As a society, we’re good about setting some big goals. Putting a man on the moon, developing an information superhighway, cutting carbon emissions as a means to combat climate change-these are laudable and in the case of the first two, already achieved.
But what we sometimes forget is that these “big” goals are only achieved through slow, hard work and a series of intermediate steps, without which, we’d never have made it. In the case of climate change, the fact that buildings generate 40 percent of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions means we simply won’t succeed unless we dramatically improve the energy performance of buildings. An important step will be to address the bread-and-butter rules governing how buildings are designed and constructed: building codes.