The Going Green Member Forum offered informative green facts from a CHEERS rater as well as some finer points from Build It Green’s Elise Hunter about the Green Point Rated system. We discovered that the HERS Phase II rating will include: whole house energy homes, uniform rating system based on a statewide rating scale, as well as labeling procedures for homebuyers, renters, real estate industry, mortgage lenders who have an interest in home energy ratings. We say Hoorah to that! The speaker also snuck in some tidbits of info that even surprised us such as the “”Energy Efficient Mortgage” that ties into the 203B FHA loan that allows five percent of property value in most cases, while VA loans allows up to $6,000 in green upgrades.

Hunter offered a straightforward overview of the benefits of the Green Point Rated system, the economic pulse (such as occupancy rates are 5.6 percent higher in Green multi-unit apartment buildings in Seattle) and the state of green buildings. We already knew a lot of the info but not everyone does and with the sparse attendance in the room it appears that interest in Green real estate and its many be benefits may have to wait until the real estate industry weathers this storm.

The economy definitely had an impact on this year’s West Coast Green with less venders but with less money that mean that people just had to get more creative with less moola such as the floating island, show gardens and even the sustainability built Jewish Sukkoth. The usual green rock stars like Eric Corey Freed and Michelle Kaufman made their presences felt with their energetic personalities.

Kaufman, in fact, talked about the use of Green pre-fab homes and the affordability factor. She mentioned that she gets most energized by the fact that her parents and grandparents who live in Iowa would have to go through a long drown out and costly experience if they wanted to build a Green home, only because the resources don’t exist there – yet. She wants to make Green pre-fab homes affordable to all people. Fab Michelle, fab. She went off on the top three production homebuilders who she says do “crap” as their homes are not well made, not well designed, not healthy and efficient. “The big home builders won’t be proactive to make changes said Kauffman. American homebuilders being reactive? We can’t believe it.

We also could believe how interesting the planetarium project at the closing party at the Academy of Sciences was. The special WCG program featured An Ecological View of the Cosmos. This interactive program (accompanied by live narration presented by media artist David McConville, the Director of Noospheric Research of The Elumenati and a Director of the Buckminster Fuller Institute and classical/new agey music from Christen Lien and Rachel Bagby gave us a stirring, complex and though provoking view of the universe. In fact, we learned from this program how when someone asks us if we think that we are the center of the universe we just might be able to answer affirmatively.