By now, everyone has heard of
greenwashing -- a
term used to describe the practice of companies disingenuously spinning
their products and policies as environmentally friendly. The new wave
of anti-environmental action is more devious, and potentially
more destructive. I call it greenbashing.
What is greenbashing? The use of seemingly reasonable arguments
about catastrophic costs or unforeseen dangers to undermine progressive environmental programs. There have been lots of examples of greenbashing lately. Here are a few choice ones:
1. In
challenging Toronto's
recent mandatory green roof by-law, Don Marks, executive director of
the Ontario Industrial Roofing Contractors Association, warns that:
"I don’t believe that the insurance industry has caught up with the
increased risk of fire that may result from improperly maintained green
roofs ..."
According to engineer
Rob Diemer, partner with AKF Engineering, this threat does not comport with reality:
This is a new technology and the codes, insurance companies,
underwriters and testing agencies are just now catching up. From what I
have seen, we should see code language and testing protocols dealing
with wind uplift and fire hazard for green roofing in the near future. In the mean time I think the fire hazards are minimal and depend a lot on the type of roof and plants used.
On an extensive roof using shallow, lightweight, mineral based
growing medium and sedum plants, there is probably little or no fire
hazard. Even if the plants should die due to a prolonged drought, the
fuel load of the dead plants is minimal and it is likely that any fire
would rapidly consume the plants and die out before damaging the
building structure. Intensive roofs using deeper growing medium and
larger plants may provide a larger potential fuel base; however, most
of these roofs need to be irrigated which would tend to mitigate the
fire hazard due to drought induced plant death. As with all things in
life there are no guarantees; however, it would appear that the
potential fire hazard of green roofs is more than outweighed by the
many positive benefits they provide.
2. The National Association of Home Builders issued a
press release on June 29 regarding the national energy efficiency provisions of Waxman-Markey that Chris Cheatham and I discussed
here in
our Green Building Guide to Waxman-Markey. According to the NAHB,
requiring increased energy efficiency will have catastrophic effects on
affordable housing:
The market is not geared up to supply the necessary materials and
equipment, and that's going to drive up costs. The result will be fewer
working-class families in these new energy-efficient homes. They'll be
relegated to older, less efficient housing stock and face ever higher
utility bills.
In addition, a national energy efficiency code would apparently impede regional sustainability considerations:
Usurping states' rights to determine appropriate building efficiency
for homes and buildings within their jurisdiction would result in
ineffective application of efficiency standards to address varying
climate zones and specific needs ...
The reality of the situation is, of course, that builders benefit from lack of regulation. Currently,
13 states have no statewide commercial building codes, and
14 states
have no statewide residential building code. A national energy
efficiency building code would impose regulations where none existed
before, or more stringent regulations in jurisdictions with lagging
codes. The result might be higher costs of construction -- but of course
lower cost of ownership of homes in the long term.
3. Our friends over at
Sullivan Kreiss reprinted a
letter that the International Council of Shopping Centers sent to its
members warning of the dangers of a national energy efficiency building
code:
The cost and complexity of this federal takeover of state and local
building codes forced ICSC to oppose the overall bill. The specific
efficiency targets are too aggressive and the deadlines are too short.
In addition, there is no trained inspection force to oversee a national
building code, so it will require the federal government to retrain
state employees and, no doubt, hire a huge number of new inspectors.
Supporters of this new federal program simply refused to negotiate or
compromise on the language. As a result, ICSC does not support this
provision.
Of course, the way that Section 201 is written, building codes will
be drafted and implemented by code councils and the states/local
governments in the same way they are now, unless those entities fail to
develop codes that meet the Waxman-Markey efficiency standards.
Also, the ICSC letter fails to identify how retraining code official in
energy efficiency and creating additional green jobs enforcing an
energy efficiency code would be a
bad thing.
Greenbashing would be a rational approach to protect vested
interests if there was vested interest to protect. However, according
to the Census Bureau, new housing
starts in
May were down over 45 percent from 2008 and shopping centers are being
decimated as well. Instead, these groups could embrace sustainable
programs to create new demand for their products, and help the climate crisis which will effect us all.
Shari Shapiro, J.D., LEED AP, is an associate with Obermayer Rebmann Maxwell & Hippel LLP in Philadelphia. Shari heads the company's green building initiative.
She also writes about green building and the law on her blog at http://www.greenbuildinglawblog.com, where this post originally appeared.
Image by branox.
