As 10 presidential candidates descend on the city for the fifth Democratic presidential debate, former President Barack Obama is also in town, speaking to a collective of green building enthusiasts.
Obama is Wednesday’s keynote speaker at the annual Greenbuild International Conference and Expo at the Georgia World Congress Center. The former president has been the biggest advocate on the global stage for fighting climate change and is a supporter of social equity, one of the major themes of this year’s conference, said Mahesh Ramanujam, president and CEO of the U.S. Green Building Council, which presents the conference.
Ramanujam said after a quarter-century, it is time for the organization to shift the conversation about green building away from metrics and toward people.
“Instead of talking about energy efficiency and carbon reduction, we should talk in terms of people and their health. We have to really quantify the human health benefit and talk about buildings in terms of the people inside them,” Ramanujam said. “We know what equity means, but do we know what it means in the context of a green building?”
Obama joins other highlighted speakers including Bernice King, who on Tuesday connected her father’s 1966 fight for housing equality in Chicago to current efforts to make green building accessible to all. “Greenbuild, we are living in exciting and very promising times technologically; however, having the capacity to build better buildings green with renewable energy and being more efficient will be insufficient if there is no equal commitment to ensuring that there is access, affordability and inclusion in the building process for all people, especially vulnerable groups,” King said.
Wednesday through Friday, the conference offers a range of education sessions covering topics such as paint technology, buildings that can absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, green design in schools and how to update our country’s aging infrastructure. Other speakers include Jamie Margolin, the 17-year-old activist who founded the youth climate justice movement, Zero Hour; and Jeanne Gang, MacArthur Fellow and architect who founded Studio Gang, creators of architecture that connects people with each other and to their environment.
The U.S. Green Building Council was founded in 1993 to promote sustainability-focused practices in the building industry. In 2000, the member-based nonprofit unveiled its Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification program, which has become the most widely used green building rating system in the world. Prerequisites and credits are earned to obtain a certification level ranging from Certified to Platinum. Last year, the organization launched the Living Standard Initiative to emphasize inclusivity.
Atlanta, which recently met its 20% energy reduction goal ahead of its 2020 deadline, has a long history of sustainability. Atlanta-based Southface Institute, founded in 1978, is a leader in the Southeast for sustainability and helped the U.S. Green Building Council develop the LEED for homes certification program, said Andrea Pinabell, president of Southface, which will be honored with a leadership award at this year’s conference. Pinabell said as sustainability moves toward a health focus, as climate change is normalized, and as cities like Atlanta continue to make commitments to 100% clean energy, it is the perfect moment to focus on making sure sustainable building practices benefit everyone.
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