THE INDISCREET BANALITY OF THE BOURGEOISIE

The Church of LEED, Passive House and the Dangers of Going Green
Jeff Dardozzi

Pat Murphy's new book, The Green Tragedy: LEED's Lost Decade 1 is a dry but worthwhile effort to
debunk the US Green Building Council's (USGBC) claims regarding its flagship LEED2 program.
Anyone interested in solid accounting of the shortcomings of the LEED rating system and the buildings
it certifies will find his book compelling. For the uninitiated, LEED (Leadership in Energy &
Environmental Design) is a building certification system which emphasizes third-party verification
that a building was designed and built using strategies intended to improve environmental performance.
The LEED program purports to be a key strategy in creating a 'sustainable' society.

Murphy's arguments center on the fact that LEED certified buildings have failed by virtue of the their
core metrics and therefore mislead the public in claims to sustainability. The LEED program, he
suggests, does not sufficiently emphasize those areas of 'building performance' most relative to
Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, preferring to pursue broader, and in his opinion, more subjective
qualities that have little bearing on CC. While his critique of LEED is valid, Murphy alternatively
advocates for the hyper-rationality of the Passive House as a response to the ecological crisis, failing to
understand that the crisis is social in origin.

Both USGBC and Passive House offer no real evidence that their approaches will produce meaningful
ecological outcomes as both programs rely on the scientifically untenable, and largely unquestioned,
assumptions of bourgeoisie ideology3.

GREENWASH
USGBC has dominated the discourse in the US on sustainable building practices for the last decade not
because they have good ideas based on a sound understanding of the issues but because it is an industry
trade organization with a well funded mandate. USGBC's current budget is $46,000,000. The truth
and the absurdity of its premises, as Murphy points out, can be found in the pending certification of
one single family home, 24 stories tall, with a 168 car garage and three heli-pads for an Indian
billionaire.

The logic of LEED is that it can be applied to any building regardless of social context and the
consequences of the activity taking place within the structure. A nuclear weapons factory, a biological
warfare lab or a concentration camp could carry a platinum rating. Guantanamo could be redeemed by
virtue of bike racks, orange jumpsuits made from recycled fiber, cattleprods energized by photovoltaics
and water-boarding conducted with reclaimed grey-water.

As Murphy accurately points out, LEED is a teleological construct, a straw man argument which
industry has made in an effort to create a 'new' market for its members' products and services. Its
much vaunted 3rd party verification is little more than a revenue generating scheme and a PR stunt.
There is no body of evidence that validates USGBC claims that its LEED program will contribute to
the development of a sustainable society as its core assumptions are little more than articles of faith.

The problem begins with the definition of sustainability most used by LEED professionals:

Sustainability is “development that meets

the needs of the present without
 compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs.”4

The definition, originating with the 1987 UN Bruntland Commission, is oft repeated but as sincere
sounding as it is, it is far too vague to be operational as it can mean anything to anyone and is therefore
essentially, and conveniently, meaningless. How we are to know what the 'needs' are of a specific future
generation is never stated. Needs, both physical and subjective, are so bound by context, contingent on
circumstance and central to our ever changing sense of being that to suggest knowledge of something
so complex is like predicting a specific instance of weather in 2130.

Furthermore, perception of need is highly contingent on frames of reference largely established by

culture, which in ours is controlled by powerful social institutions. 'Middle class standards of living'
are defined not by innate thresholds of human tolerances or evolved systems of adaptation and survival,
but by the profit demands of corporate power which must vigorously safeguard and manipulate those
perceptions in order to maintain dominance in the social hierarchy. The North American homebuilding
industry spends billions in advertising dollars annually to convince Americans that a 'real' home
requires superficially opulent luxuries, synthetic veneers, climate controlled interiors, granite counter
tops and bathrooms that could house an entire family. All the green building movement seeks to do is
legitimize that perception by claiming it can be made environmentally benign.

The fact is that no existing green building program can say with any measure of certainty that its
program will contribute to solving the ecological crises related to the built environment, so such claims
are largely disingenuous, ultimately relying on unquestioned assumptions to secure broad acceptance.
The real purpose of these ritualistic displays of rationality, such as LEED's rating system or Passive
House, are to preserve the illusions of our modern selves and our society. Ultimately, as Joseph Tainter
notes in Social Complexity and Sustainability, it is about the “comfort of an accustomed life”, seeking
to rationalize the behaviors that we know are problematic but unable to change by virtue of larger
social forces.

PASSIVE HOUSE
While the USGBC program falls short of its claims and suffers from disingenuous intentions, Passive
House5 (PH) is another story. The term passive house refers to a rigorous, voluntary standard
developed by the Passive House Institute in Germany for energy efficiency in buildings resulting in
very low energy requirements for space heating or cooling. The underlying idea of Passive House is
that we can design and build modern homes with radically reduced energy consumption, intimating that
such reductions will reduce energy consumption, the generation of GHG emissions as well as conserve
resources of the planet.

The ideas and methods for constructing buildings that leverage design and material advantages to
produce comfortable and environmentally integrated buildings that consume very little energy have
been the stable of vernacular buildings for eons across all cultures. Historically, resource-inefficient
buildings were (and continue to be) the domain of wealth and power. By virtue of metaphor and
symbol, architecture became a formal means not by which to achieve social harmony and
environmental integration, but to express social power, that is power over others and over nature.
Recently, the ecological crisis has spawned a global realization that the economic system is the primary
destructive agent in the ecological equation. In response, those whose interests are now threatened are
staging a campaign to convince us that the dominant paradigm can be operated in an ecologically
benign manner. Passive House is, in spirit and in substance, part of this campaign.
Energy and social power are obviously closely related:

Last year, the 296 million people in the USA used 97 quadrillion BTUs of
energy. To put that huge number into perspective, each of us used about 328
million BTUs during the year, the equivalent of 96,000 Kilowatt hours of
electricity. A Kilowatt-hour is about 1/3 more work than a horsepower-hour,
so we used about 128,640 horsepower-hours, or the equivalent of 147 energy
slaves working for each of us 24/7, all year long6.

According to the Energy Information Agency, space heating for homes amounts to less than 5
quadrillion btus, compared to the 97 quadrillion consumed annually by the nation7. The biggest user of
energy, of course, is the system itself, approximately 80% of all energy consumed. The system being
defined as those areas of social life directly and indirectly involved in constructing power: commercial
enterprises including everything from chemical production to movie making, transportation and
communication networks, institutional endeavors such as schools, universities, research facilities, non-
governmental organizations, government and military. In short, the whole of our society.

The fact is that the bulk of our energy consumption has to do with its conversion to political, economic
and military power and that the vast majority of Americans do not benefit equally from the nation's
energy use. Reducing energy consumption of our homes would only marginally reduce the amount of
energy consumed by individuals and not reduce the aggregate amount of energy consumed by our
society due to the ecological paradox first articulated by Jevons8. Central to green building and EE
advocates' position is that efficiency improvements conserve resources and reduce emissions when, in
fact, they do not. The myth of resource efficiency improvements within the current economic system
has been debunked, yet advocates like Murphy continue advocating actions for reasons that are
demonstratively false. Furthermore, they never acknowledge the relationship between power and
energy.

It would appear to be misleading a discussion to suggest the importance of something that comprises
less than 5% of the total energy pie while ignoring the fact that the largest consumer of energy and the
largest source of GHG emissions is the system itself. In light of this, and the fact that ecological
outcomes can not be linked directly by EE strategies, why it is so important to Murphy, Passive House
and USGBC that society pursue them?

A clue to Murphy's motives in his advocacy can be construed in his comment:

These questions should be answered by science and transparency. We must be

able to measure things.

It is interesting to note that Murphy does not explain why science must be the only answer nor why we
must be able to measure things. By inference, I can only assume that his world view and understanding
of reality is reductionist in nature, Cartesian by definition and is rooted in the mythology of the
Technocratic Society.

The problems with reductionism and the Cartesian world view are well known, as they rely, just as
capitalism does, on denying the larger picture through a process of objectification whereby reality is
reduced to the narrowest of subsets conducive to observation, analysis and manipulation. The
limitations of these concomitant world views are the subject of many interdisciplinary inquiries. This
is not to say reductionism makes no important contributions to understanding our world, but as the
single arbiter of reality it has failed humanity terribly as the ecological and social crises testify. The
fields of emergence, holism and complexity are revealing entirely new dimensions to our existence and
work in the cognitive sciences are revealing what many of us have already known: that we are not
discrete, autonomous machines, genetically driven in the mindless pursuit of self interest. Such is the
ontology of the rational agent of bourgeoisie ideology and primary archetype of the modern world view
for whom Murphy's advocacy is based.

Furthermore, Murphy incorrectly bases his whole position on the belief we should follow Germany's
example since the country has supposedly reduced its GHG emissions over the last two decades. He
implies that this is by virtue of EE pursuits such as PHI and the whole of German society. The reality of
Germany's claim, upon closer examination, appears to be due to gaming the system by opting to peg
the baseline for GHG calculations at a point in time prior to relocating emissions to other countries via
off-shoring of heavy industry9. Further proof of this fallacy is that Germany's emissions, once the
relocation of heavy industries were accounted for, have remained flat as the 2000 to 2008 data now
shows10.

Lastly, Murphy makes no attempt to articulate any understanding of the crises other than to see them as
technical and management problems where he advocates for increased social complexity in another
attempt to assert control over a force he fails to comprehend. Certainly, Murphy should know by now
recent arguments regarding increasing social complexity, ecological cost and the accruing negative
returns10. As an advocate of the scientific world view, he should also be aware of the findings in
cognitive science that reveal a large disconnect between the intent of the rational agent and outcomes11.

The reality of EE pursuits is that there are unstated objectives, in the form of energy subsidies, that are
invariably linked to increasing social complexity, not to solve ecological problems, but to maintain the
power of a system that has enslaved the world.

“ASSUMPTIONS ARE THE MOTHER OF ALL FUCK-UPS”12

We are now learning things about selves that are in complete contrast to what we have been taught to
be true for hundreds of years. The model of human agency and the assumptions that underly it frame
our entire political, legal and economic system and that model is now being shown to be false:

These assumptions culminate in the widespread and persistent belief that regardless of
physiological processes, developmental history, or current circumstances, the person is
"free" to choose any course of action among the alternatives that present themselves.
This view of human behavior is simply untenable from a scientific perspective13.

This belief is the basis of self-hood in the form of the rational agent. It is the foundation of both
progressive and conservative dogmas and what allows the structures of power to perpetuate themselves.
The narratives and legitimization rituals of our society are designed to enforce this conception of the
human animal but they ultimately depend on the acceptance of these assumptions of the self as true:

• Actions are freely chosen

• Choices imply preferences
• Preferences are stable over time
• Preferences implicate identity of the self
• Outcomes are mostly controllable
• People are responsible for the choices they make and the resultant outcomes.14
Americans accept these assumptions as a true account of the human animal without reservation,
unconsciously conforming themselves to the behavioral models prescribed by elites all the while
thinking that such models are the product of individual will. This singular conception of mankind has
served as justification for Capitalism's systematic destruction of human community and ecosystems for
four hundred years. The ecological and social catastrophe devastating the planet clearly shows that
capitalism's hero, 'the selfish individual', has no idea what he is doing and now we know why: the
hero's life is based on a lie.

When it comes to buildings, it is an elemental truth that our dwellings are powerful metaphors for they
are the physical embodiment of lived social relations and the underlying narratives that construct social
reality...a social reality that has created the crises that Murphy claims as the cause of his advocacy.
Neither PHI nor USGBC programs alter this situation as they affect neither underlying social relations,
their concomitant mode of production nor it's epistemology. On the contrary, programs like Passive
House and LEED ultimately seek to codify it to the point of total encapsulation within the bourgeoisie
world-view where the relations between nature and humanity are mediated by elites and technology,
under the false assumption that we can control outcomes.

When it comes to meaningful social action, we should recognize that our hostility to the dominant
social system is rooted in the fact that it is a falsehood imposed upon humanity, often with devastating
consequences, and the very essence of our rebelliousness is a validation of our common humanity.
Food, buildings and all other areas of material culture are precisely the place to begin redefining the
terms of a different social life and the nature of our relationship with the earth. The material
conditions of daily life are changing rapidly and the old narratives are no longer believable. All those
trapped in the fairy tales of a dying world and who share a desire for another must first abandon those
conceptions of self-hood inculcated from the moment of birth. It is only there that begins the journey to
a different world that has already begun to emerge.

1. Pat Murphy, The Green Tragedy: LEED's Lost Decade, (Yellow Springs, OH: The Arthur Morgan Institute for
Community Solutions, 2009).
2. Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design see www.usgbc.org
3. For further discussion on bourgeois ideology see Harvie Ferguson, The Science of Pleasure: Cosmos and Psyche
in the Bourgeois World View, (London: Routledge, 1990).
4. Gro Harlem Brundtland (chair) and the World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common
Future, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), ch.2 section IV.1
5. Passive House Institute http://www.passivehouse.us/passiveHouse/PHIUSHome.html
6. Jennifer Barker, "How Many 'Energy Slaves' Do We Employ?" Altenergy Magazine,
http://www.altenergymag.com/emagazine.php?issue_number=06.08.01&article=slaves
7. Energy Information Agency, Annual Energy Review 2008, http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/pdf/pages/sec2_22.pdf
8. John M. Polimeni et. al, Jevons' Paradox and the Myth of Resource Efficiency Improvements,(London: Earthscan
Publications Ltd. , 2008).
9. Joseph Kahn et al., “Choking On Growth; China Grabs West's Smoke Spewing Factories”, New York Times,
December 21, 2007, World section online, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?
res=9901E1DA1F3FF932A15751C1A9619C8B63&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
10. UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, "Summary of GHG Emissions for Germany,"
http://unfccc.int/files/ghg_emissions_data/application/pdf/deu_ghg_profile.pdf,
11. Joseph Tainter, “Social Complexity and Sustainability,” Ecological Complexity 3 (2006): 91-103.
12. Jon D. Hanson and David G. Yosifon, “The Situational Character: A Critical Realist Perspective on the Human
Animal”, Harvard Public Law Working Paper No. 08-33 (2004).
13. Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, DVD. Directed by Guy Ritchie 1999, London: Summit Entertainment.
14. J. Michaels and R.R.Vallacher, “The Ghost in the System: Where Free Will Lurks in Human Minds.” In-Mind
 Magazine, October 21, 2009, 9.
15. Hanson, J; ibid