Recently revealed emails suggest that climate change experts may have exaggerated science data to overstate claims for geologic climate change.  Does this mean green building and innovation will be tossed out the window?  Will we return to the status quo - which I’ve seen in the last year to include businesses failing, foreclosures and bank bail-outs.  This can’t possibly be related to climate change can it?

When I think of climate change, I imagine rising temperatures, melting of the ice caps, lack of water in many parts of the world, but I don’t associate it with green building.  After reading multiple news reports and op-ed’s I get the feeling that most people lump climate and sustainability all together. 

Just yesterday the Sustainable Sites Initiative unveiled the first national rating system for sustainable landscapes. This system covers all three sections of the process: design, construction, and maintenance and applies to both sites with or without buildings. It was made possible through a partnership with the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, and the US Botanic Garden.

Nancy Somerville, the current Executive Vice President and CEO of ASLA explains that "while the carbon-neutral performance remains the holy grail for green buildings, sustainable landscapes move beyond a do-no-harm approach." What she is referring to is the ability of natural landscapes to sequester carbon and filter out toxics in the environment. Carbon dioxide, as many people are aware by now, is a potent green house gas (GHG) that has just recently been named by the EPA as a toxic gas that must be regulated. Plants naturally take up carbon in the atmosphere in order to give off valuable oxygen. In addition vegetation act as natural filters that trap and break down chemicals in the environment, especially in water before it permeates to subterranean groundwater.