ARTICLE TWO
“The Origin of 'Green' "
Diane A. Davis, M.S., Ph.D. Cand.
copyright claimed August, 1990
The term “green” has become very popular
lately: green fuels, green materials, green products, green building design,
green jobs, green labor force, green economy.
The origin of the term “green” has arisen out of the U.S. Federal Government’s
LEEDSTM Program that affects all of us in society, but more especially
impacts architects, interior designers, engineers, building owners and real estate managers, scientists,
manufactures of products, processes and services, furniture, furnishings, chemical products such as paints, varnish, and
coatings.
As a result of the world's first environmental conservation
protocol signed between the U.S.A. and Canada, the U.S. Federal Government's initiative to implement a strategy of environmental
conservationism and especially to reduce air pollution, the U.S. LEEDS Program was instituted c 1989. With
this program in place, a national policy was set forth, the measures of which impact public health and sustainable building
design, manufacturing processes and manufactured products.
A key factor in the LEEDS Program is the goal of reducing the number of free-floating volatile
organic compounds (v.o.c.s) in the ambient air that we breathe. V.O.C.s contribute to ground-level ozone making
it hard to breathe on hot and humid days and can bring on an attack of chronic allergies such as asthma in both children and
adults, lower immune system responses to flus, viruses and colds, be a serious irritant to persons with upper respiratory
conditions such as COPD, lung disease, chronic bronchitis: all of which result in lost days from work and school, high
medical bills, higher health insurance premiums, in some cases untimely death, loss of human potential within society.
The LEEDS Program is a follow-on to President Jimmy Carter's Executive Order which established
the 1976-1977 U.S. BOCA Energy Code. The Code became an initiative for a national policy in the U.S. of energy conservation.
The Code regulated indoor ambient temperatures: 68 degrees F. in summer and 72 degrees F. in the winter months.
This mandate required many mechanical equipment (HVAC-MEP) revolutionary technological changes to be instituted in order to
conserve energy throughout the United States. It involved a complete overhaul of most
HVAC-MEP systems at significant cost to building and institutional owners and developers as well as the taxpayers.
The LEEDS Program involve 17 points: the first 12
include the BOCA Code energy conservation measures and the second 5 points concern environmental conservation measures:
sustainability of materials toward the preservation of raw resources, "green" building design and clean up of brownfields,
state-designated as "Superfund Sites" that carry with them their own funding.
This initiative is one of the reasons why we separate our food garbage from packaging coupled with
recycling of bottles, aluminum cans, white paper, printed media paper, cardboard, and brown paper boxes all separated
into different waste streams, a they are destined for different recycling plants once collected.
The goal is that food-garbage landfills that produce methane gas during the garbage debris-decay
process do not contain materials that can be “re-used” through the recycling process. Recycling plants
in close proximity (within 50 miles) to where the materials have been used and discarded is also part of the LEEDS Program
sustainability measure.
Recycling practices save on physical mining for new quantities of aluminum, copper, pig iron, sand
and silica, the manufacturing process of blowing new glass requiring more fossil fuels to heat the industrial furnaces for
such processes that result in greenhouse gases and toxic contaminates released into air, water and agriculture-grazing lands:
CO2, SOX, NOX, and methane, heavy metals, PCBs (209 highly toxic contaminates) and CFCs, as well as more trees cut down
to produce additional paper supplies, releasing CO2 (carbon dioxide) and CH4 (methane - 4 times denser than CO2) into
the ambient atmosphere, all contributing to global warming and climate change.
Moreover, when we separate our actual food garbage from
recyclable waste streams, non-recyclable materials may then be used by local municipal utilities to produce low-cost
electricity from that waste stream, close to the source of the collectible waste stream.
There are other points in the LEEDS Program, but what must needs be defined here is the
popular term “green,” its origin and many connotations.
“Green energy" or “green fuels” refer to those fuels which are sustainable on
their own such as can be renewed from nature or which are self-sustaining processes,
such as thermonuclear fusion energy for powerplant generation of electricity and/or alternative hydrogen
fuels, which do not pollute or contaminate precious natural resources: air, water, agricultural – grazing
soil, as do fossil fuels.
"Green fuels" by definition do not contain any carbons from hydrocarbons (as do coal, petroleum
oil, LNG, natural gas: methane, propane, butane, ethane, or CNG compressed natural gas) all of which contribute to the carbon
footprint and greenhouse gas storing of the Earth's atmosphere: the detrimental result of humankind's activities on the
environment.
This carbon footprint is widely recognized by scientific disciplines across the board
worldwide as the root cause of the El Niņo/La Niņa extreme meteorological syndromes resulting in catastrophic events
such as extreme drought and flooding, worldwide hurricane, cyclone, tornado events and out-of-season temperatures which result
in sickness and loss of days at work, loss of agricultural produce, livestock, real property assets, erosion of coastal territories,
municipal infrastructure property assets, and human life.
For more "green" information, see FUSION ENERGY ~ THE PUBLIC’S GUIDE, VOLUME I, VOLUME II, and VOLUME III in the series of books, films, seminars, lectures or by becoming a Member and receiving our Newsletter.
In Article Three you will learn how thermonuclear fusion energy technology is especially unique
as a "green fuel" in its ability to generate plentiful, inespensive commercial electricity without polluting precious
environmental resources as well as create alternative by-product “green fuels” or “alternative
fuels.” These by-product "green fuels" that are capable of aiding in environmental clean-up and restoration
to a state of stasis within the atmosphere, while providing the U.S.A. with ~87% of its fast-track energy demands.
Only thermonuclear fusion energy can provide all these promises. Read on for more about "green"
fusion energy.
Article One
Article Three
Author: Diane A. Davis, M.S., Ph.D. Cand., Founder and CEO
The International Institute For Thermonuclear Fusion Energy Education, R&D, Regulation,
Technology And
Public Policy, Inc.
Filed with U.S. Library of Congress, Office of Copyrights Protection. All copyrights domestic and international
claimed by Author, Diane A. Davis.
