Dire Global Warnings Inspire Promising Antidotes to 'Civilization'
Green visionaries, absent a crystal globe to predict with certainty how much greening the construction industry should do to redress past crimes against the planet and to prevent more, are a bit blindfolded in their quest for practical, achievable and economical ways to stem pollution, resource depletion and climate change. That isn’t stopping them. While scientists ban together to convince die-hard skeptics that human use of fossil fuels is the major contributor to global warming, enlightened politicians, owners, architects, engineers, contractors, equipment makers and material suppliers are making their way, somewhat in the dark, toward greener horizons.
The journey hasn’t been and isn’t an easy one. But thanks to public-consciousness raisers, among them the latest report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth, a groundswell of support is beginning to be seen.