Page 66 - Green Builder Magazine Jul-Aug 2021

TAILGATE
New Offerings for the Sustainable Minded

A Different,

Tragic Kind of

Groundbreaking

Ron Jones
Co-Founder and President
®
Green Builder Media
ron.jones@greenbuildermedia.com

BUILT
HE
It will take months, if not years, to come up with all the answers.
probably
ENVIRONMENT has
T never been so under the microscope than it is But already there are indications of flawed design and shoddy
construction, lax regulatory oversight and poor maintenance. The
at present. All buildings, particularly those that
provide residential shelter to billions of people
shocking pile of rubble was soon met with a wall of grief and vows
worldwide, come under increasing scrutiny with
from every quarter that this should never happen again; that no
rapidly accelerating frequency, and for very
one should ever feel such heartache.
good reasons.
Unfortunately, part of the legacy of the building industry is
that we prioritize short-term profits over goals such as durability,
Faced with the undeniable realities of climate
change and the extreme conditions brought on
that exceed the absolute minimum requirements for health
by natural systems stretched to the breaking
and safety.
point, it is no longer possible for anyone to take for granted any resiliency, performance, resource management and standards
responsibilities or basic expectations that we have regarding the In recent decades we have enjoyed the emergence of products,
safety and security of our homes. materials, systems and building science that combine to enable
Each year in the U.S., we see growing threats of natural disasters U.S. builders to construct housing that is the envy of the world.
to individual structures, whole neighborhoods and even entire But has our devotion to craft, and our commitment to quality
communities. Hopes, dreams, memories and financial resources and value, kept pace? Or have we, as an industry, shirked our
of countless families go up in smoke due to uncontrollable most basic responsibilities and abandoned our ethics strictly in
wildfires, suddenly becoming submerged, destroyed and swept the pursuit of profits?
away by flood waters, or being blown completely off the ground I am afraid that resolving the building industry’s problems—
by the fury of tornadoes and hurricanes. and within the buildings that we produce—will not be found
Perhaps even more tragic is the realization that we have allowed in boardrooms and shareholder meetings. Quarterly reports
our basic national infrastructures for delivering water, power, will continue to serve as the most-important metric for most of
sanitation, communication and safe transportation to deteriorate those folks.
to intolerable levels. And sadly, although we have the necessary If we hope to never again see the heartbreaking memorial
resources to reverse the decline, we have lacked the leadership tributes and the unspeakable grief on the faces of survivors, it
and the collective will to use them. will only happen one home and one builder at a time. GB
At the beginning of this summer, the nation was mesmerized by
images of a collapsed 12-story condominium building in Florida
that killed nearly 100 of our neighbors. News reporters and public
officials asked how such a tragedy could occur with a building that
was only a few decades old.

64 GREEN BUILDER July/August 2021 www.greenbuildermedia.com