The U.S. Green Building Council has begun floating a series of progressive amendments to its building certification program, stirring controversy within the construction, forestry and chemical industries that warn the proposal is radical environmentalism masquerading as reasonable regulation.
The proposed changes to the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program, administered by the private USGBC group but since adopted by the federal government, disallows the use of over 75 percent of America’s certified forests and the third most commonly produced plastic worldwide.
A building must cross varying green thresholds — accruing credits through an exhaustive review of sustainability, water efficiency, energy and materials — to earn one of the program’s four accreditation levels. As written, the four new accreditation levels will bar the usage of products containing Polyvinyl chloride, better known as PVC, or lumber sourced from over three-fourths of American certified forests.
In a preferential nod to one forestry certification group, LEED stipulates that credits will be awarded for the “responsible extraction of raw materials” that qualify as “[Forest Stewardship Council] or better.”
Unlike other green building rating tools like Green Globes and the National Green Building standard that recognize all forest certification standards, LEED’s critics say the insistence on FSC-certified forests or the undefined “better” baseline has erected an artificial and ambiguous barrier to American timber.
“‘FSC or better’ is neither logical nor scientific,” Michael Goergen Jr., executive vice president and CEO of the Society of American Foresters, said of the decision. “Especially when it continues to reinforce misconceptions about third-party forest certification and responsible forest practices.”
But whereas industry forces acquiesced to the technical provisions in earlier models, the proposal to ban products containing PVC has put on edge the construction and chemical industries.
The effective banning of the third most widely-produced and consumed plastic worldwide means a tremendous, new burden on the industrial and construction sectors, as the pair will be forced to use other, more expensive alternatives whose own environmental merits are ambiguous by the government’s own account.
While the outright banning of PVC has been a goal of the environmental lobby for some time — GreenPeace has a campaign to “phase out this poison plastic” — USGBC’s assent, some say, runs counter to the group’s long-held posture towards the chemical.
A 2007 study by the USGBC revealed PVC outperformed a number of still-approved alternative materials in ecotoxicity, eco depletion and contribution to climate change. Specifically, the report found:
“PVC performs better than some alternatives studied for window frames, siding, and drain-waste-vent pipe;”
“Relative to the environmental impact categories (acidification, eutrophication, ecotoxicity, smog, ozone depletion and global climate change), PVC performs better than several material alternatives studied;”
“If buyers switched from PVC to aluminum window frames, to aluminum siding, or to cast iron pipe, it could be worse than using PVC;”
I’m in the timber business and things have been hard enough since 2008 what with the existing decline in housing construction and decrease in paper purchases because most print newspapers are trying to putting themselves out of business due to their bias.
This will only make things worse.
What do they think is going to happen to employment levels as loggers, foresters, mill workers and all the associated industries dry up? What will happen to all those who depend on the incomes generated by all those jobs, meaning shop keepers, grocers, doctors? What about the states and all the tax income they will lose as all of this economic activity dies away?
But then this is a government agency that looks only at its narrowly defined bit of power and doesn’t do cost benefit analyses nor does it care about the economy. Big pitches like this mean more funding and more bureaucrats and all of that translates into more power to grab, more promotions and pay.
William, good synopsis. My reaction was “WTF?!”
In one fell swoop, these new standards damage a wide swath of the economy. Timber producers, loggers, growers, manufacturers, furniture makers, construction companies and all those employed directly or indirectly in those industries. Similarly, the PVC issue will affect chemical companies, plastics producers, construction companies, etc., and all those directly or indirectly employed.
Either they’re so stupid they haven’t a clue, or they’re so vile they don’t care.
Thanks.
It will hit chemical, construction and other industries hard as well. People don’t realize just how big of a share of the economy forestry is. I don’t have the numbers handy right now, but but if this stands, many states are going to be in trouble financially, not to mention all the millions of people who will be directly affected.
I don’t think they care one bit, but I don’t think they are stupid. I think they are greens who have this pie in the sky ideal that just won’t work. Still, they are going to ram it through anyway. I also wouldn’t be surprised to see if those on this board have investments in or some other relations to businesses that will thrive under these regulations or connections to the 30% of forest land that will still be useable. After all, plenty of other boards and groups have pulled that stunt under this administration, so why not them, too?
Agree completely.
Freeze to death in the dark. That is the final goal of radical environmentalism.
ifyou look at all of the jobs that are being targeted you will notice one recurring theme: They are almost all independent of the government and not centered in urban areas. Loggers, farmers, truckers, oil, etc. All people who live quietly on their own. The government hates them and is trying their best to destroy small farmers, loggers and their rural communities. Once these occupations are destroyed it will be much easier to herd people into the soul eating mega-cities.
I work in the engineering sector, and I can tell you a ban on PVC would be devastating. I can also tell you that most engineers I work with consider LEED a joke……a very very sad joke. I believe USGBC was actually sued a while back because the LEED buildings didn’t perform as promised as far as energy savings go. There are things done in the name of LEED that only make sense if you assign an infinite value to a natural resource, so therefore any expense in saving any of that natural resource is a valid expense regardless of how much it costs. I would love to see an investigation by a neutral party into just how effective LEED actually is, and if we wouold be better off if the government just scrapped it and allowed engineers and architects to use their actual expertise, experience, and good judgement to make buildings as efficient as possible.
This article has gotten surprisingly little traffic. That’s unfortunate given how broad the implications are for the economy, employment and government mismanagement of resources. I’m going to be forwarding this article to my Congressmen and see if they can’t beat this.
We’ll just all have to e-mail this link to everyone we know and generate some traffic
Do any of you really think the people who control the LEED Program care how many people they put out of work? Putting people out of work is a feature of these regulations, not a bug. They hate people who cut trees, make chemicals of any kind, or affect the environment in any way. Other than themselves, that is. You people here need to wake up, the environmentalists care nothing about industry, jobs, or improving people’s lives. All they care about is raw power, the power to do whatsoever they please, dictatorial power at the discretion of bureaucrats they control. Wake up and know your enemy.
Its most likely gotten little traffic because people dont see wood or plastics as a big driver in the economy.Now if was Morning Wood, this thread be be bustling with excitement.
I can hardly wait for the implications to soak in of using materials that are inferior to PVC for buried residential sewer pipes. Schedule 40 pipe, the common white plastic seen in 10 foot sections in the racks at Lowes and Home Depot is great stuff and impervious to in-ground degradation over time. Do enviros really want leaky sewers? They seem “hell-bent” to dive in that direction.
So this means more of our tax dollars are going to pay for pleasing an environmentalist bureaucrat and the U.S. Green Building Council that at heart just doesn’t want to see any new buildings constructed? Can we just ignore this clown and reverse the adoption of LEED by the government or anyone else instead? When the suggestions proposed are idiotic, why keep listening to the makers of those suggestions? Where exactly does their power come from if its not voluntarily given?
B
“They hate people who cut trees, make chemicals….” Nope. They just hate people in general – aside from the very small tribe of fellow travelers with whom they live in the “progressive” faculty lounge.
The timber provisions of only recognizing FSC are already in place and have been for a few years. That doesn’t mean non-FSC timber isn’t being used on LEED projects it just can’t be claimed for credit. It is just a stupid little checklist. PVC will still be used.
I second the comment from the engineer above. All engineers know that LEED is a joke. What a waste of time and a added layer of bull crap the people doing the real work have to deal with. Oh and it has the added bonus of putting extra cost with no benefit for all the govt projects that require LEED certification. But hey… it is just tax dollars so who cares.
Thanks to the work of people like Anthony Watts and his Watts Up With That climate blog, we all can see the faults and outright fabrications of the Global LukeWarming “science”. Even before his blog, the curves of temperature and CO2 produced by the scientists at the Vostok weather station clearly show a repeating pattern of warm followed by many more years of cold, long before humans began any industrialization. Indeed before any humans at all.
For example, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok_420ky_4curves_insolation.jpg
ref:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/
The Soviet Union collapsed for a clear reason. They regulated themselves to death. The current Russia is doing the same. Still, governments won’t learn, because they have a good thing going taking in money, and more all the time.
LEED Compliance models equal nonsense
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I rode my bicycle around, seeing white signs on the sidewalk and around the building. Each sign proclaimed an environmental benefit obviously contradicted by reality. Bike racks for no riders. Small, almost leafless trees unable to “reduce energy use for air conditioning up to 70%”.
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AMG: Government achieves excellence by checking off the box. Business achieves excellence by producing a profit, creating more value than the resources used.
“The evidence indicates that a credit that rewards avoidance of PVC could steer decision makers toward using materials that are worse on most environment impacts.”
This sort of thing is just about the biggest slap-in-the-face-and-wake-up possible for anyone — yes, I mean anyone — who still thinks that the environmental movement is “about the environment”.
Going forward, anyone who maintains this delusion, explicitly or implicitly, should be prima facie understood to not be in the game, at all.
It was game-over when Nixon created the EPA. Armies of petty cheese police have outlawed modernity with varying degrees of sanction from nearly all of the population. Brother, you asked for it!