The Nature Conservancy steps up to help Puget Sound

The Nature Conservancy has a acquired some key waterfront property in Island County. This means a small chunk of Puget Sound shoreline will remain undeveloped.

I know it’s hypocritical of me to want to see the rest of the shoreline undeveloped after I myself developed a piece of it, but there you are. I did the dirty deed twenty years ago and now I like to think of myself as reformed. Some might call me a NIMBY and accuse me of wanting to pull up the ladder now that I’ve climbed aboard. So be it, a lot has changed in those twenty years.

The fact is I now agree with Jason McLennan, CEO of Cascadia Green Building Council who says “Humanity has co-opted enough land – it is time to draw boundaries and declare it enough.” His Living Building Challenge, challenges builders and architects to design buildings that actually produce energy instead of using it and re-use already developed land instead of virgin sites.

I was pleasantly surprised to learn about the Conservancy’s shoreline acquisition from my local builder’s association. Though I work for a builder and my husband is a contractor, and the people at SICBA are all wonderful, we don’t always agree on political and environmental questions. I think I have a messiah complex – I live with the sinners while pushing my (ever so much more righteous) green agenda.