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Dear Whoever Thinks They Are Saving the Planet,

Do your homework immediately. New residential construction isn't
perfect, some of the water run off is slighlty dirty (just like the
run off from your neighbor down the streety who just washed his
car), some of the materials used in the homes may still be
unhealthy (but believe me, they're working on that too) and some of
the lumber used may not be from sustainable forestry (however you'd
be quite shocked to find out how much actually is), 

but good lord have you not looked around your city, your county,
or your entire state to see how skyscrapers and other large
commerical buildings are sucking the life out of our resources! 

Water, electricity and indoor environmental air quality are just
some of the more obvious issues screaming to be addressed in these
warehouses of waste.

Environmentalists are concerned with saving the eart so that more
people, more generations of human kind can enjoy their great gift
of life on a clean, healthy support system for that life. That's an
outstanding mission, who can argue against that? But what about the
people who are alive right now! Help the office workers breathe
cleaner indoor air and simultaneously help the environment by
addressing the real construction related issue: EXISTING COMMERCIAL
BUILDINGS! And for the love of Pete and his long list of relatives'
sake, stop picking on homebuilders! They aren't your biggest
concern!

If you run the numbers, you will see that solving the problems of
large commercial properties is priority number one next to somehow
grappling with the 800 pound gorillas that go by the name of
transportation and coal burning energy plants. It's merely a matter
of being focused on net results, not easy prey such as new home
builders who have recently "put themselves out there" and thus made
themselves a more convenient target for supposed environmentalists.


Someone you know works for John Laing or Shea or William Lyon or
some other homebuilder that started as nothing more than a family
with a dream to make a living building homes. And now, decades
later, after building a legacy of excellent products within the
guidelines and often above the guidelines of public policy, they
are being constantly subjected to libel, slander, abusive and
malicious lawsuits and all the while their teams are completely
focused on innovative solutions to the challenges of taking from
the earth to build our undeniable need for shelter and doing so in
such away that allows them to buy a shelter of their own. So please
see that person you know as a good person and redirect your
energies to making a quantifiably larger impact on the environment
with your efforts and aim your passion at commercial properties.
Get serious about making a difference now, the homebuilders are
already getting it 90 to 99% right. Move on to the major commercial
property owners who are probably doing next to nothing...

Sincerely,

Kevin Ralph Ward,
Aspiring Sustainability Manager. (And just a plain old dude who
thinks homebuilders are cool people who society is asking to fund
the solutions for so many problems they never created in the first
place)