Congress Kills LEED

In our contentious Congress and our especially anti regulation, anti environmental House of Representatives a recent Amendment was passed in the House to refuse LEED Gold or Platinum certification of any Governmental building.

Treehugger was in arms about this current turn of events, however I want to point out one of a few things:

1. It was singularly passed in the House, not the Senate nor signed into Law by the President. This was a House Amendment that joins the current legion of position bills that include defunding Planned Parenthood, NPR and re-defining Rape; In other words all politics all the time.

2. The Amendment said GOLD and PLATINUM only not just basic certification or Silver which are perfectly fine reasonable benchmarks if LEED is to be attained at all.

3. The Amendment seems to be focused on DoD buildings which are now requiring an energy analysis regarding performance as a part of certification.

Green Building Law asks relevant questions on what the larger impact regarding green building on the long term will be but if you look further down the blog trail he discusses USGBC's own internal politicking and conflict of interest in their lobbying efforts.

Just like anything one understands is that Lobbying is the largest influence regarding policy decisions, be it green or otherwise. The House currently passed another Amendment to rescind the energy savings bill that required energy saving light bulbs as the mandate. So if anything this is just another "get Obama" and gnaw away at the current efforts by the EPA to actually enforce and regulate the environmental laws passed decades ago to preserve our environment

Frankly I have never been a proponent of Certifications that go beyond the basic necessity of a buildings performance and function and one could point out that higher levels of LEED certifications do not necessarily lend to a buildings superiority in that area. As a taxpayer who funds these projects the Department of Defense should and must sacrifice a few points to make a building "LEED" vs further cuts to social service programs that are increasingly serving more as our economy falters.

Mr. Alter, whom I respect, did not respond to my tweet to him asking him why sacrificing LEED is so distressing when its not a total abandonment of Green build? And frankly I find it odd that given he is Canadian his country is not suffering economically nor have had a overwhelming amount of budget dedicated to "defense" so it seems to be a false alarm ringing. And ironic that Canada just opted out of Kyoto protocol upon the eve of building the XL Pipeline - a by far more detrimental affect on the environment than the lack of a Gold LEED star for a building.

We are a nation and globe undergoing massive changes in budgets, policies and philosophies and frankly forgoing the attainment of higher LEED certifications is a perfectly acceptable cut as long as the overall ambitions of green build are not.