Welcome to the first official entry of a multi-part series documenting the green business, building, marketing, branding, and festival-izing conferences that are ramping up as the summer comes to a close (including Opportrunity Green). I’ve previously provided a first-hand account from WINDPOWER 2007 and Green Festival Chicago, and missed countless others.

I recognize all the benefits of green building, but, as I’ve never owned any kind of building, I’ve never explored a homeowner’s eco-friendly options in much depth, or been to a conference targeted at the industry.

Right from the opening plenary, visionaries (led in prominence by Steve Wozniak) hammered home the feeling that the green building industry is really at a tipping point where a cascade of exponential growth is possible. In this respect, I didn’t feel too out of place. I had heard a similar message at every niche conference I’d been to since starting Green Options. Indeed, the implications of a true transition to a sustainable economy are the same for green pioneers in every industry. If you can provide any product or service in a more environmentally responsible way, and do it as cheap or cheaper than the old way, you are the future.

So what? People have been saying we’re at a tipping point for years… They’re just another kind of salesman trying to drum up business, right? Even if it’s growing, it’s just a bubble, like everything else.

Wrong.

In the many industries that demand consistent natural resource inputs (energy, building, transportation), people have been doing things essentially the same way for a long time. And entrepreneurs are finding solutions that preserve all of the advantages of our unsustainable practices, but with less toxicity, fewer resource inputs, and beautiful outputs. Any industry can optimize a business model for more than one variable–say, profit AND impact on the system as a whole.

Some of the exhibitors did just that.

There were multiple firms that recycle packaging styrofoam into insulated concrete forms. The best one I saw was Apex-Block. Some might object to the use of styrofoam in any "green" building, but my take on it is that we need cost-effective, energy-efficient solutions now, and there’s no shortage of styrofoam being produced and thrown away that none of us can do much about at the moment, so… get real.

There are were also some "breakthroughs" whose green-ness I question: both of the two ethanol-burning fireplace booths I visited were more concerned with emphasizing the simple, sleek, user-friendliness of ethanol as a fireplace fuel than where the fuel came from. I found it ironic that 10 minutes later I was listening to a pre-eminent architecture professor use his Powerpoint to contrast decreasing crop yields from global warming against our policy of sacrificing food for fuel.

It didn’t surprise me too much that my fireplace salesmen friends weren’t up on the significant disadvantages of corn-based ethanol. All day, the fragmentation of the green building professionals I saw at the conference struck me; it seemed a little like most of them didn’t know there were that many others out there. As they grow, WCG and conferences like it continue to help refugees from the old economy find their place in the new.

It's nights like this I'm glad I moved to Berkeley to start Green Options. Although it was only a few hundred people packed into the First Congregational Church, authors Bill Mckibben and Michael Pollan were there to talk about the mid- to long-term fate of our way of life, and what we need to be doing now to minimize the disaster, and ensure a reasonable quality of life for future generations. I feel like this is a conversation that more people should hear about, no?

First off, I was impressed with the format Global Exchange came up with for the event. A short summary of McKibben's book, Deep Economy, a long, lively conversation between the two authors, and then a well-organized Q&A. Maximum variety, maximum information. Other book tours/speakers series take note. As such, I have a hunch that my paraphrased notes will give you more information, quicker, than me writing prose about the subjects these two covered. So, here goes:

McKibben's Introduction of Deep Economy

The book critiques the dominant paradigm of growth as the ultimate economic goal. A model that relies on growth can't continue. A quick check of what would happen if China and India continue at their current rates of growth shows that resources would collapse before they reached current American consumption. (He had detailed examples, but if you want them, read the book)

Despite what ads tell us, more widgets no longer make us happy. Economists have started to realize that 'utility' is no longer an entirely sufficient term, as more does not equal happier. Although more generally does = happier in underdeveloped countries, human satisfaction surveys have shown a 50-year decline in American 'happiness' despite increasing levels of consumption. And in western Europe, happiness levels have not declined, even though they have moderated their consumption.

Why?

There is a loss of social connection, supported in the data. Average numbers of close friends per person has dropped in the US; many other indicators. Again, I guess, read the book.

Solutions to both the problem of growth and the problem of lost social connection: smaller communities, utilizing local resources.

Example: the supermarket vs. the farmer's market. A duel. Which one fosters more community? Which one requires more energy to feed you?

Community: Sociologists who strolled many a supermarket and many a farmer's market and tallied their results found that there was a ten-fold difference in the level of interaction between shoppers. (I have to agree with Bill here. And besides, my degree in Sociology compels me to dwclare it valid science)

Energy: On average, food eaten from a supermarket takes 5 to 15 times more energy to get a given amount of calories in your stomach than a local farmer's market.

Winner: Farmer's market, on both counts. (I'm not saying I'm a good enough cook to get all my food there, but why buy produce that's been sitting in a plane and then a truck when I can get local stuff picked that morning?)

Dialogue between Bill McKibben and Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma

(Warning: the following is even more heavily edited and paraphrased than the last section)

MP: This is fine to tell a culture that already has so much, but what about all the people around the world who are striving to achieve the consumptive example we've set? Can we just tell them not to want stuff? What do we do?

BM: Our chief export is the image of the American Dream through TV and film, but there simply aren't enough resources to accomodate the demand. Going back to the topic of food, there are lots of innovative, sustainable practices that are more productive. One problem is that we've confused 2 kinds of productivity, yield/$ invested and yield/acre. The industrial food economy relies exclusively on the prices of inputs, and aims to maximize yield/$. Small farms that produce a variety of crops and animals can yield more per acre than vast monoculture tracts, without degrading the soil or polluting watersheds. (This is a big deal, people)

MP: But don't we need industrialization of food to maximize efficiency as the world's population continues to rise?

BM: If that growth in efficiency could be sustained forever, that's one thing, but history shows that gains are always temporary, lead to more problems, and require more chemicals, more inputs, to keep pushing yields up. Working with the uniqueness of local ecosystems, rather than trying to destroy them, keeps giving good yields year after year, no matter what the price of natural gas-fueled fertilizer is. It's not like eating localy is some crazy idea: "it's worth remembering that 50 years ago everyone ate locally, and 90% of people worldwide still do."

MP: There's talk of another revolution in agriculture, this time based around genetically modified organisms (GMOs) instead of chemicals.

BM: The metrics by which we measure success need to change. We're so convinced that the ends we puruse are correct just because they're possible. To frame a push for sustainability or organic farming as giving up modernity is wrong. It's more a question of trajectory: what course we choose, what we invest in as a society, and how we lead the world. China and India could follow either the European or American model of development, and if they all decide they want to drive their Hummers to the suburbs, it's game over. (Note: his actual quote was "…Plan A isn't possible. If that's all we can think of, we're going to drive off a cliff.")

What, no more?

This is long enough already, so I'll spare you the Q&A (unless the comments explode with requests), but there is one last thing. Bill McKibben, as a writer and professor in rural Vermont, has close ties to his community, and strongly believes that community action is the only way to create enough pressure (well, at least until the frequency of disasters and weather weirdness increases) to compel government to act in the interest of our society. He's using the power of the internet to build a National Day of Climate Action, to be held on April 14th at hundreds of rallies across the country. If you want to get involved (there are over 950 events currently planned), go to the Step It Up 2007 website at stepitup07.org.