That was the attitude I picked up in a recent article by Alec Appelbaum from the GreenSource magazine website:
When the feds pass a law to fight climate change, you would expect architects, builders, and facilities managers on the front lines. After all, buildings produce 40 percent of our nation’s greenhouse-gas emissions, and since more than half the buildings likely to be in use in 2030 don’t yet exist, more robust government regulation could help spur needed innovations. But effective lobbying by the homebuilders’ industry made the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, signed into law in December, more tentative about efficiency than green-building advocates had hoped.
Let’s set a couple things straight here. First of all, the federal government can pass all the laws they want about climate change and it would mean diddly-squat as far as actually changing the earth’s atmospheric temperature. (Passing all those regulations, though, would mean much more in terms of destroying a once-robust economy.) The climate was warmer in the 1930’s than it is today and no one blamed those inefficient and polluting Ford Model A’s for the long hot spell of a decade – it was just Mother Nature doing her thing.
More troubling to me is the advocacy of more “robust” (read: oppressive) government regulation to spur needed innovations. A far better method of innovation is called the marketplace, unfortunately those who feel as Appelbaum does that the government can actually make a dent in our climate (and notice it’s not about “global warming” now because the evidence of the last decade that the planet is cooling put the kibosh on that term) have no concept of what constitutes a free market.
Of course, my fellows in the American Institute of Architects lead the way in being suckered by the hype:
Along with five industry organizations, (the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) founded a group called the Commercial Buildings Initiative (CBI) in 2006. The CBI coalition includes the American Institute of Architects (AIA), the U.S. Green Building Council, the Alliance to Save Energy (ASE), the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, and the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers. This group plans to support the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to help carry out the mission of the federal net-zero initiative. “A collaborative could span near-term deployment and long-term R&D,” Selkowitz says. “We’re advocating a system of real-time reporting that owners can compare to [performance] targets.”
Aside from ASHRAE, none of these groups truly represent the building industry. In fact, the thrust of Appelbaum’s moaning is that the home builders’ lobby watered down the so-called Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (it provides neither) to insulate themselves from expensive regulation. With that industry already in the tank because of financial problems, an increase in the price of new homes because of overzealous government regulation would have further depressed the sector.
In looking at the idea of energy efficiency, I’m certainly for it IF it’s cost-effective (e.g. a fairly short payback period – my yardstick is generally 5 years or less.) Unfortunately, many in the green movement cannot justify their schemes to save energy with such a short payback so they turn to an entity well known for butting into markets and making unproven technologies “cost-effective” with taxpayer money. Yes, it’s called taxpayer subsidy. Why work to make a product more competitive when the government pays an owner to install it?
But don’t worry, Mr. Appelbaum, I’m certain that once the election has passed that there will be many legislators tucked firmly in the pocket of the radical green organizations who will seek to “improve” the EISA with even tighter restrictions and possibly even funding courtesy of those greedy oil companies. I’d bet the bottom dollar that’s going into my gas tank because of onerous restrictions on oil exploration and subsidies to agribusiness for ethanol creation on it.