In my new book, The Godfather of Green: An Eco-Spiritual Memoir, I included an Epilogue in the form of an open letter to today’s young climate strikers. What had I learned from the environmental and green building movements that I could share with them, that would help them to confront humanity’s most significant challenge: living together peacefully on a fully habitable planet?

After I began to write books about green building in 2006, I began speaking internationally, first in Australia, soon thereafter in Europe, then Singapore, the Middle East and finally Africa. During this decade as an international keynote speaker, I had many adventures. Here’s one of them.

By 2005, I knew that green building represented the future of commercial property development, but there was very little construction going green in Arizona when I arrived in the spring of 2006. It took a few years, but developers finally got the message.

#Black Lives Matter #Climate Emergency #Coronavirus It’s only June, but already we can see in these #hashtags the dimensions of a year of tremendous disruption and a year with the opportunity for unprecedented transformation, not only in the U.S. but globally. The U.S. Presidential election in November is the yet-to-be-constructed fourth pillar of this year of massive change.

The Great (Green) Wall: In March 2005, USGBC sponsored a trade mission, sending leading green building professionals to China to create more buzz around green building. I joined the group, taking along my colleague from Interface Engineering, Zhonghu Li, a native Mandarin speaker and former Chinese academic.

In 2000, Nathan Good, FAIA, and I became co-directors of Green Building Services in Portland, one of the first green-building consulting firms in the country. Our first hire was a young architect, Alan Scott, FAIA, LEED Fellow, who was active in the local AIA Committee on the Environment and a passionate advocate for sustainable design. Excited by how many building types LEED could potentially certify, Nathan, Alan and I enthusiastically promoted the green building and environmental agenda to Portland’s leading architects and developers.

In my new book, The Godfather of Green: An Eco-Spiritual Odyssey, I recount my experience as a pioneer in the green building movement, starting with co-founding the first chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council, Cascadia, in 1998, encompassing Oregon, Washington and British Columbia and continuing through the creation of Greenbuild in 2001-2002, still the country’s largest green building conference and trade show.

Here is the third of five excerpts from the book.

Watching the green building movement grow in the late 1990s and early 2000s was like watching a plane take off. For the first third of the takeoff run—the slow roll—not much appears to be happenin. It’s easy to think, this will never get off the ground. During the next third, the plane is clearly moving faster, and you start to think—maybe now there’s a chance. As it accelerates toward the end of the runway, it lifts off quickly.

So pleased to have had the chance to give an interview to a dynamic editor, Sasha Frate, in the latest issue of the international lifestyle magazine, Face the Current. Here’s an excerpt. You can read the entire interview here.

In the Epilogue to my new book, The Godfather of Green: An Eco-Spiritual Memoir, in which I address a young climate activist in the form of an open letter, I ask whether we can find a way forward that offers a sustainable solution to the climate crisis, one that integrates love, respect and compassion with effective action.