No, I’m not talking about global warming. Stay with me.
A press release from USGBC says U.S. Mayors Champion the Greening of America’s Schools:
If mayors from across the country have their way, every child in America will be attending a green school within a generation.
In a move to better support the health and well-being of America’s students, the U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM), which represents more than 1,100 mayors, unanimously supported a green schools resolution last week at its 75th annual meeting in Los Angeles.
All across the country, more and more schools are going green to save money, protect the environment, and help kids learn. To date, more than 30 schools have received LEED certification and nearly 300 more are on a waiting list for certification from the USGBC, which administers the nationally recognized LEED rating system for environmentally friendly buildings and recently released its LEED rating system specifically for schools.
Yippee. They’ll eat that up here in Guilford County, which is eagerly establishing itself as a green school system. Fair enough, Guilford’s “green schools” aren’t officially LEED certified, but they would qualify based on construction materials. And we walk around wondering why $60 million is the going rate for a new high school. Definitely something for voters to think about with another school bond on the way.
But guess what?
The LEED certificiation program isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be, says retired physician and tree farmer Robert Cooper:
This program and its respective marketing campaign pose a serious threat to the more than 600,000 North Carolinians who own private forests. A majority of these forest owners have made the investment in their lands that will be someday realized in a timber harvest of some type as their trees are turned into one or more of the 5,000 wood products that Americans use every day. These landowners, who own three-fourths of the state’s 17.6 million acres of forest land, support environmentally friendly and energy-efficient building practices. However, any building code program should be based on scientific information, not just one group’s idea of what is right.
There is no question that this green building code is popular because it espouses sound ecological concepts within the construction community, but here is where we encounter the consequences of a program based on good intentions and not rooted in science. The LEED program’s sheer existence depends on its ability to convince environmentally concerned elected officials and citizens to support its established principles and standards of the program. It is a feel-good program developed in a boardroom with little or no input from the private landowner.
And there aren’t that many elected officials willing to say they’re not concerned about the environment, are there? So stuff like this is going to keep getting rubber stamped, with no thought to the true costs, especially to the taxpayer. I hope that one day average citizens will wise up and realize that the hystreria surrounding the environment and global warming is just that —hysteria. Unfortunately, government and the media have a distinct advantage. For now, at least.
