In response to today’s macabre business environment, the Green Builder Media team decided that we needed a little pick-me-up.  We understand that life feels hard right now.  Too many people are just getting by, slogging through their days with heavy hearts and cluttered minds, clinging to hope and a prayer that the dog days will soon be over.

The little things mean a lot these days, so we set our sights on something quite straightforward—we simplified the look and feel of our website and e-newsletters.  

We hope that the new bold colors, fresh design, and clean layout of our digital media provides you with a sense of lightness that de-clutters your mind as you read through our award-winning editorial content.

Over the next few months, please continue to check out our website for enhanced features and cutting-edge technology that will enable us to further unify our community, empowering each and every one of us to communicate more effectively about all aspects of sustainability.  

At Green Builder Media, we are constantly raising the bar on ourselves, perpetually striving to amplify thought-leadership within and beyond the building industry.  We feel that the new modern design of our website and e-newsletters mirrors what we aspire to bring to the market—insatiable curiosity, boundless imagination, palpable positivity, and an intense desire to affect positive change. 

What do you think about our new design?  Please write to me at sara@greenbuildermag.com or follow me on Twitter @SaraGBM. 

Last night, as I was watching a story on the evening news about the extensive fires in Texas, I had a strange revelation. The newscasters were using the same language to describe the battle against the conflagration as they did in the previous story about ground warfare in Afghanistan.

As I listened to the broadcast, it became crystal clear to me how misguided we have become by the hubristic conviction that we can, in any way, control nature. To paraphrase American ecologist Aldo Leopold, until we regard nature as a community to which we belong, rather than a commodity that belongs to us, we will continue to abuse and disrespect it.

It's quite elemental—there is no battle to be fought with nature. The weapons and "diplomatic" strategies that we employ in wartime scenarios are utterly useless against the raw, primal, impartial, and invincible forces of nature.

In warfare, it's said that the best defense is a good offense, but not so with nature. When it comes to the elements, there is simply no offence. We can neither harness nor prevent natural disasters, so it seems that our only strategy is preparedness.

We can no longer ignore the undeniable changes in our climate that have resulted in over ten separate billion dollar disaster events in the U.S. this year alone—the emotional distress and economic destruction is too great on individuals and businesses (according to FEMA, a staggering 40 percent of businesses struck by a natural disaster never reopen, and according to American Red Cross, nearly 60 percent of Americans are not prepared for a disaster of any kind.)

Today, we spend billions of dollars on profligate and often ineffective offensive strategies, fighting wars for access to oil. How much of our grandchildren's future are we willing to mortgage on a futile fight against nature? When will we actually allow our pens to trump our swords, enabling our innovation to triumph over our stubbornness?

Rather than waging a battle against the elements, perhaps a more realistic quest is to establish a sense of harmony between man and land. Instead of accepting shoddy construction that feeds our quick-flip, lowest-upfront-cost addiction, wouldn't it be wiser and more expedient to focus our efforts on preparing for extreme weather?

Those of us in the building industry have a particularly unique responsibility—a duty—to keep our country safe by designing and constructing stronger buildings that can withstand the impacts of disaster, as well as infrastructure that can protect our communities from floods and fires. There are things that can only be accomplished by working together—with ourselves as well as with nature. What would happen if we, together, focused our efforts on creating systems that worked in balance with nature to, for example, channel flood waters from Louisiana to quench the fires in its scorched neighboring state of Texas? Could we achieve biotic harmony then?

Have ideas about how we can create harmony between man and land? Please write to me at sara@greenbuildermag.com or follow me on Twitter @SaraGBM.

For more information about green building and sustainable living, visit www.greenbuildermag.com, like us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter @greenbuildermag for regular updates and breaking news.

I recently attended a chamber music festival, where I experienced the rare and unexpected delight of hearing a true masterpiece. The magnum opus was the Quartet for the End of Time, written in 1940 by French composer Olivier Messiaen as he was detained in Görlitz, a German prisoner of war camp.

In this piece, Messiaen expertly interlaced an ethereal spectrum of notes with a scant four instruments—violin, clarinet, cello, and piano—to invoke a full range of human emotion. Facing apocalyptic circumstances and stripped bare of the confines of social morays, the composer crafted a piece that effectively pits good against evil, joy against sorrow, love against fear.

The Quartet for the End of Time embodies bravery and passion, revealing Messiaen's own agonizing journey to spiritual enlightenment. The voyage from despair to salvation is depicted through a fractured combination of melody and discord, and the end is a perfect sublimation of the subtle and transcendent.

The tragic inhumanity of Messiaen's situation forced him to cross his own Rubicon, reaching deeply into himself to unleash his inner genius and deliver a masterpiece that will endure throughout the ages.

While entire generations of us in the West have been spared the physical deprivation and emotional anguish that Messiaen suffered, we are nonetheless caught in the crossfire of a fierce political, economic, and environmental battlefield.

At times, it feels like we are prisoners of our own broken system, entombed inside a clear looking glass, simply observing as history unfolds.

In the U.S., paralyzed and disenfranchised by our own hand, we perpetuate impotent governance driven by special-interests and bankrupt leaders. Dismayed and fearful, we cower as our overloaded credit-based economy collides with the revelation that we must invest in research, education, and infrastructure. Stunned and traumatized, we can only bear witness as unprecedented natural disasters and extreme weather events destroy our communities and disrupt our lives.

As sovereign debt unravels economies in Europe and as China's grow-at-all-costs manufacturing experiment frays at the edges, our fundamental belief in a free market system is under assault.

Meanwhile, with tenuous sanguinity, we hope that the political vacuums formed as tyrants are toppled in the Middle East will be filled with peaceful polities that support justice, personal freedom, and equitable prosperity.

While we may not have the ability to directly and immediately affect the litany of elements that have created global instability, with the right blend of wisdom and focus, we can still be the architects of our own future. Imagine if we all harnessed Messiaen's courage as we made choices about how to react and respond to our daily affairs. What would the world around us look like if it reflected our very best—our bravery, passion, and inner genius? In a world like that, what would your masterpiece be?

Have ideas about how we can unleash our inner geniuses? Please write to me at sara@greenbuildermag.com or follow me on Twitter @SaraGBM.

For more information about green building and sustainable living, visit www.greenbuildermag.com, like us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter @greenbuildermag for regular updates and breaking news.