Desmond Tutu, Van Jones Open Greenbuild on Optimistic Note

Here’s the dirty little secret of green business: What makes sense for the environment often makes sense for the bottom line. In green buildings, up-front investments in energy efficiency pay for themselves in energy savings.

Some cynics have written off the green revolution as opportunism fueled by escalating energy costs and cheap capital. Drive down energy prices, choke off capital markets and the fad will go away.
A month ago you could have counted me among the cynics, but after the first full day of Greenbuild, I’m a green true believer. Not only is attendance at the continent’s largest green building tradeshow breaking records, but spirits are high.

Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu set a provocative tone in his opening address. “It is becoming part of the fabric of our morality that causing harm to the environment is as egregious as a human rights violation.”

Overstatement? Perhaps. Inspiring to hear it from a man who fought apartheid? Definitely.

Later, author and Green for All president Van Jones called the green energy the foundation of America’s future prosperity. The U.S. will replace consumerism with local production, overreliance on credit with thrift, and environmental destruction with environmental conservation, Jones said. He called Barack Obama the country’s “first green president” and prevailed on his administration to keep its promises to cap carbon, retrofit American homes and buildings (“The biggest weapon in the new green economy will be a calk gun.”) and overhaul the American power grid.

The Dow may have dropped below 8,000 today, but word from the Boston Convention Center was full speed ahead. If business is slow for America’s green builders, you wouldn’t know it from here.

Tomorrow: highlights from the Expo floor.