It's said that you shouldn't measure a day by the harvest that you reap, but by the seeds that you plant. But in these trying times with such a decided lack of bounty, a good harvest is worth celebrating.

In that light, I'd like to celebrate Green Builder magazine's editorial team for winning not one, not two, but seven AZBEE awards from the American Society of Business Publication Editors for editorial and design excellence.

These awards have a twofold meaning to me. First, they prove that the vision, creativity, and fearlessness of a small team of passionate people can prevail over the litany of challenges presented by difficult financial times.

Second, the awards symbolize that the decision that Green Builder Media has made to follow the risky path of thought leadership and innovation is resonating with our readers, advertisers, and the general marketplace, for which I am truly grateful.

Despite the dire economic conditions and the motley state of our government, it's a multitude of small successes that make me as optimistic as ever about our future. I hear of these successes from our readers as you write to us about extraordinary green projects that you've recently participated in and from our advertisers as they send us news of developing game changing, earth-saving products.

We sincerely appreciate your continued support, and we want to offer ours to you as well. Let's continue to celebrate each other's successes as we continue down the path of sustainability. Please write to me at sara@greenbuildermag.com with your success stories that we can share with the Green Builder Media community. 

And don't forget to follow me on Twitter @SaraGBM, visit www.greenbuildermag.com, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @greenbuildermag for regular updates and breaking news.

Have ideas about how we can sustainably revitalize our economy?

Green Builder Media, and the whole of the sustainability community, is mourning the loss of green business pioneer Ray Anderson, former Founder and Chairman of Interface.

Anderson started Interface in 1973 and grew the company for two decades to become one of the world's largest and most profitable carpet companies. But in 1994, after reading Paul Hawken's book, The Ecology of Commerce, Anderson made a 'Mid-Course Correction' (the title of his business biography written in 1998) to turn Interface into one of the most exemplary green companies in existence today.

Anderson used to say, "Unless someone leads, nobody will," so he set out to create an example, transforming the way that Interface did business to diminish its environmental impact. By 1999, Anderson became known as America's greenest CEO, even though he considered himself a "plunderer of the earth."

Anderson and Interface broke new ground in all areas of sustainable business, proving that a triple bottom line approach that blends profitability with environmental stewardship and social responsibility can make a company legendary.

I had the good fortune of meeting Ray and interviewing him on several occasions. Ray played a large role in paving the way for all of us who have created green companies. He helped me realize that a company that has a set of blended values is far more attractive to stakeholders than one that focused only on profits. It's fair to say that Ray's leadership, courage, and vision have indelibly changed the way we do business.

Yesterday, in an Impact Series: Game Changers in Sustainability interview with Ben Packard, VP Sustainability of Starbucks, Green Builder Media's President, Ron Jones, paid his own homage to Ray when he expressed the following:

"I like to think of the sustainability community as a forest, where even though there are many different species that come in all shapes and sizes and hues, we are all interdependent, all anchored to the same soil, all reaching up to the same sun, all thirsting for the same rain,

…all striving for the same results, all hoping to ultimately leave behind our own contribution for the next generation to build upon.
On Tuesday, we received news that one of the giants of this community, one of the great redwoods, if you will, rejoined us here on the ground as he embraced the Earth in this magical cycle we call life.

Ray Anderson was the great statesman of sustainability; committed, gracious and eloquent. If you ever had an opportunity to hear him speak, the honor to present on the same stage as him, or just to share a conversation with him… you knew instinctively that you were witnessing authenticity.

Those of us who have taken shelter in the cool shade of his presence, who have taken encouragement in his quiet determination, know that today there is a large space in the forest that may take a generation, perhaps a lifetime, to fill in.

May we all be students of his humility, celebrate his integrity, and be grateful for his legacy.

On behalf of the Green Builder Media community, we offer condolences to the Anderson family.

Thank you, Ray, for leading us into the light towards a more sustainable future. You will not be forgotten."

Have a tribute to Ray Anderson or another sustainability icon? Visit www.greenbuildermag.com, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @greenbuildermag for regular updates and breaking news.

The noxious quicksand of our divided government has left us feeling as parched as a Texas corn patch. The recent fiasco in Congress over raising the debt ceiling has not only enraged citizens of all political inclinations, but has also diminished America's already damaged international credibility.

While part of the blame can be assigned to a blend of political ego, ignorance, and inflexibility, the core of the problem runs much deeper than polar extremes with no roadmap to the middle ground—it resides in the very foundation of our system.

Our great democracy is an extension of economics, and, much like the weak link theory, it's only as sound as the underpinnings of our financial system. Unfortunately, the principles of our Adam Smith economic system were founded on the incorrect premises that people behave rationally in free markets (which they do not) and that natural resources are infinite (which they are not).

Time and time again, emotion eclipses rationality in our free market, and irrational exuberance leads to tulip (Holland, 1637), technology (USA, 2001), and housing (USA, 2006) bubbles that economists simply cannot predict or explain, despite all of their fancy calculations. To trust that our free market economic or political system will compel individuals to act rationally is fundamentally counterintuitive.

Behavioral economists and psychologists at Stanford have performed studies on the human brain to analyze emotion that indicate that the same emotional irrationality—the same addiction to winning—that drives people to gamble with their earnings or invest in market bubbles at prices that they intuitively know are exorbitant also compels elected officials into tense saloon showdowns that are futile and embarrassing.

While we can't necessarily control or predict the forces that take us to the financial or political brink, we can at least try to control what we do once we find ourselves there.
In light of the recent Congressional face-off, I find green building pioneer David Eisenberg's words quite apropos: "The first rule in negotiations is to never give anyone exhibiting sociopathic tendencies the benefit of the doubt or an opening. Never. They believe they have nothing to gain by being ethical or to lose by being unethical. And they think those of us who care about ethics or feel empathy are fools."

As our country plummets into a downward spiral of further debt and despair due to unpredictable markets and ineffective leaders, I can't help but wonder, will our irrational behavior outlast our solvency?

Have ideas about how we can transform the destructive pathology of our zeitgeist? Visit www.greenbuildermag.com, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @greenbuildermag for regular updates and breaking news

Have ideas about how we can sustainably revitalize our economy? Write to me at sara@greenbuildermag.com or follow me on Twitter @SaraGBM.