Some Comments & A Review of Green Principles

Before talking about Green Principles, a few comments:

• Reconveyance: The timing of the County's meeting to explain its reconveyance proposal for forest lands in the Lake Whatcom Watershed is suspect at best.
They actually picked the day AFTER elections to publicly explain what is going on!

So the October 'surprise' that got rushed into September will now be explained in November?
It had better be good!

• FCC Shenanigans: I strongly agree with Dave at MegaAwesome. The FCC is out of control and trying to give away the public's airways rights to mega corporations.

Check out PBS.org and see what Bill Moyers has to say about it from his program last night.
Then write your Congressional Representatives. But do it quickly!

• Doorbelling for Dan Pike today found some people who had either not voted or decided.
It was damp, wet and cold, but I'm really glad I did it.
Some people actually thanked us for doing it. That felt good.
And, I like Pike's chances of becoming Mayor!
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'Those who do not read, have no advantage over those who cannot"
- Mark Twain

"Will we be able to face our children and assure them that we did not lack the courage to face these difficult situations, did not lack the stamina to pursue the correct solutions?" - Pierre Trudeau
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On Green Principles:

I reviewed three books I bought at the Green Built Conference held at the Ferry Terminal:

• Developing Sustainable Planned Communities - An Urban Land Institute Publication

• The Philosophy of Sustainable Design - Jason F. McLennan

• Women in Green: Voices of Sustainable Design - Kira Gould & Lance Hosey

Each had interesting and valuable information, focused on different areas.

But, the second volume is the one I would read first.
Jason McLennan has some insights that are just brilliant!

I plan to share these books with the Library Board, plus the Waterfront District Redevelopment Project

Here are the 16 Chapters and 5 Appendices included:

Chapter 1 - The Philosophy of Sustainable Design

"An invasion of armies can be resisted...
But not an idea whose time has come...
- Victor Hugo

Chapter 2 - The Evolution of Sustainable Design

" One reason we are in so much trouble is that our modern culture is paradoxcally behind the times, still assessing the world the way it did in the nineteenth or even eighteenth centuries: as a place of inexhaustible resources, where man is at the pinnacle of creation, separate from and more important than anything around him." - David Suzuki

Chapter 3 - The Principles of Sustainable Design - Respect for the Wisdom of Natural Systems - The Biomimicry Principle

"For a long time we thought we were better than the living world, and now some of us tend to think that we are worse...but neither perspective is healthy. We have to remember how it feels to have equal standing in the world, to be "between the mountain and the ant...part and parcel of creation." - Janine Benyus

Chapter 4 - The Principles of Sustainable Design - Respect for People - The Human Vitality Principle

"The biggest tragedy is not the waste of natural resources, though it is tragic. The biggest waste is the waste of human resources." - Oliver Wendell Holmes

Chapter 5 - The Principles of Sustainable Design - Respect for Place - The Ecosystem/Bio-Region Principle

"Can we not create, from a beautiful natural landscape, an environment inhabited by man in which natural beauty is retained, man housed in community?" - Ian McHarg

Chapter 6 - The Principles of Sustainable Design - Respect for Energy and Natural Resources - The Conservation and Renewable Resources Principle

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice anywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality-tied to a single garmet of destiny-whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly." - Martin Luther King

Chapter 7 - The Principles of Sustainable Design - Respect for The Cycle of Life - The "Seven Generations" Principle

"If we keep going the way we are going, we are going to end up where we are headed." - Groucho Marx

Insert - A Brief Survey of Green Buildings

Chapter 8 - The Principles of Sustainable Design - Respect for Process - The Holistic Thinking Principle

"Most people are more comfortable with old problems than with new solutions." - Charles Browe

Chapter 9 - The Technologies and Components of Sustainable Design

"the only way to make change, is to make that which you hope to change obsolete." - Buckminster Fuller

Chapter 10 - Shades of Green - The Levels of Sustainability

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead

Chapter 11 - Productivity and Well-Being

" While an upgrade that cuts energy use in half can save one dollar per square foot in annual energy costs, it can generate more than ten dollars per square foot in new profits every year if it boosts productivity even five per cent!" - Joseph Romm

Chapter 12 - Greening Your Organization

"Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it." - Goethe

Chapter 13 - Green Economics

"By the time the design for most human artifacts is completed but before they have actually been built, about 80-90% per cent of their life cycle economic and ecological costs have already been made inevitable." - Joseph Romm

Chapter 14 - The Sustainable Design Process - Holistic Thinking

"Instead of seeing the rug being pulled out from under us, we can learn to dance on a shifting carpet." - Thomas F. Crum

Chapter 15 - The Aesthetics of Sustainable Design

"In anything at all, perfection is finally attained, not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away." - Antoine De Saint Exupery

Chapter 16 - The Future of Green Architecture

"It is horrible to see everything that one detested in the past coming back wearing the colors of the future." - Jean Rostand

Appendix A - The Green Warrior Reading List

"Writers are at their best as terrorists- Sometimes social terrorists, sometimes political, sometimes terrorists of the heart. If a writer is good, he will be all three at once. His weapons are words well used to disturb and to clarify thought, emotion and action." - John Ralston Saul

Appendix B - Who's Who in Green Design

Appendix C - The Phases of Green Design

Appendix D - The Elements of Green Design Methodology

Appendix E - The Principles of Sustainable Design - Summary
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