1. Treehugger. If you only want to follow one blog that dishes all the news you could ever hope for that deals with green design, energy, business or living, it should be Treehugger.  Then, 3 days later when you realize that you can’t keep up with their RSS feed because they publish something like 100 posts a day, feel free to come back to my blog and I’ll give you the highlights once a week or so 
2. WhiteHouse.gov/Blog.   Could anyone have imagined when the Internet first showed up in the 1990′s that we would have a direct line of access to our President, and to the initiatives of Executive Branch of our government, straight from the horse’s mouth?  This blog is a revelation in transparency and information dissemination, and has filters for every imaginable subject, including one for Energy & Environment.  BUT, it may not be for everyone; for instance, if you can’t think for yourself and you require a 24-hour news network to tell you what to believe, then by all means, don’t bother reading the WhiteHouse.gov blog.  Or mine, for that matter.
3. Inhabitat.com.  I regard Inhabitat as an old friend, an endeavor that I, myself, might have come up with if I had logged a few more years of experience in the green design industry a bit sooner.  Instead it was founded by my internet friend and green-living-wunderkind Jill Fehrenbacher, and it persists in being awesome due to a small army of like-minded wunderkinds that have since joined the effort.   Wundervoll!
4. GreenInc. For anyone who might be surprised that the green design and energy industries rely as much on business decisions as any other industry.
5. Wired Science. I think Wired has a blog updating schedule similar to that of Treehugger, but I manage to resist all of their feeds in favor of this one, really really great one.  Science nerds unite!
6. DotEarth/NYTimes. One of the first blogs that I ever bookmarked… and one of the closest things to a traditional newspaper column that I read.
7. Al Gore’s blog. Whether you love him, or, ahem, don’t love him, you do have to admit that Al Gore has the access to and the attention of every major world leader who has the opportunity to do something about climate change.  So, I pay attention.  And besides, his blog posts are sometimes adorable.
8. Planet Green. It’s primarily a TV channel, but it also happens to publish stuff that even its Discovery sister media outlet, Treehugger, doesn’t.  Coincidence?  Probably not, but it’s still worth a look.
9. Huffington Post Green. The Huffington Post is a new media standout, that ever-evolving fusion of social-media-network + aggregator + opinion + comedy = something fun to read.  Their Green section, although perhaps not as strong in content as some of the above outlets, nevertheless covers the goods as well as giving us fun polls and the ever-present adorable animal videos.  Worth it just for that last bit, if nothing else.

So there you have it… my Top 9 Inspiration Blogs of 2009. Check them out, and have a Happy New Year, because things are bound to get better in 2010!

Which is why, in my most recent e-newsletter from Architecture 2030, I was pleased and not surprised to discover that they had spent so much time poring over the 1428-page Waxman-Markey climate bill in the House of Representatives.  I am going to take Ed’s word for it, as I do not have the energy (or enough caffeine) to read a 1428-page bill, when he tells me that the 29 most important pages of the bill are contained in Section 201, which requires updating national building energy codes to meet the following energy reduction targets:

• in 2010, 30% below the baseline energy code (IECC 2006 and ASHRAE 90.1-2004),
• in 2014-2015, 50% below the baseline energy code, and
• every three years after, out to 2029-2030, an additional 5% reduction.

Simply put, this is totally awesome. If designers and architects are going achieve lower energy buildings, we are going to need the building codes to be our guides, because our clients usually won’t pay for it on their own.  This is starting to change, certainly, but frankly there are not a whole lot of people in the building industry that are getting paid for anything right now.  This portion of the bill will not only regulate new construction, but it will encourage people who can’t afford new buildings to reconsider renovation as a viable option.  And both of these things NEED to happen:  new construction should be more energy efficient, while renovation should happen on a broader scale.  The GOOD NEWS is, clients, developers, and builders need to work openly with architects, designers and engineers to make this happen.  Which means, everybody gets back to work!

To read more about the awesomeness of energy efficiency in buildings and the implications of this climate bill, read the complete analysis (with fun graphs and everything) in Architecture 2030′s latest e-newsletter.

And this is why Portland is leading the country on sustainable design issues!  Awesome.