[Greenbuilding] Consumer Reports unbiased?

[tom]

On May 3, 2008, at 12:56 AM, greenbuilding-request at listserv.repp.org  
wrote:

> -Bob Korves
> P.S.  I have similar concerns with this group.  This is a group  
> with quite a
> few professional builders and designers, which is a good thing  
> because one
> can ask questions to professional people that do the type of work  
> that is
> related to the question asked -- and that is great.  What I really  
> notice,
> though, is that most of the questions from the professionals are  
> asking
> about products to sell to their clients.  Now, that makes sense, I  
> guess,
> but what is interesting is that rarely do I see answers that advise  
> the use
> of other than a new, commercial product.  I understand that the  
> client has
> asked for something, and you are trying to provide it, and that is  
> how you
> make your living, but sometimes the honest thing to do is to  
> recommend doing
> without entirely.  I don't much hear that option on this group,  
> like I do on
> end user populated green groups.  It's really too bad that  
> greenbuilding has
> to buy into the consumer economy, just with a different set of  
> products.
> Flame Suit  <ON>


Couldn't agree more.  This list is on the lighter shade end of the  
'green' continuum, which isn't to say I haven't found much good  
information here, but for the most part the list seems firmly rooted  
in the current dominant overall paradigm and tends toward  
technological and product-based 'tweaks' to extract incremental  
advantages of efficiency within a system that is showing signs of an  
inability to address the problems we're facing.  But as we work  
toward a system of living and being that can properly address these  
problems we do need these techno-fixes and product-based tweaks in  
the transition, so it serves a great purpose.