Green FAQs

1. What is Global Warming?

   Today, some of the most challenging environmental threats confronting the United States and the rest of the world are less obvious, hiding in the plain sight and taking their toll gradually. The loss of rain forests and other wildlife habitat is a daily nibble. The millions of dribbling nozzles at gas stations are polluting America’s coastal marshes with one-and-a-half super tanker loads of petroleum every year.
   
   But there is no “slow drip” as potentially serious as global warming - the decades-long rise in average temperature of the earth. Global temperature is calculated by tracking thousands of readings from around the world, year after year, and distilling them down to a single temperature, which is now about 59 degrees Fahrenheit.
   
   Earth’s temperature rose about 1 degree Fahrenheit over the 20th century, but the rate of warming in the last 30 years is three times the average rate of warming for the last hundred years. And 2005 appears to have beaten 1998 as the warmest year on Earth in at least a century of measuring.

2. What is “Greenhouse” Effect?

   In 2001, a group of more than 1,000 scientists from around the world (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) concluded that most of the warming since 1950 was probably caused by a buildup in the atmosphere of carbon dioxide and other gases that trap heat in to the atmosphere.
   
   These invisible gases let sunlight through, but they prevent some of the resulting heat from radiating back out to space. Because they behave like panes in a greenhouse, they are called greenhouse gases, and their influence on the Earth’s temperature is called the greenhouse effect. All others things being equal, the higher the concentration of such gases in the atmosphere, the warmer the planet gets.
   
   The world’s major sources of greenhouse emissions – The U.S., China, India, Europe, and Japan – remain divided on how to proceed. In the meantime, the world is poised to build about 800 new coal-burning power plants in the next several decades, millions of cars and SUV’s are being bought by the growing middle class, and experts say there is inadequate research underway to find new source of energy that would not heat up the planet.
   
   Former President Clinton gently chided the countries resisting binding steps to control green house gases, like the U.S. and China, and those squabbling over what to do after the Kyoto treaty (which requires cuts in emissions by about three dozen industrial powers) expires in 2012. Clinton said the world might be better off if everyone agreed to specific, smaller initiatives to develop and spread technologies that could greatly reduce emissions in both rich and poor counties. “If you can’t agree on a target, agree on a set of projects so everyone has something to do when they get up in the morning,” he said, “I think it’s crazy for us to play games with our children’s future.”

3. What is “Green” Design?

   The American Society of Heating Refrigerating, and Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning (ASHRAE) Green Guide defines a design that is “green” is one that is aware of and respects nature and the natural order of things; it is a design that minimizes the negative human impacts on the natural surroundings, materials, resources and processes that prevail in nature.
   
   It is not necessarily a concept that denies the need for any human impact, for human existence is a part of nature too. Rather, it endorses the belief that human kind can exist, multiply, build and prosper in accord with nature and the earth’s natural processes without inflicting irreversible damage to those processes and the long term habitability of the planet.

4. What is Sustainability?

   And this leads to the concept of sustainability, another green related term defined by the ASHRAE Green Guide. Sustainability is providing for the needs of the present without detracting from the ability to fulfill the needs of the future.
   
   The concepts of “green” design and “sustainability” have no absolutes: that is, they cannot be defined in black ands white terms. These terms are more useful when thought of as a mindset – a goal to be sought, a process to follow. Inducing owners, architects, contractors and designers of buildings, building systems and equipment to achieve green building design or sustainable design is something that can not be dictated.
   
   What can be done is to make people aware of these concepts and why they are important and to set forth some practical techniques to help practitioners achieve the goal of green design and thus make a significant contribution to the earth’s sustainability.

5. What is a “Green” Building?

   Buildings fundamentally impact people’s lives and the health of the planet. They use one-third of out total energy, two-thirds of our electricity, one-eighth of our water, and transform land that may provide valuable ecological function.
   
   How we design, construct, renovate and operate buildings today impacts what happens to future generations.
   
   Energy efficiency is of great importance. Equally significant are the materials used, what is emitted and discarded, the impact of on existing ecosystems, and the indoor environmental quality experienced by building occupants as measured by their comfort and productivity. Sustainable buildings achieve many objectives.
   
   A “green” building is one that achieves high performance, over the full life cycle, in the following areas:
   
   • Minimal consumption – due to reduction of need and more efficient utilization – of non-renewable natural resources, depletable energy resources, land water and other material as well.
   
   • Minimal atmospheric emissions having negative environmental impacts, especially those related to greenhouse gases, global warming, particulates, or acid rain.
   
   • Minimal discharge of harmful liquid effluents and solid wastes, including those resulting from the ultimate demolition of the building itself at the end of its useful life.
   
   • Minimal negative impact on the site ecosystems.
   
   • Maximum quality of indoor environment, including air quality, thermal comfort, illumination, acoustics/noise, and visual aspects.