2006 A Very Green Year

Two thousand six has been a banner year for publicizing the threat of global warming and other issues near and dear to those in the green building movement. It started in January at the Sundance Film Festival with the release of “An Inconvenient Truth,” Al Gore's powerful PowerPoint on global warming. Soon the consumer media were all over the “GW” issue. Vanity Fair did an entire “green” issue, with a green cover featuring Gore, George Clooney, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and a leaf-bedecked Julia Roberts. Even Surfing Magazine chimed in with a green issue that asked the penetrating question, “Where Did Pipeline Go? How Global Warming Will Change Everything”—“everything” presumably referring to the best spots to hang ten.

In these pages, the editors of Building Design+Construction offer constructive insights on a number of technical developments in the green building field. Accompanying the issue is our fourth White Paper on Sustainability, entitled “Green Buildings and the Bottom Line,” which explores the fundamental question, Are green buildings more valuable than conventional buildings?

See you at Greenbuild in Denver!