Hartmann tells a story of how the struggle between corporate power and individual rights has gone on for centuries, and has never been satisfactorily resolved. Much legal history in this book: corporations (starting with a milestone case in 1886 where the Southern Pacific Railroad claimed and (strangely), sued Santa Clara, California, arguing that they were being unfairly taxed, that corporations are protected by the 14th amendment, which guarantees the right of all persons to equal protection, without respect to color or creed. (it was passed after the civil war ended, to keep former black slaves from being treated as property) After that, corporations had all rights of a natural person (i.e. free speech, etc.)

Corporations can’t be jailed and they are immortal. If a corporation hurts or kills someone, they can’t be held accountable by jail or a death penalty. They are only answerable to their shareholders, so profit takes precedence over good citizenship. Not good for us real persons.

Corporations are concentrating power (with money). Because they pay much less in taxes than individual citizens, they have an advantage. This is where it gets disturbing. Keep in mind that taxes are an extremely contentious subject, especially today.

Corporations spend a lot of money spreading information through advertising (or mis-information).

Look at News Corporation, the owner of Fox News. They have a large audience eager to believe what Fox says about taxation. But there is a corporate agenda at work. They are expressing corporate opinion, disguising it as unbiased reporting.

Fox News hates the left, and tell us that President Obama is a radical, that he was not born in the US, that he and the Democrats are conspiring against the people. But their “conservative” slant is a sham! They are in it to divert attention from what is important. By diverting attention to these side issues, they are actually enhancing big corporate power and .

News Corporation loves to talk about the “TEA” party”. Islamic mosques in Manhattan and gay marriage? How awful. Privatizing social security? Repealing medicare improve it? Great, lets roll the clock back. It would help large corporations profits,

NO APOLoGIES to Big oil and big coal companies. We don’t need more public subsidy of gas and oil. We do need a more sustainable infrastructure and building stock.

Remember that President Bush and his allies were in charge for 7 years before our national economy started south. The so-called conservatives have no right to complain. They got a trillion dollar tax cut in 2001, they started an unnecessary trillion dollar war in Iraq. They bailed out the banks with a 700 billion dollar program.

Leftist conspiracy? Socialist President? Hunh?

• active and passive solar heating,
• air conditioning,
• historic building preservation
• human factors like indoor air quality

I first learned how to do an energy model with pencil and paper. It was very exciting to learn how to design and justify energy conservation measures. Then the Energy Crisis went away about 1982. The energy recovery methods that I thought were so cool were no longer needed or cost effective. But the career path open to me was still basically HVAC controls and design. So, this is what I did, and this is what I do.

To be sure, most, if not all, of my professional peers are schooled in mechanical engineering. ( and they possess a B.S. Mechanical Engineering). I do not have that specialization. However, I am uniquely qualified and experienced.

Like many professional engineers today, my desire is to serve the design and construction industry. Many people do not remember the 1970s. I prepared for an energy shortage then, and I remain ready to help attack the problems of this new energy crisis.

1. Serve as a high level resource on the latest science and art of building, or introduce you to one. Knowledge includes minimizing building energy (carbon) footprint via energy recovery, advanced control approaches , daylighting design, indoor air quality, ventilation, cogeneration, photovoltaic systems, etc.
2. Recommend energy-efficient design solutions and technologies, including lighting, HVAC, building envelope measures and passive solar and ventilation measures.
3. Validate and summarize energy audits of existing facilities by third parties.
4. Identify various alternative energy conservation measures and predict energy usage based on energy modeling. Includes economic analysis and financial projections with payback.
5. Work with the design and construction teams, sharing and validating others energy models (compliant with DOE-2 and BIM GbXML) as third party reviewer.
6. Provide documents and regular verification required for obtaining LEED energy credits.
7. Work closely with you on alternative solutions for building and system energy usage.

LEED for Homes connects to this effort www.greenhomeguide.org is a new web site with some great potential.

XHB- Homebuilders index

I am talking about the new and improved version of Autodesk Revit MEP that came out in April last year and was updated massively in the fall.

I am learning a lot from a variety of sources, among them, the Revit groups at Linkedin.com and the Autodesk user group forums www.AUGI.com
The past 12 -16 months seem to have produced a flood of development and implementation with respect to MEP. FINALLY.

I am catching up but its like drinking from a fire hose.

Most of our relatives lived in NY, so my family used to drive through New Jersey to New York , home to some of the most obviously polluted areas in the world, with all manner of oil refineries, chemical plants, chemical dumps etc. I learned the different impacts of different factories, I could even tell you where we were by the smell. The chemical plants used to gag you if you caught a whiff while driving by on the turnpike.

The event that got me really stirred about this was the first Earth Day in 1970. Coincidentally at that time, I had a teacher who asked us to read a book entitled “Silent Spring”, by Rachel Carson. This book really opened my eyes to our destructive impact on the birds, and by extension, all of the environment. I understood that we were building a technology that was unsustainable in the long run and eventually would destroy us.

I decided at that point, at age 16, that I had to do something about it. I went on to college, majored in environmental design, and took as many courses as I could relevant to environmental conservation and energy efficiency. I gravitated to HVAC engineering after graduation and since I have always tried to design the most energy efficient solutions. Signifying my commitment to this, I became a LEED accredited professional in 2006. My career has been, and will continue to be focused on energy efficient, sustainable building designs, and reducing our societies impact on the planet to net zero..

Green and sustainable have been relatively underdeveloped concepts until the last 10 years. In fact, there are recent standards to apply to building design and performance. LEED certification is a good standard that I support. Energy Star status for buildings is another standard that I like.

There is an amazing explosion of marketing of the so called green building components. Its a hot and popular concept. There are marketing campaigns by manufacturers proclaiming grand visions of their green product making a greener world. Some border on false. Many are totally absent of verification. Then again, some big names are cleaning up their “environmental footprint” – and displaying a conscientious approach to business. But a great number of smaller mfrs have yet to prove their products are really green and produced with “green” practices. They could be more honest in their marketing too.

I digress. The point is that uncertainty as to the meaning of the words green and sustainable , mostly in the press, can obscure the discussion.

The end objective would be a society built upon a sustainable economy and technology. The very definition of sustainable implies, to me, that humans can live comfortably on this planet for many millions of years to come. With that in mind, anything is possible. The concept of “Green” building design happens to be one of those possibilities.

As it turns out, Michael Ivanovich, in this blog article at Consulting Engineers magazine entitled, Sustainable semantics summarizes this subject fairly well.