Green is for real.. not that you didn't know it....

As followers of this blog know, I am a fan of things “green” and have brought the different “green” angles to light as they have come up. Well without question, last week, the whole “green” movement went speeding into the mainstream. This no longer is a movement promoted by hippies and geeks… it is EVERYWHERE. Case in point, NBC dedicated an entire week to it. Promoted being “green” during all of their programming and even had special episodes of shows like ER and Las Vegas with major “green” themes running through them. By doing that, NBC easily raised awareness of this effort incredibly. Between changing their logo for the week to an all green hue, to having public service announcements in virtually every show, to even trying to conserve energy during their football pre game show, NBC made an effort. Now granted, they’ll now cut down a huge tree to use for thousands of electric sapping Christmas lights, but at least last week they got it. What does this mean for us? More LEED and GBI submittals, more effort to get products that both meet these standards AND (most importantly) provide energy efficiency on to jobs. There is no doubt that we are in the early days of a pretty interesting movement. Now maybe I can convince the wife to get the waterless urinal….

Elsewhere….

-- Two views on the economy… the New York Times, who have been on both sides, here says “its not as bad as you think”- (CLICK HERE)

But the guy who predicted the Tech Bubble burst among other dead on predictions says “Its gonna be ugly… for a while…” (CLICK HERE)

I want to be an optimist… I really do… but this economy does scare the you know what out of me! By the way I think the 2nd article (bad news) is actually the more convincing piece.

-- Best wishes for a quick recovery to Julie Ruth. Julie fell ill a week or so ago and is off the job. If you do not know her, Julie is one of the industry’s most respected code consultants currently working with AAMA. She also writes a monthly piece in one of the trades. In any case, thoughts and prayers with Julie and her family. Get well soon!

-- I have followed the EE Global Forum that Megan Headley has headlined in the last two days of USGNN. Today’s post featured Chris Mathis. Chris is one of the folks that really wanted the Titanic… errrr the CMA program from NFRC. (you know to police us unsophisticated folk) Anyway, his take in the article today was interesting as he talked about how there is a “resistance to change” and so on. NO CHRIS… there is a resistance to people like you and groups like the NFRC who want to profit unduly on the backs of legitmate businesses. See quite simply, there's not many sane people in this world who would not want to push value added energy efficient products, but not be FORCED into it and have to follow an insane, complex and expensive plan to do so. That’s why there’s resistance. It's like I was told by the DOE once.. "you guys don't like making Low E because it's too hard" That is/was such a crock it hurts. Commercial people want to sell the good stuff, if they don't they're crazy. So no resistance here my man...

-- And as for the code guys, no doubt enforcement is the key, but so is education. But unfortunately that gets left to the side because of the agenda of others and that is too bad. You know like the NFRC giving “someone” 60K to do the education when they are a board member of yours… and he’s educating who on what? (the wrong people on a program years away from existing) Then again the NFRC educating a code official on a commercial product would be a disaster.. and hilarious since they'd have to actually learn the commercial business....(Sorry guys, much different than res windows!) By the way, the one thing Chris said and I agree with, and many people miss, is what do we do about the millions of sq ft of existing properties that have the worst possible building products in them? Now THAT is a huge and legit problem. I wish he’d spend his ample time on that one, instead of trying to develop police actions on legit professional industries.

-- NFRC overall… nah I leave it at the above.. I am still OD’ing on them right now. Though my traffic, e mail and phone calls would disagree.

-- Football pick- a “push” last week with the Dolphins. This week… take the up and down Lions to bounce back at home vs the Giants.

Video of the week, is a quick football flavor. When Indianapolis missed a field goal at the end of the game last week… listen to the hometown call (over the video) I just love the play by play guys reaction…. And I too thought it was good- so can’t blame him.