Council (ICC) through its consensus process and adopted by code jurisdictions, such a code would make sustainable design a mandatory practice, not a suggested alternative. . .

Through the working document, the Sustainable Building Technology Committee (SBTC) and participants have been looking at codes and rating systems in Europe, Australia, and the United States. “The strength of the finished code will be in its unity,” Green says. “It will give architects, states, and municipalities one single tool in the I-Codes they need to guide sustainable development.”

The National Association of Governors (NGA), as part of its comprehensive national Energy Conservation and Improved Energy Efficiency policy, adopted in July the promotion of carbon neutral new and renovated buildings by 2030, a commitment proposed by the American Institute of Architects. Maybe ALA should follow. That's a lot of hot air. Or AMA. Or AARP.

Once we get all these oldsters to stop breathing (not really, even greenies know that is carbon neutral), eating meat and burning fossil fuel or using plastic or modern technology, maybe then we can reach the carbon neutral state so longed for by people whose religion believes Mother Nature has too much flatulence.

More money for government buildings

The government gets to the green pork trough first. According to Architectural Digest $130 billion of the bill is earmarked for construction-related spending. Glancing through the list, it looks like you'll need to live near DC, Maryland or Virginia to get any of this. I don't think we have any GSA or NIH buildings around here.

BUILDINGS: $13.4 billion
General Services Administration (GSA), energy-efficiency upgrades for federal buildings: $4.5 billion
Facilities on federal and tribal lands: $3 billion
National Institutes of Health, facilities upgrades/construction: $1.5 billion
National Science Foundation, research equipment and facilities upgrades/construction: $600 million
Department of Homeland Security, new headquarters: $450 million
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, procurement, acquisition, and facilities construction: $430 million
Department of Homeland Security, ports of entry: $420 million
National Institute of Standards and Technology, facilities construction: $360 million
Department of Agriculture, facilities: $330 million
Border stations and ports of entry: $300 million
U.S. Courthouses and other GSA buildings: $300 million
Fire stations: $210 million
State Department, Capital Investment Fund: $90 million
Smithsonian facilities: $25 million

HOUSING/HUD: $9.6 billion
Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Public Housing Capital Fund: $4 billion
HUD, redevelopment of abandoned and foreclosed homes: $2 billion
HUD, Community Development Block Grants: $1 billion
HUD, energy retrofits, "green" projects in HUD-assisted housing projects: $250 million

DEFENSE/VETERANS: $7.8 billion
Veterans Affairs, medical facilities upgrades/construction: $1.25 billion
Department of Defense (DOD), facilities upgrades/construction: $4.2 billion
DOD, military “quality of life’ projects, such as housing and child-care centers: $2.3 billion

Weren't you always told to read the fine print before you bought something on credit? When the editors put this list together, no one had yet read the bill--not even the people who voted on it. Not even the President read it. It's sort of a guess.

Page after page, lustful thinking

The AIA report on how to spend billions and billions of federal money on local and state projects to help the building and construction trades, many of which no one will want or use (transit, model schools, etc.) or will forget about as it filters through the bureaucracy pipe line for several years (block grants to communities), was supposed to include a "tax cut for businesses." I searched and searched, and finally found it on the final (9th) page.

Repeal Section 511 of P.L. 109-222, which requires federal, state and most local government agencies to levy a three-percent withholding on all government contracts, grants and other payments.

Although this provision is not slated to go into effect until 2011, many businesses are in the process of developing their plans for the next few years and are having to invest funds already in preparing accounting systems to handle the new withholding. In addition, the withholding would come into effect around the time that many economists believe that the economy will begin to recover. It makes no sense to provide economic relief to businesses on one hand and yet punish them for
performing government work with the other.

This is an unfunded mandate from 2005 which could cost some of the building trades more than their margin of profit. Certainly worthy of cutting, but I doubt that it's enough to offset the huge gorging of green the architects are craving and the banquet table loaded with pork. The building trades have been under the thumb of the federal government for at least 30-40 years--not as long as the farmers, but they've lost control of their professions. Why are all these buildings, roads and bridges in such tough shape if the government knew how to do everything better 20-30 years ago?

Pork is turning green for education

"Both the House and Senate versions of the [American Recovery and Reinvestment Act] bill include a multi-billion dollar ($14 billion in the House and $16 billion in the Senate) provision for modernizing public schools (including charter schools) with technology upgrades and energy efficiency improvements. Unfortunately, religious and independent schools are EXCLUDED from this provision, even though a companion provision relating to higher education includes religious and independent colleges and universities." Council for American Private Education

I've seen all the pleas to architects (my husband's e-newsletters) to rally around every green project because it's big bucks for the building trades (everything in the package is turning a magic green), so this one is a plea to private religious educators to get in the fray. I disagree that stimulus money should go to religious schools. No matter what shade of green.

Every profession wants a piece of the bailout and stimulus plan

The building industry is just one of them, but never you mind, peek under the covers of your own profession and you'll find a group thrusting and sweating with a calculator trying to figure out how they can rape the tax payer.

"To revitalize the building sector, which accounts for about one in every 10 dollars of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product, the AIA has developed the Rebuild and Renew Plan, which details its recommendations for the allocation of funds in President Obama’s economic recovery plan. The AIA is calling on the new administration and Congress to create policies that ensure these monies are spent on the planning, design, and construction of energy-efficient, sustainable buildings and healthy communities that are advantageous for both the environment and economy." AIArchitect This Week, 1-26-09

Hellooo out there! Did no one study American History? FDR lead us through a full decade of the Great Depression (yes, it began under Hoover, who like Bush also tried tinkling on the economy to get it to bloom). The poor and low income suffered the most under FDR's plans because the percentage of tax burden on the creators of wealth falls most heavily on the poor. Under FDR Americans began a slide into government nannyism that continues to this day, in thought, word and deed. Boomers have never known anything else than Uncle Sam as a cruel step-father and/or sugar daddy. Forgive us, Lord, may we not be lead into the temptation of hand-outs, bail-outs, and more welfare for business, banks, and farmers than we already have.

No moralizing here.

Renzo Piano calls his new building for the California Academy of Sciences in the San Francisco Golden Gate Park a “soft machine.” Apparently, it sounds better in Italian, but in any language it is a green gimmick. The type I love to ridicule. No professions, unless it is the politicians and civil service of both parties, are more vested in green hype than the building trades--architects, interior designers, furniture makers, engineers of all makes and models, all construction trades from plumbers to sub contractors, and venture capitalists. They ripped down classical structures and threw up (literally) buildings that looked like cereal boxes on a kitchen shelf, then covered up that mess with "post-modern" full of peaks and valleys and round windows, and after leaving most cities and their budgets in a shambles, are back with a new idea--going green and reducing the carbon footprint. I can hardly stand to look at some of the architectural student projects for survivors of hurricanes and earthquakes.

“Piano saw the roof as a metaphor for the entire project. “I saw it as topography,” he adds. “The idea was to cut a piece of the park, push it up 35 feet—to the height of the old buildings—and then put whatever was needed underneath.” From the beginning, he envisioned a green roof that would be an extension of the park and serve as a thermal buffer for the spaces below. “Twenty-first-century architecture must be about sustainability,” he asserts. “This isn’t a moralistic stance; it’s simply what architecture must be.” To really appreciate the full scope of every shade of green, read the whole article in Architectural Digest.

I love it especially when they say they aren’t moralizing.

Floor lamp update

New Year's Resolution number 5 was to buy a floor lamp. I've now visited four stores, so yesterday I stopped at a large builders supply chain, which will remain nameless, because I like the store. I stopped there after my mail run to the church's suburban location, telling the return campus receptionist I'd be about 15 minutes late. After browsing the shelves, I settled on one not-as-ugly-as-the-others, which had two lights--a 100 watt that reflected on the ceiling and a movable arm with a squirrely, low energy bulb that was supposed to be "full spectrum" to help with reading. The box in 3 languages was explicit about that low energy bulb--13 watts. All I could find on the shelf was a 15, so I lugged the box, now getting a bit heavy, to the service desk. Two handsome young people looked quite blank when I told them the problem, and the young woman got on her cell phone and called someone. Many older people think sales staff are being rude or ageist, but I suspect they just know nothing or aren't trained. Then the woman-child said, "He first has to cut some wire for another customer than he can help you." I stood in the light bulb aisle about 10 minutes, then returned the box to the shelf. No one came.

Usually, the only people in these warehouse supply places who know anything are the gray haired part-timers who have retired from something else, got tired of golf and want to get away from their wives' honey-do list. Also, I suspect there has been a serious staff cut back, because I've never had a problem at this store getting help.

All was not lost, however. I stopped at the Discovery Shop (cancer donations) because occasionally entire rooms of furniture are donated (a truck was there). No floor lamps, and the clerk said they go fast. She knew exactly what I was looking for. But I did find a beautiful pair of navy blue velvet jeans which look unworn for $5. Not a lamp, but they are a reminder that I need to stay with my exercise program (was a size 8 last year, these are size 10), New Year's Resolution 6.

The green clergy

If environmentalism is a throw back to the pantheism the Christian missionaries faced down after Pentecost, the new age religion that has been growing like a destructive mold on our college campuses since the 1960s, the robes of its well organized clergy are "green." My husband's professional architectural, engineering and construction magazines and e-zines are so loaded with this religious hype and jargon it is astounding. Here are a few quotes from the latest issue of Buildings. (The editor says that readers of Buildings are the key decision makers in the commercial and institutional buildings market, and although that may just be trade hype, these same ideas are reflected in all building related materials and publications, but especially in the college courses. If he chose to, my husband could do nothing but attend professional credit classes on this stuff.)

Being green is more than just a practice, however, it's a process, a culture, and a belief system. "Green," "environmental" and "sustainable" are more than just labels. They're practices that include every aspect of business: invention, definition, construction, production, and the ultimate disposal of the product. . . The green trend continues to grow exponentially. . . the greatest impact that green building can have in the commercial arena is on a company's most valuable resource: its people. (long list here of all the health advantages, especially respiratory illnesses) Then it turns to the other green--money. "It's hard to understand why any business or consumer would be hesitant about going green. An investment in commercial green practices is ultimately returned in the long run. . ." p. 32, May 2008

Wow. What a market. Land in most cities has become very dear--let's just grab some neighborhoods, declare our right to do this so "the people" will have better air circulation and lower density, and build something new and green. Let's promote it as more healthy, something that will emit less CO2. Then let's forbid cars or tax them into disuse, get rid of those smelly buses and install a trolley line.

Some 19th century buildings might be saved if they can be declared historic, but look out 20th century! This means tearing down or rezoning just about everything built in the 1970s and 1980s, not that this would be a huge loss from an aesthetic viewpoint, but most of these were designed for what were current ideas at that time about energy (air tight), and they caused huge problems for air circulation and hazardous materials. They will also be extremely difficult to carry to the dump, because of all the new green regulations. And the stuff with asbestos or lead paint? We've been tearing those down for years creating jobs for lawyers and regulatory agencies, not to mention haulers and dump truck operators. There will be litigation, more regulation and in general, only the largest and wealthiest builders and developers will survive, more low income people will be pushed out of their homes and jobs, and in general, red tape will become green.

Americans are losing their representative form of government to regulatory agencies. The latest polar bear scam is just one of the more glamorous, well publicized examples. There are thousands and thousands of green candles being lit down the road as this religion converts more and more sensible, thinking people into mindless believers. I'm not sure what the bread and wine will be, but it will have a green tinge.