By Andrew Himes
Director of Collective Impact, Carbon Leadership Forum
IMHO, one of the classic (funniest) cartoons of all time was Back Alley Oproar, produced in 1948 by Warner Brothers. Sylvester sings (and does other crazy stuff) in an alleyway, destroying Elmer Fudd’s sleep. Deeply tragic consequences ensue with Fudd’s extreme and ill-considered resistance to Sylvester’s operatic endeavors. The highlight of the cartoon (for me) comes at the 3:10 mark in the video, when Sylvester sings, “You never know where you’re going ‘til get there…”
Sylvester’s performance pushes me to reflect on the history of the CLF and embodied carbon. People have been making buildings out of low-carbon biogenic materials for thousands of years, of course. But it’s fair to date the inception of the modern US green building movement to 1993 with the first meeting of the US Green Building Council and the first glimmer of the LEED standard for buildings. In those early days, people talked about “sustainable materials,” but had no rigorous way to describe what such a material was, and no data or tools available to help compare or select low-carbon materials.
A significant date in CLF’s history was February 14th, 2011 (Valentine’s Day) with the announcement by Kate Simonen that CLF would be hosted at the University of Washington's College of Built Environments.