HER LEED

On August 4, 2008, San Francisco’s Mayor Gavin Newsom signed the groundbreaking Green Building Ordinance. LEED certification and its residential counterpart, GreenPoint Rated (GPR) are the recognized industrial standards the City uses to measure energy efficient requirements under the new rules. The next entry will detail San Francisco’s building practices and the events that [...]

In 1993, leaders from across the building industry convened for the first time and created the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). Their objectives were to advance environmentally responsible building while promoting a healthy and profitable society (USGBC, “About”). Since their inception, USGBC has provided educational services and research capabilities to their 18,800+ member [...]

Since 1974, California has held its per capita energy consumption constant while the rest of the countries individual consumption has increased by 50% (Mufson, p1). With advocates like Freeman, Lovins and Rosenfeld who powered the movement, federal regulation provided the framework, and the California Energy Commission lead conservation and efficiency efforts in buildings and [...]

Three of the many innovators who changed how we view our shared natural resources are S. David Freeman, Amory Lovins and Arthur Rosenfeld, pioneers of energy efficiency practices, and instrumental in contributing to the conservation movement.
Freeman headed up the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) under President Carter and pushed for technical fixes. He successfully curtailed [...]

Environmental awareness grew with the smog in California in the 1940’s. The first federal regulation that addressed the link between energy use and environmental damage was the 1963 Clean Air Act, which established air quality standards and reduced emissions of carbon and sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere (Hirsh, p 64). In 1969, Congress [...]

The industrial revolution marked a pivotal point in history when natural resource extraction for financial gain and the ideology of progress through technological advancement fueled American’s economic growth. Since the mid 18th century more of nature has been destroyed than in all prior history (Hawken, et al., p 2). Industrialization created economic prosperity, [...]

Development and natural resource extraction go hand in hand.  Historically, the capitalist system failed to assign value to our formally abundant natural resources, an oversight that brought conservation reluctantly into the mainstream. Participatory democracy and progressive policies supporting conservation led to national regulations.  California was an early adopter in the environmental movement and the testing [...]