Grid's upcoming May cover story focuses on green building and design, so I've got it on the brain. Grist has a post up today that features a conversation with Pam Worner, a woman who runs a business near Seattle that helps home builders adopt “green” building practices. She argues that for all the talk of high-tech building materials and recycled products, it all comes back to energy:
If climate change is the biggest environmental threat to human welfare, then reducing energy use is the most important goal of green building—by far. This is the consensus view among green building experts (for a good explanation of the energy-trumps-everything argument, see Auden Schendler’s book Getting Green Done). A countertop made of recycled paper is nice, but a highly efficient furnace is going to pay much higher environmental (not to mention financial) dividends over the years. If homeowners can cut energy use, Worner figures, they don’t have to sweat every small thing.
In a related note, Grid will be featuring home energy-saving tips over the next few months. We want you to be prepared when the caps come off.