A few years ago, I was moderating a panel discussion on green buildings at an ASHRAE meeting of the Cleveland chapter, when after a few hours of dithering discussions on costs, benefits, and performance data, an engineer in the audience piped up and said, "If green were to just become fashionable, people would buy it." Well, thanks a lot, buddy. The green movement has indeed become faddish and fashionable. Green is gold, the new black, and the new denim. Some are even wrapping the red, white, and blue in green. With all this green, the movement has become a gag reflex. Who could be surprised? This is, afterall, America, where media coverage and public sentiment can ramp up from scarcity and ambivalence spanning years to saturation and fervor overnight. What shifted the paradigm, moving green's cheese past the tipping point? Was it Vanity Fair's "Special Green Issue" of April 2006, which featured Julia Roberts, George Clooney, and Al Gore on the cover? Or was it in 2003 at the Academy Awards when Harrison Ford and other Hollywood stars hatched out of chauffeur-driven Priuses? Or did the tens of thousands of LEED APs and Greenbuild attendees make a difference en masse? The origin matters not; what's more important is what will happen when the fad fades.
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