Desmond Tutu and Green Building?

The U.S. Green Building Council has announced its Greenbuild keynote speaker for 2008: Archbishop Desmond Tutu. It's an interesting choice, following on the heels of Vice President Al Gore being given half of the Nobel Prize for peace, that reinforces the connection between social justice and environmental performance. What will Tutu have to say about green building?

I think he might have something to say about globalism, about the effects that choices in the U.S. have on countries that are very far away geographically and culturally. He may have something to say about choosing materials based on their social implications as well their environmental ones. I think he might have something to say about how energy efficiency and water efficiency actually have a great deal to do with the quest for peace.

I had the opportunity to hear Tutu speak in South Africa when I visited there in college--he spoke to a couple hundred people and riveted their attention with his hope that the humanity in people could overcome the institutionalized racism and violence that had long plagued his country.

Tutu has much to say, not only about peace and change in his own country and continent, but about change happens. How will change happen in the building industry? How will we sort out environmental claims from environmental reality? How will we make our buildings and the materials in them safer for people even as we make them better for the environment? I'm sure that Tutu will have some guidance for us, and I look forward to hearing it in November.