PrintDecember 10, 2010
Small Complicated Climate Building Codes
The Cancun Climate Summit organizers -- escaping frigid temperatures in Europe and North America -- have announced that "more nations may agree to cut emissions." It is easy to dismiss the climate change activists in international and national bodies who keep up a charade of playing in a game they have already lost. These goals are rarely met, and the unrealistic pledges are for the most part ignored as soon as their junkets end. We should not, however, be complacent. Progress (if you can call it that) is being made in state and municipal governments through a clever mechanism: residential and commercial building codes.Building codes are controlled by public safety bureaucracies, such as the Department of Public Safety in my home state of Massachusetts. They thus have an existing enforcement power: follow the rules or you don't get a building permit. Break the rules and you're in trouble. So far, building codes govern only new...(Read Full Article)
