What does climate change denial look like? A pig in a tux.

The Greenwash Brigade

Though their mission ironically embraces “sustainable development,” the Commercial Real Estate Development Association (NAIOP) is trying to scuttle efforts to improve building energy efficiency. Maybe this is good news. Coby Beck identifies 5 stages of climate change denial:

It’s not happening
It’s happening, but we don’t know why
It’s happening, but it’s natural
It’s happening, it’s not natural, but it’s not bad
It’s happening, it’s not natural, it’s bad, but we can’t stop it

Just as we’re coming to terms with the fact that buildings are responsible for over half of our energy use in the US (and the associated emissions), the NAIOP has clearly embraced Stage 5: it’s bad but we can’t stop it.

Architect Ed Mazria lambastes NAOIP’s recently released study in an article titled, “A Hog in a Tuxedo is Still a Hog, the NAIOP Disinformation Study.” Mazria points out how the NAIOP study cooked the books, by leaving out no cost, low cost, and cost-saving energy efficiency strategies.

“Clearly, this study is meant to confuse the public and stall meaningful legislation, insuring that America remains dependent on foreign oil, natural gas and dirty conventional coal.”

Check out Mr. Mazria’s recent testimony to the Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources to learn more about how building energy efficiency can create green collar jobs, reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, address global climate change, and save money. (a win-win-win-win)

March 18, 2009 by Jim Nicolow
3 comments

tags: 2030 Challenge Architecture 2030 climate change disinformation Ed Mazria green jobs NAIOP

Comments (3)

Allen R Gentry | Respond
March 19, 2009 5:31 AM PT

Here are some more climate change denials that are being used:

We will be raptured to heaven and all the sinners will be left with a scorched Earth. No problem.

Several meteorologists with the Weather Channel have admitted that global warming is made up.

Half the scientists in the world admit that it is not really happening. The other half are liberals and cannot be believed.

I just ask those people back, when the US is a vast desert, and food transforms from our chief export to our main import, and you finally admit that global warming is real, do you really think I would sell what food I have for just money? What good is money going to be?

oracle2world | Respond
March 23, 2009 6:33 AM PT

Okay, how about these questions.

1. Are effects from rising CO2 swamped by the water vapor/cloud feedback mechanism? 2. Compared to other disasters (total thermonuclear war, bird flu, extinction meteor strike, Yellowstone supervolcano, gamma-ray burst, mega tsunamis, etc.) how worried should anyone be about global warming?

The bottom line is that people adapt to long slow change - it is the abrupt threats that challenge us. The Yellowstone supervolcano is overdue to erupt. It would spread a cloud of ash that would cool things dramatically for many years and affect food production, probably significantly.

A small global warming of a few degrees spread over hundreds of years ... just isn't much of a threat no matter how you cut it.

And please spare me the future predictions that read like something out of the Book of Revelations. They are just WAGs (wild-a**ed guesses), nothing more. There are winners and losers in climate change and no one knows exactly where, when, and to what extent who wins and who loses in the future.

But I would like to commend you for your recognition of Greenwash. The US has spent an enormous amount of effort to clean up its natural environment over the years through a grind-it-out-process. And unsupported end-of-world stuff about climate change is making a laughing stock out of the environmental movement.

Gordon Maupin | Respond
March 24, 2009 4:43 PM PT

oracle2world is probably hired by the energy companies and other organizations that profit from any failure to address climate change.

They actually employ people to sound informed and make arguments like the ones used by oracle2world.

The tactic is to sound informed and reasonable and keep less informed people from understanding the seriousness of the climate change problem.

I hope oracle2world is paid well. I couldn't be paid enough to be that dishonest.

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Meet the Greenwash Brigade

Our hand-picked environmental professionals, each part of the Public Insight Network, are on the hunt for "greenwash" as they examine eco-friendly claims by companies, governments and other groups. They ask tough questions about the mainstreaming of green, from the perspectives of people in the trenches who are focused on these issues 24/7.

Jim Nicolow is a nationally recognized expert on sustainable design and leads the sustainability initiative for Lord, Aeck & Sargent, overseeing the incorporation of sustainable design strategies and features into the firm’s design projects. He is a LEED® Accredited Professional with extensive knowledge of the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) LEED rating system.

Janne K. Flisrand has worked as an affordable housing and urban planning research consultant for five years, primarily supporting local non-profits. Her focus is on transit, transit-oriented design, affordable housing, and sustainability. Currently, she’s the program coordinator for Minnesota Green Communities, a program promoting affordable, healthy, sustainably built housing throughout Minnesota.

Dennis Markatos-Soriano recently completed a Master's in Public Affairs at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School. He is now launching Sustainable Energy Transition (SET) to help individuals and institutions move from dependence on oil and gas to an efficient use of renewables. Previously, he co-founded SURGE (Students United for a Responsible Global Environment), which aims to bring young progressives together across issues of environmental and social justice throughout North Carolina and beyond. In the summer of 2006, he helped to start a small green company, Greenway Pedicabs, to provide a greenhouse gas-free transportation option for people in the Triangle of North Carolina.

Heidi Siegelbaum is a principal with Calyx Sustainable Tourism and works primarily on advancing sustainable tourism practices. She also specializes in science translation, cross-border indicators with Canada, cross-disciplinary planning and environmental technical assistance to businesses. Previously, she was in-house legal counsel for EPA for industrial chemicals and biotechnology and the senior performance measure analyst with the Washington State Department of Ecology. She is on the technical advisory committee of the Seattle Culinary Academy and a long standing member of the Chefs Collaborative.

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