"Green" McMansions Torched in Seattle
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 03. 3.08
Street of Dreams is a type of home show where builders go all out to build jazzy homes that are used for fund-raising and then sold. Often over-the-top McMansions, the 2007 Seattle Street of Dreams was built to more "modest" scales of between 4,200 and 4,750 square feet and were certified through Built Green, a Seattle area green builders initiative. One home, the Urban Lodge, had Five Star certification and was also Gold under the new NAHB certification program.
But evidently not green enough for some; last night they were bombed and three of them burned to the ground. The fourth was spared because the arson device failed to go off.
All of the houses were vacant so nobody was injured; they have been languishing on the market for months. A sign spray-painted onto a sheet was found that according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer "had the initials of the Earth Liberation Front in scraggly red letters, mocked claims that the homes were environmentally friendly:
"Built Green? Nope black! McMansions in RCDs r not green" the sign said.
Real Estate Bob Hoffman, who has been flogging one of the houses for eight months, says "The whole project's theme was about the environment, They did a great job of environmentally doing the right thing."
Urban Lodge before.
Some commenters in the Seattle paper suggest that perhaps there were other reasons for the fires: "Expensive homes being torched in a housing recession? Hmmm... How convenient." Other wags on the web note "Only it ain't the Earth Liberation Front, it's the BANK Liberation Front." Certainly real environmentalists don't use spray paint, let alone do arson. Fortunately one of the bombs did not go off, which should provide more than the usual evidence.
Copper Falls
Others consider the hypocrisy of calling the houses "green":-Homes advertising themselves as "Built Green" merely by applying a few simple token gestures to their construction. The mere thought of a "4000+ sq ft built green house" should be an oxymoron. Congratulating ourselves for using recycled carpet while building cathedral ceiling homes in sprawling subdivisions abutting wilderness, whose cavernous air spaces have to be heated for the next several decades is a terrible and destructive kind of hypocrisy as well." ::Seattle Post-Intelligencer
read also ::FBI Alert for Treehugger Wackos and
A Picture is Worth... Polar Bear Knut is 1 Year Old
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Event: Green Walking Tour of Lower Manhattan, March 8, NYC
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The builder probably torched them for the insurance money. Friction fire I think they call it. Just a hunch.
Wow. Too green for some?? What is that supposed to mean? Bombing any built structure of any kind is going to cause a lot of unwanted chemicals and smoke to be let off into the air.
Wow. Too green for some?? What is that supposed to mean? Bombing any built structure of any kind is going to cause a lot of unwanted chemicals and smoke to be let off into the air.
I agree. With the market tanking, I bet the developer torched it to claim insurance money, knowing they wouldn't be able to sell the houses. They just scrawled ELF stuff near it to try to shift the blame.
Wouldn't be the first time.
This is the kind of stuff that gets us a bad rap...
The real problem with this is that it will allow ecological activists to be labeled as terrorists, leading to greater stigma and persecution of folks who don't believe in making the most money the quickest, regardless of consequences.
Property destruction is generally counterproductive. But it certainly gets folks attention in a way that politely clearing your throat and tugging on someone's sleeves generally won't.
Glad no one was hurt, and it looks like the event was calculated to eliminate or minimize personal injury.
Certainly looks like some fine old growth timber burned up pretty good. More than a little ironic.
Yea, the enivronmental movment would have a lot more legitimacy if they didn't have these kinds of nutjobs pulling crap like this. If you really wanted to save the enivronment that much, put a bullet in the back of your head--it would probably do more than this kind of moronic move.
I think it probably was the builder, this kind of insurance fraud has gone on for a long time when there's a downturn in the economy. The ELF has been quiet lately and with reduced building going on because of the housing slump/mortgage crises etc. why would they pick now to make a statement. I go with the "BANK Liberation Front"
Obviously a set-up. Any environmentalist would have used bio-diesel, not Kerosene.
Builders would just dump the property for a loss. They don't care what the stockholders think.
Homeowners don't have that luxury, so thus are more likely to have suspicious fires.
Considering all of the other stuff ELF has done, why doubt they did this?!
Dollars to donuts they claim responsibility...
@ Dan A: "Put[ting] a bullet in the back of [one's] head" wouldn't help much. It have been better if this hadn't happened, due to the prospective arsons being educated and more civil in their actions. That opens up a whole other can of worms about education and american society though...
While the homes may have been rather extravagant, if they were environmentally neutral (hypothetically, I don't know the details), I don't really see why one should be offended unless you're mad that you can't afford one. There's probably a good argument for why that should not be, but it's a class thing, not ELF.
Besides, if it was already built it doesn't make sense to destroy it to make a point that it wasn't environmentally friendly because then you're a hypocrite because of the fire damage and the possibility that they might just rebuild it.
In summary, I'm sorry for how this has hurt the green revolution and I hope that it doesn't happen again.
I agree that it was probably the builder. If it was the ELF then I hope they catch them quickly and put them away for a long time. We certainly don't need them acting like reprobates in the name of sustainability.
"Besides, if it was already built it doesn't make sense to destroy it to make a point that it wasn't environmentally friendly because then you're a hypocrite because of the fire damage and the possibility that they might just rebuild it."
And burning Hummers on dealership lots wasn't?
I'm amazed that people try to blame the builder and not ELF when there are clearly signs left behind stating they did it. Why wouldn't builders have done something that makes more sense and would have had little police investigation like make it look like a drunk homeless guy did it? How hard would the police go looking for a homeless guy?
Defend ELF all you want, they are probably guilty and have done some pretty lame stuff in the past.
What a waste. Is it eco-friendly to torch building and toss tons of chemicals and CO2 into the atmosphere? And all those raw materials, and for at least the few parts that were 'green' are now just charred waste.
Why not write a letter or send an e-mail talking about this? If that fails, just post it on the web to a site like Treehugger. Far better than being an idiot with a bonehead move.
I wish the article had specified more on how "green" the houses were. Did the houses employ thermal water heating? Did they have any solar panels that were grid-tied or off-grid? Was the wood used in construction from salvaged structures that had already been torn down -- or come from beetle-killed pine that was already dead/dying? Was hay-bale insultation used? Was LED or CF lighting employed? And so on.
How can one determine if there is any legitimacy (whether it is a "mere grain" or a "truck load") to the arsonist's claims that the houses weren't really "green" if there aren't any real details on the houses other than their square footage and the statement that they were certified by NAHB? (And what does NAHB stand for? Is NAHB certification as reputable as LEED certification?)
Inquiring minds want to know.
If ELF was responsible, they now get the special place on the list which used to be taken by the blatant AGW deniers. And happily, they will be caught and actually go to prison for a long time. The AGW deniers still get to run off scot free.
But, I say its 50/50 as to if the developer was involved or not.
Discounting whether or not the ELF is responsible - Maybe there is some legitimacy in these types of direct radical environmentalist actions?
@12:07 "Why not write a letter or send an e-mail talking about this? If that fails, just post it on the web to a site like Treehugger. Far better than being an idiot with a bonehead move."
Who would publish a letter or email about this? An environmental site? It's preaching to people already involved in the movement.
The ELF action are the types of actions that get attention - that make people aware of issues that they normally would not be aware of. Sure, green housing sounds like a great idea. And there are some merits to promoting environmental friendly housing, but were these houses really green? We don't need large, extravagantly decorated houses to live in. How far were all these products shipped? Who built them? I'm going to guess that these houses are not that "green." And yes, as one of the quotes mentions: Why is a 4400 square foot home environmentally friendly or necessary?
It's just another form of greenwashing - a way of using "environmentalism" to sell a product.
These actions could show people that there other ways of thinking about sustainable building that actually have the environment in mind and not money.
@ a solar man: I agree, I wish there were more details on the houses.
I also wish that the media (Faux News) didn't immediately yell "TERROR!, TERROR!, TERROR!" when they opened their little 3 minutes of coverage of this incident. It was truly saddening.
@ JC: I never said it wasn't ELF, I just said it would be stupid for ELF to do.
I wonder what it's like to be a day laborer and see your project get torched. Is it disappointing to see all your work go up in flames or is it revenge on exploitative bosses?
NAHB= National Assoc of Home Builders. What sort of "certification" they offer is vague (and not on the website). Chances are it's worse than LEED (which has some issues as well).
Blatt, your rationale is the same used by every terrorist and radical there has ever been.
Let me sum it up for you: savage behavior is not to be tolerated under any circumstances. It is not to be rationalized under any circumstances. If you don't get that, you're just one of the savages, and hopefully the system will put as many of you down as possible.
Would an environmentalist really create all the air pollution, possible toxic air pollution, and waste all those resources that it took to build the houses? It makes not sense from an environmental stand point to do this. Either it was an insurance scam, or some pretty short-sighted environmental terrorists!
now I'm not defending arson at all, this act is horrible and i hope the people who did it go away for a long time.
-but- wouldn't you consider eco-terrorism, terrorism against the ecosystem? given that these home were gigantic monstrosities, built with in the water shed of a protected salmon run, and any of the 'green friendly design elements were superficial at best, green washing at worst, (ie the homes were 4,591 sf plus, but used recycled wallpaper....who cares)couldn't you consider the mc mansions them selves a form of terrorism? environmentalists should have been fighting to prevent them from being built in the first place.
If this was done by environmentalists, and not the developers who (apparently) were havening trouble selling them, they may have had more power in protecting that ecosystem if they were not simply arsonists and petty criminals. Then they could have worked with legal actions, public relations, lobbying, and (last resort) non violent forms of direct action. but instead they stained and sullied an entire movement. shame....
now I'm not defending arson at all, this act is horrible and i hope the people who did it go away for a long time.
-but- wouldn't you consider eco-terrorism, terrorism against the ecosystem? given that these home were gigantic monstrosities, built with in the water shed of a protected salmon run, and any of the 'green friendly design elements were superficial at best, green washing at worst, (ie the homes were 4,591 sf plus, but used recycled wallpaper....who cares)couldn't you consider the mc mansions them selves a form of terrorism? environmentalists should have been fighting to prevent them from being built in the first place.
If this was done by environmentalists, and not the developers who (apparently) were havening trouble selling them, they may have had more power in protecting that ecosystem if they were not simply arsonists and petty criminals. Then they could have worked with legal actions, public relations, lobbying, and (last resort) non violent forms of direct action. but instead they stained and sullied an entire movement. shame....
Good comments from a lot of you above. I don't much care who did it (unfortunate either way), but I think more emphasis should be placed on the issue of 'rural cluster developments' in general.
These are essentially gated communities for the wealthy, and there are many additional associated 'non-green' costs with creating the infrastructure to support them - no doubt the 'average taxpayer' foots the bill for the developers to build/pave the roads, long-distance plumbing, electrical, phone lines, etc., let alone the energy used into creating the infrastructure.
Plus, people have to get there right? How? I highly doubt a green-vehicle comes with the sales package. This and the vulgar size of the homes constitutes obvious green-washing in my opinion, even if the house was actually above-average in other 'green' elements.
Also note that Copper Falls photo above - anyone notice the *3 car garage*, with separate lobby entrance?!
Mmm, very 'green', if you live in Denial, WA.
What ever reason it was done for, it's just a damn shame. If the builder torched it, karma will get them in the end. If it was ELF, I hope they realized the environmental harm they caused by this deviant act. Violence, destruction, hate - All these are added pollutants to any environment and any group involved in those acts needs to re-evaluate where they really stand because it certainly isn't environmentally conscious.
This is a sad thing to see...
I gotta disagree with some of the comments above that stated how building a 4000+ sq. ft. home is not the way to go green. I agree with this (and believe it'll be a valid argument in the future), however I think that since there is a lot more money to work with when building larger custom homes, the technology has a chance to be introduced into the market. I can't imagine any sustainable community with homes that sell for $150,000 having solar panels and geothermal heating/cooling with fancy HRVs, and recycled materials. Just how xenon lights and ABS systems were introduced first in expensive luxury cars and then slowly trickled down to the compacts and more affordable vehicles, so have to do the 'green' materials which will hopefully one day be the economically viable norm.
I agree that building extravagant homes and calling them green isn't really the green way to go about building environmentally friendly homes, however you have to start somewhere. And for now, especially in North America where oil supplies are only now starting to feel the squeeze, there is no other way of getting the American hummer-driving, mcdonalds scarfin' society to change their dull perception on the life around them.
I rant...
Have a nice day everybody!
I'll bet the arson device wasn't green. Yeah, being that these houses hadn't sold makes me highly suspicious.
When's the last time you saw a company leave $10M worth of property unguarded?
There's been several fires in Vegas that all turned out to be the builders.
"When's the last time you saw a company leave $10M worth of property unguarded?"
Unguarded? No. Guarded by $7 an hour security that drives around in a truck every half hour like clockwork with a flashing orange light that can be seen a mile away, frequently.
"There's been several fires in Vegas that all turned out to be the builders."
News links? Not that I doubt, especially in Vegas, but sources are good.
This is issue is very intense and should be looked at very closely. TitanTV has recently brought up this subject on their website and have posted their show that talks about this on Youtube. The show is called Daily Greens and it examines environmental news. Check out the vide at http://youtube.com/watch?v=e5WhUNqMsmM. Also check out the TitanTV site to see all our videos and all the Daily Greens Episodes.
I've been waging a battle against junk mailers for the past 9 months and one of the worst offenders is MediaThatDeelivers, publisher of magazines like Estates West that promote the grotesque McMansion lifestyle.
I've contacted them on numerous occasions asking to be removed from their mailing list only to be met by complete indifference.
I encourage anyone interested in stopping these propagandists to visit http://jonnyhal.com/otl_blog/2008/03/14/estates-worst/ and find out how you can tell them where to stick their magazines.
Burn baby, BURN!
Whoever torched these monstrosities deserves a fucking medal.