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Author Lucia Athens
Green Building Team Chair
City of Seattle
Lucia.athens@seattle.gov
www.cityofseattle.net/sustainablebuilding
 
Comment
The philosophical approach of proving impact and risk versus using the Precautionary Principle is critical. The Precautionary Principle adopted by the UN Conference on the Environment and Development (1992) reflects the uncertainty in assigning precise relationships between cause and effect, and can be described as follows: “Where an activity raises threat of harm to the environment of human health, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established.” The precautionary principle permits a lower level of proof of harm to be used in policy-making whenever the consequences of waiting for higher levels of proof may be very costly and/or irreversible.

The USGBC Board of Directors needs to provide leadership in utilization of the Precautionary Principle, versus undertaking vast and complex analysis of materials that will never provide irrefutable conclusions. The realm of LCA analysis is fascinating and many-layered, but should not be expected to provide conclusive results. Rather, LCA is a useful tool to begin to indicate impact areas and aid in qualitative decision making . It is in reality a qualitative tool, due to the fact that so many of the assumptions used with LCA are subjective or a matter of opinion. LCA is not a pure science, rather it is an art. Therefore, the Council is overemphasizing LCA’s ability to give us “The” answer to any sustainable building question. The USGBC is a values-based organization, and the Board must ask itself if refusing to acknowledge the potential negative environmental and human impacts of PBT’s fits with the values of Council. This is a much more important question, one which I believe the Council has not appropriately grappled with.
Supportive Citations
UN Conference on Environment and Development, 1992, Precautionary Principle