Many years ago, a friend of mine, James Thornton, was lucky enough to have an audience with the Dalai Lama. During this audience, James was allowed to ask a question and so he inquired: "What do we need to solve the world's environmental problems?" (James was a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council for many years and now heads up the British environmental nonprofit law firm ClientEarth.)

The response from the Dalai Lama was, "Radical confidence."  He went on to say that people need to believe that problems are solvable in order to put the energy into solving them. Given the pervasiveness and the magnitude of these problems, solving them would require  "radical confidence."

So, in honor of all of the people who think differently and act practically, I want to name this column Radical Confidence because people do "impossible" things every day and that is why we are not still living in caves.

Speaking of living in caves, there is hope that Henry Gifford and his ambulance chasers are one step closer to the dustbin of history as a result of the U.S. Green Building Council's recent filing of a motion to dismiss their pointless lawsuit. Dredging up decade-old issues that long have been solved–or would have been solved if this ego-driven nuisance hadn't decided to turn the spotlight back on himself through litigation. Indeed this entire pathetic spectacle has been an exercise in rampant self-inflation, from its initial headline-grabbing hundred-million-dollar in damages to the grandiose class action claims of plaintiffs "too numerous to count."

Fortunately, American jurisprudence does not allow people who have not been harmed by an action to seek to stop that activity, even if they find it objectionable. Since Gifford has made a cottage industry of criticizing LEED and wears his rejection of all things USGBC as a badge of honor, he's made it very difficult to demonstrate that he or any of his co-plaintiffs have been harmed. Irony on. Heck, since they're so darned smart, why don't they show the rest of us morons how to do a real LEED building so the power of the brand can actually do some good? Irony off. As for the substance of the complaint -- LEED buildings don't save energy and USGBC knows it -- I've debunked this extensively in the Green Building Market Impact Reports for the last two years available here and here.

Rather than paying attention to Gifford and his ilk, I have a much better idea: Read LEED AP Jim Sinopoli's fantastic article on how to help buildings work as designed by improving the handoff between the construction and facility management teams. Sinopoli understands that LEED is simply a green framework and that problems with buildings principally result from not executing that framework properly. His eight straightforward tips for avoiding problems during the handover are right on and clearly demonstrate his experience in the field in making buildings work. A must-read for anyone doing a larger building.