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This year, the environmental community is making protection of the environmental budget one of its top "priorities." The lobbyist for the Washington Environmental Council told the Associated Press, "Many of these programs are close to being decimated."
Unfortunately, they haven't always been so careful about setting priorities, supporting budget expenditures in the past that were more about politics than environmental benefit.
In the second part of our series, we focus on another King County expenditure that did little (or nothing) to help the environment, but promoted a political agenda at the cost of funding for other projects.
Last year, King County rolled out the first in what it claims will be a series of videos promoting "green" building. Names after an MTV show of a similar title, "Eco-Cribz" shows how to remodel a house to make it more green.
There are some problems with the video. First, the home featured in the video is worth $2 million with an area of 4,000 square feet -- hardly a model of what environmentalists themselves claim is "green." Second, some of the advice dispensed in the video is probabaly counterproductive, such as promoting wood certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) which, despite being more expensive, may actually be harvested more intensely and shipped farther than Washington-grown timber.
The cost to produce the first video: $8,361.57 (not including King County staff time). If additional videos are produced, WPC will update readers on the cost.
After writing about this case last year, the contractor who worked on the house project had this comment:
"In my business I’ve found that an increasingly significant portion of the home owners are interested in their homes being energy efficient and healthy. Wanting to reduce fuel bills and to have a home that is both safe and healthy for one’s family is neither new nor a fad."
Absolutely. Homes have become consistently more energy efficient and people are taking additional steps because it saves money. And, they're doing it without government videos that provide questionable information. Thanks to the free market, energy efficiency isn't a fad, but a long-term trend. Fixating on labels like FSC without regard to the impacts, however, is a fad.
Builders like the one who remodeled this house are certainly helping improve energy efficiency and the trend is growing because people have the disposable income to make it happen. The WPC has said many times, "If it isn't economically sustainable, it isn't environmentally sustainable." A strong economy is the best thing for a healthy environment.
The problem with the video isn't the project per se. Homeowners who have the income and willingness to make these improvements are free to do so. That is the core of WPC's message, and it is what accounts for the vast majority of environmental improvements we've seen in the past several decades.
The problem is King County is spending scarce resources to highlight an example that hides the true costs, cannot be extrapolated generally and gives misleading information. Worse, such projects may provide excuses for government to impose cookie cutter approaches that don't work for many homeowners.
