Politicizing the Environmental Debate, 2000–2017 239
the Forest Stewardship Council, or FCS, and
the Marine Stewardship Council, or, MSC. The
product certification programs were launched
separately by consortiums made up of corpora-
tions and environmental groups. As such, they
are the product of compromise, deal-making,
and behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing
that critics say have done a disservice to the very
nature they set out to protect. While both labels
have prominent environmental supporters, their
detractors say the FSC and the MSC are half-
measures that mislead the public but won’t head
off extinctions.Source: Christine MacDonald, Green, Inc.: An
Environmental Insider Reveals How a Good Cause Has
Gone Bad (Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2008),
pp. 54-56.leaders, who run businesses with interests in
many far-flung places, have found a proactive
sustainability stance can help avoid costly envi-
ronmental accidents, avert PR messes when
they occur, and mute protests, particularly in
developing countries, where the bulk of the
world’s raw materials and finished goods come
from these days.
But some ask whether sustainability makes
any sense in nature conservation, where ancient
forests, oceans, fresh water, and other natural
resources have been taken to the brink of col-
lapse after human exploitation dating back
millennia. How to harvest these resources sus-
tainably is a concept that has eluded humankind
for centuries.
Two projects that illustrate the dilemma of
how to strike a truly “sustainable” balance are
DOCUMENT 166: LEED and the Green Building
Revolution (2008, 2010)Buildings consume vast amounts of energy in both their construction and operation. According to some
estimates, they generate close to half the carbon emissions of the United States, as well as 12 percent of all
freshwater use, 30 percent of all raw materials use, 45-65 percent of waste output to land fills, and 74 percent of
electricity consumption. In the 1990s, as concern about global warming and the need to conserve energy became
widespread, communities began adding green building standards to their building codes, and in 2008 California
became the first state to pass a statewide green building code.
The U.S. Green Building Council was founded by architects S. Richard Fedrizzi, David Gottfried, and Mike
Italiano as a nonprofit trade organization whose purpose was to encourage a reduction in the construction and
operation costs of new buildings. The retrofitting of old buildings was quickly added to its agenda.A. Richard Fedrizzi on the Founding
of the Green Building Council and its
LEED Certification Program (2008)
A revolution is going on all over this land, and
it’s about time! It is transforming the market-
place for buildings, homes and communities,
and it is part of a larger sustainability revolu-
tion that will transform just about everything
we know, do, and experience over the next few
decades. This revolution is about green building,
and its aim is nothing less than to fundamen-
tally change the built environment by creating
energy-efficient, healthy, productive buildings
that reduce or minimize the significant impacts
of buildings on urban life and on local, regional
and global environments.
In 1993 the U.S. Green Building Coun-
cil (USGBC) was founded to drive this change,
and in 2000 we launched the LEED (Leadership
in Energy and Environmental Design) Green
Building Rating System to provide a common
definition and way to measure green buildings. A
point-based system LEED rates buildings accord-
ing to key environmental attributes such as site
impacts, energy and water use, materials and
resource conservation, and indoor air quality.