July column for Builder & Developer magazine now online

My column for the July 2014 issue of Builder and Developer magazine is now posted online.

For this issue, entitled "Green Building Takes on Climate Change," I reviewed the June report released from The Risky Business Project and what that could mean for the building industry.  An excerpt:

In late 2013, a trio of business leaders including Michael Bloomberg, Hank Paulson and investment fund billionaire Tom Steyer teamed up to found the Risky Business Project with a simple mandate: Determine the potential consequences for the U.S. economy without significant changes in the way we consume and deploy natural resources...

Several years ago, the NAHB conducted its own research into the effects of housing and homebuilding on GHG emissions using data from the Department of Energy, the Census Bureau and other agencies. The association hired its own researchers and economists to review existing data on density, land-use patterns and vehicle usage.

What they concluded was that given the complexity of building communities, caution is strongly recommended as choices are made about the future due primarily to the law of unintended consequences. Solutions that may seem simple on the surface are actually much more complex, and would involve various tradeoffs that could create new problems to solve...

To read the entire column, click here.

To read the entire July 2014 issue in digital format, click here.