I received an email last week from Scot Horst , who chairs the LEED Steering Committee. He describes the behind the scenes narrative that has been going on since work began on LEED 2009.
Person A: “Global warming doesn't give us much time.”
Person B: “But we can't address much of anything, let alone global warming, if we're only dealing with a small fraction of the entire built environment. We need to get everyone involved.”
Person A: “Yes, but why get them involved in a system that doesn't take them far enough to save us from ourselves? We need our buildings to be restorative.”
Person B: “LEED can't save us from ourselves. LEED, as a tool, can engage the market in transformation. That transformation is about people. It is not about LEED credits.”
Person A: “You're missing the point. We have to be tougher. We have to go beyond.”
Person B: “No, you're missing the point. We have to find ways to engage a market that has never thought about these issues before.”
Persons A and B: “Let's find a way to do both.”
This is an engaging and very important narrative and perhaps the most important point is that LEED is a “tool” that helps to raise consciousness and “engage the market in transformation.” My personal view is that we must “go beyond” and that much of what we currently do in the green building movement, however well intentioned, is nothing more than rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic. The global warming mentioned in Horst's narrative has provided the catalyst for both LEED and Architccture 2030, but focusing solely on warming misses the point. Warming is a symptom and not a cause. It has prompted us to take some action, but not to “go beyond”.
As a premise for action it has been useful, but is easily attacked on it's “scientific validity”. It is one of the canaries in the coal mine, but there is very little discussion of the coal mine. We need to expand the narrative and take a broader view. Borrowing from basic premise of ecological economics, once you picture the built environment as a mere subset of our closed ecosystem, then your conceptual framework regarding sustainable building is forever changed. It means you have to accept that there are limits, and that we are not going to be able to grow forever. It implies the built environment must have some optimal size and level of consumption relative to the larger ecosystem. It means you cannot grow beyond that optimum without threatening man's survival within that ecosystem. Out of this stream of thought flows a long list of very troubling questions: How do we stop growing? What are the limits? What is optimal? Does climate change tell us they have already been exceeded? Do we face a kind of built environment armageddon when fossil fuel production peaks and begins to decline? Is a zero energy standard imperative now? What do we do? How do we do it?
Our very survival depends on how and when these questions are answered. LEED does not provide the answers, but it does help us to prepare.
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