Well, that may soon change, at least a little bit.  Enter the HOME STAR Jobs Bill.   HOME STAR provides two paths for consumers to save energy in their homes (from their Web site):

1. The Silver Star prescriptive path provides a near-term incentive for specific energy saving investments that is simple to administer and easily introduced into the existing marketplace. Homeowners receive between $1,000 and $1,500 for each measure installed in the home, or $250 per appliance, with a benefit not exceeding $3,000 or at least 50% of total project costs (whichever is less). Covered measures include air sealing; attic, wall, and crawl space insulation; duct sealing or replacement; and replacement of existing windows and doors, furnaces, air conditioners, heat pumps, water heaters and appliances with high-efficiency models. The legislation will utilize existing standards for qualifying products at a level sufficient to significantly increase consumer demand for highly energy efficient building materials and mechanical systems.  SILVER STAR improvements may be implemented by any appropriately licensed and insured contractor, but all participating contractors will receive information about opportunities for accreditation and training programs.
2. The Gold Star performance path offers an incentive to households that choose to conduct a comprehensive energy audit and then implement a variety of measures that are designed together to provide greater total returns in energy savings. This performance path represents the future of home efficiency: state-of-the-art building science is used to identify problems, present solutions and deliver verifiable energy savings, generating confidence among homeowners and investors alike. This technology-neutral approach is based on performance, not specific products, so market forces will direct funds to solutions that achieve the best results. A certified professional with accreditation from the Building Performance Institute (BPI), the Residential Energy Services Network (RESNET) or an approved equivalent conducts an energy audit before work begins, and a test-out when the performance retrofit is complete. Consumers receive $3,000 for modeled savings of 20%, plus an additional $1,500 incentive for each additional 5% of modeled energy savings, with incentives not to exceed 50% of project costs. Contractors implementing the GOLD STAR performance path must be BPI accredited.

What this means is that, essentially, if this legislation passes, millions of people will very quickly have several options available to them by which they can implement energy-saving measures in their homes by actions as simple as upgrading appliances or by doing an all-out renovation.  The bill primarily hopes to quickly create as many jobs as possible, while providing energy efficiency on a massive scale, which not only will ease the burden on our aging energy infrastructure, it will ultimately reduce carbon emissions.  (Both of which, incidentally, were the goals when I started this Web site.)  Additionally, anyone wishing to implement these measures will have financing options available to them that are guaranteed through the provisions of the bill.

Pretty neat, eh? Now we just need to hope that the legislation gets passed! If you’d like to learn more about HOME STAR, visit their Web site here.  If you’d like to join the coalition supporting it, visit the Efficiency First Web site to sign up and find out how you can contact your legislators to voice your support.  Even if you don’t own your own home or aren’t in a position to change your living situation to make it more efficient, I think we can all agree that adding a couple hundred thousand jobs during a recession to a very depressed construction market is a good idea, and making several million homes more efficient is an even better idea.   So CHECK IT OUT!!!

• a 20 percent mandatory reduction in indoor water use, with voluntary goal standards for 30, 35 and 40 percent reductions;
• Separate water meters for nonresidential buildings’ indoor and outdoor water use, with a requirement for moisture-sensing irrigation systems for larger landscape projects;
• Requiring diversion of 50 percent of construction waste from landfills, increasing voluntarily to 65 and 75 percent for new homes and 80 percent for commercial projects;
• Mandatory inspections of energy systems (i.e. heat furnace, air conditioner, mechanical equipment) for nonresidential buildings over 10,000 square feet to ensure that all are working at their maximum capacity according to their design efficiencies;
• Requiring low-pollutant emitting interior finish materials such as paints, carpet, vinyl flooring and particle board.

All of this and more information about CALGREEN can be found here.

So what does this mean for the average homeowner?  Well, if you live in California, you may start to see the changes immediately, especially if you are building or planning on buying a house in the next few years, as this new code will affect all new buildings.  Although on the other hand, the changes may not be as noticeable, since California has been at the forefront of energy efficient design for many years, so this code is more like an incremental step rather than a big jump.

Even gas stations in California are designed sustainably: The LEED Certified BP Helios House in LA

Now, if you don’t live in California, you should still pay attention, because you may not be off the hook:  the CALGREEN is the first green building standard in the nation, but it won’t be the last.  There are many states that are not too far behind California in discussing adjustments to their state building codes to make buildings more energy efficient, and those changes to the code might be coming as soon as this year.  States like New York, Minnesota, Florida and Colorado are no strangers to green building guidelines, while Wisconsin, Oregon and Washington have energy efficiency programs in place already.  California has many challenges facing it right now – its crazy budget problems, its constitution, and various other calamities notwithstanding – but it has always been good at leading the pack with regards to energy efficiency.  The CALGREEN program will test the system, and if it works, it will be a great model for the rest of the country.

Of course, you could just get ahead of the curve and start greening your own home without any codes or lawmakers telling you to do so… 

Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, there are some pretty vocal people who are still working hard AGAINST even the very notion of climate change, mostly because it’s in their own best interests to do so.  The newest issue of Rolling Stone magazine, always a bit of a lightning rod, has a list of the “17 polluters and deniers who are derailing efforts to curb global warming”, within an even bigger piece about the industries working hard to block progress on climate change. What an eye-opener!   I’ve always kind of thought of Warren Buffett as a sort of “benevolent billionaire” who does the right thing with his billions … imagine my surprise to learn that he bought the BNSF railroad because it’s a large hauler of coal!

Anyway, you should read the list, it’s a good one.  And no offense against anglo-saxon caucasian types, but the list consists quite literally of a bunch of older white “gentlemen” and Senator Mary Landrieu (who, frankly, is taking a rather bizarre pro-drilling stance in her home state of Louisiana, which stands to lose possibly the most if the ice melts and the seas rise).  If it weren’t so sad, it would be comical … you can almost throw these guys in costume and put them in any period piece as “the villians” of every Hollywood epic ever made.  The sad part is, they have to know they’re wrong – but they don’t care, because A) they are all too rich to care, and B) their continued wealth depends on them being willfully and purposefully deceptive.  When you consider how much is at stake … well, it would be nice if these people experienced a “rehabilitation” from “climate killer” to “climate buddy”.

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!

I’m going to go back to sticking my fingers in my ears, closing my eyes and saying to myself, “It’s better than it was four years ago… think of all the catching up we have to do after eight years of inaction… we still have time…”

…Don’t we?

Instead of sharing “news” from the conference then, I think I’ll share some tidbits that ARE worth repeating.  And we’ll start with this behemoth:

It's a GIANT sundial! (Image courtesy of Inhabitat)

This, my friends, is apparently the largest “solar energy” building in the world, in Shangdong Province in Northwest China, which is to say that, at 75,000 square meters, it’s the largest building in the world that uses a solar array as a primary energy source.  I can’t find evidence that the solar array powers the WHOLE building all of the time, however.   Stories like this make me wonder if China has been using all of the interest that we are paying them on our loans to make solar powered buildings.  If they can churn out gigantic buildings like this, do you think they can throw a few solar panels our way?  Maybe they can throw in a couple of PV arrays with our loan bill each month?

Next up is one SUPER COOL thing that has debuted in Copenhagen during the past week, and that’s this Copenhagen Wheel created by MIT students.  It’s got a kinetic energy recovery system, sensors, a smart lock, and a Bluetooth connection to the rider’s iPhone.  Talk about reinventing the wheel!  Hardy-har-har.  (Sorry.)

the Copenhagen Wheel (image courtesy of Inhabitat)

Last but not least I’d like to point out this wonderful blog post about the art seen in Copenhagen during COP15 (by, you guessed it, the equally wonderful Inhabitat).   It’s nice to know that the leaders at the conference will have something to think about as they shuttle around the city in their 1200 limos.   Meanwhile, 36% of the actual population of the city gets around by bike, a staggering statistic that is more than 5x the percent of bicyclists in America’s bike city, Portland.

So I guess we’ll just sit back and see how this one ends, shall we?

Today the EPA took the historical and bold step of announcing that man-made greenhouse gases – mainly carbon dioxide – are harmful to human health and the environment, and should be regulated. Conventional wisdom suggests that this announcement was timed to coincide with the beginning of the Copenhagen climate conference, or as it’s formally known, the COP15.  And I’m OK with that, really, especially since it will lend momentum to climate legislation.  Also, apparently the Republican party greeted the EPA’s announcement with a statement ridiculing them for suggesting that we place regulations on the “air that we exhale”.  To which I say, perhaps if the Republicans didn’t spout off so much hot air in the first place we wouldn’t be in such trouble!  (Ba-dum-pum… seriously am I the only one that thought of this joke?!)

I’ll try to keep up with news from Copenhagen and post it here as I see it… in the meantime, stay warm, folks!

Without further ado, Former Vice President Al Gore describes how he’s going to “get crazy” to get out the message of climate change.  Right on!

This post was actually inspired by a somber anniversary that I missed last week, and I’ll use it to make an analogy to get where I’m going.  Bear with me.

November 10, 2009 was the 34th anniversary of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald on Lake Superior in Canadian waters.  The loss of this massive, 729-foot-long freighter is probably best known to my peers, as it certainly is to me, because of a sad song by Gordon Lightfoot.  The ship sank with all 29 of its crewmen, without sending a distress signal, due to – according to a team from the Discovery Channel – a rogue wave.

(Still with me?)

Over the weekend, I saw the movie 2012.  And it was, as you can imagine, pretty ridiculous.  But it was entertaining.  And this movie featured its share of rogue waves, for sure.  Pretty much the biggest waves that fancy movie graphics could muster, probably.

When I got home yesterday, I saw in the news that a joint agreement had been reached by world leaders to … not reach an agreement.  That is, all of our world leaders decided that a binding climate change treaty would NOT be agreed upon at Copenhagen in December.  Instead, our leaders are now telling us that they will aim to reach a less aggressive “politically binding” agreement with the hope that they could address bigger problems in a second, later step.

(Here comes the hook…)

So I got to thinking, ‘wow, that must have been one hell of a big wave that took out the Edmund Fitzgerald.‘  And then I thought, ‘I wonder what sort of “rogue wave” it’s going to take to get our leaders to take action on climate change.  That’s gotta be one hell of a big wave too…“  (Doesn’t everyone think in italics?)

But really.  What’s gotta give for our leaders to take meaningful action?  I fully understand and respect their decision to play down expectations ahead of Copenhagen.  There are a lot of environmental activists making aggressive statements about what needs to be agreed upon in December, and while these activists make some good points, they are also not responsible to millions of people that elected them.  At the same time, I’m sitting here, writing on my blog, and I’ve got that little countdown on the right hand side…. you know, that one, right over there  ————————->

… and I guess I think that if some of these world leaders had a countdown like this on their desktop, maybe they wouldn’t want to put off decision-making anymore.  My hope at this point is that a rogue wave of good intentions and common sense will overcome our leaders, maybe not in December, but soon, at least soon enough so that … well, so that it’s not too late for us to adjust to our warming planet.  (Because I really do NOT want to go out like the folks in 2012 did… highly unpleasant, I tell you.)

So what’s it going to be, World Leaders?  Do you have it in you?

Enter Senator John Kerry and Senator Lindsey Graham.  I have always had respect for both of these men, and fortunately I do not think they fall into the category I just mentioned, but they have really stepped up today, with a joint Op-ed in the New York Times about how they can see a path to a bi-partisan compromise on climate change legislation by the end of the year.

WOW.  I mean, here I am writing blog posts about 2015 and how I doubt we’re capable of hitting that target, and these guys step up to my challenge, and the challenge of the international community, and they say, “we can do this.”  I am impressed.  And I am not normally impressed by legislators in the Federal Government.

And I realize that many people think it’s comical, even undeserved, that President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.  (I, myself, thought it was an Onion article when I first saw the news.)  But whether the President’s political enemies accept it or not, I think this type of collaboration and cooperation is a direct result of the change in tone and requests for responsibility that the President brought to the office with him.  He needs this type of initiative from the lawmakers in the Legislative Branch if he is to go to Copenhagen in December and make a real case for how the U.S. can go from ignoring climate change (under President Bush) to leading the charge on it.

So, here’s the thing: despite my blogging about it, and them writing about it, I don’t see Senator Kerry’s and Senator Graham’s Op-ed getting much attention because the mainstream media (MSM) has way too many scandalous things they can talk about instead.  But I am serious about thanking them, and if you think they had some good things to say, you can thank them too.  See here:

Click here to email Senator John Kerry and thank him for his initiative on climate change legislation.

Click here to email Senator Lindsey Graham and thank him for his initiative on climate change legislation.

…And when it comes time to get the job done, let’s not let the Senators forget what they said in this Op-ed!