World Green Building Week is being kicked off by countries all over the globe. The U.S. Green Building Council — our green liaison to the rest of the world — is happy to report that it is doing its part by “helping move the green economy debate forward, locally and globally, through its participation in a series of events this fall.” Those events include the Greenbuild International Conference & Expo in Toronto, which runs from Oct 4-7.
So what exactly happens during Green Building Week? USGBC is short on details, other than to make the above statement and schedule events like Greenbuild, which — truth be told — is a pretty amazing event.
Still, I’d like to see a little more action taken on the global scale this week or do away with the week altogether. It gets a little tiresome when every week is being celebrated for this or that but so little is done to actually recognize the week for what it’s built up to be. This is so much more the case with something like “green building,” or “green anything,” for that matter, given the serious knock that the green industry recently took with the high-profile bankruptcy of solar start-up Solyndra, LLC, less than two years after Obama visited the plant and helped secure hundreds of millions in federal loans to the company. As one interviewee on NPR noted, green jobs is the “poisoned chalice” for politicians these days.
So hopefully World Green Building Week, the USGBC and events like Greenbuild will help restore the country’s — and the world’s — faith in the green industry. It’s way too early to be turning our back on all the benefits that have come — and will continue to come — from that corner.
Credit: USGBC
