Dear Readers, 

One beautiful Friday at the virtual Sustainability Symposium, William and I learned things. Lots o’ things. We learned concepts, best building practices, and financial motivations! Some of these things included: Transforming communities by retrofitting neglected homes to be energy efficient and healthy….the importance of material circularity for embodied carbon reduction…the necessity of ventilation in every home…and finding resilience in finance by aligning capital with incentives!!!! 

Whoop whoop! What a Friday that was….

To consolidate all of those things into one key “what I learned” takeaway is super hard if you think too much about it. So, I’m not going to think too much about it. Without an overabundance of overcomplicated thought, my key takeaway is simple: The language you use matters. Simple. Yet utterly significant to every single presentation I attended that day. 

If you want to convince a city council that retrofitting 6,000 dilapidating homes and buildings into super energy efficient and healthy structures in 4.5 years is not just a good, but a GREAT idea….then the language you use matters.¹

If you want the inhabitants of energy efficient homes and buildings to use the systems appropriately, while also valuing and understanding the ethos of a home built for net-positive and zero operational and low embodied carbon living…then the language you use matters.²

If you want people to give a poop about the air they and their children breathe in their own home…then the language you use matters.³ 

If you want financial institutions to see the value in investing in homes and buildings that are healthy for people and the planet….then the language you use matters.⁴

The symposium’s keynote speaker, Donnel Baird, had a great analogy for his experiences in language-adapting ventures at BlocPower: “The building industry is like ‘inside baseball.’” You need to change your dialect when you speak to people who don’t know anything about or even care about baseball.

I completely related to this because I am one of those people who absolutely does not care about baseball. And before I met William and we started thinking about the home we wanted to raise our children in, I absolutely did not care about the building industry. 

The building industry is complicated. There is a lot of math. There are a lot of technicalities. And not too many things can be left to inspiration or interpretation or spontaneity, or my favorite: “eh, let’s just see what happens!” Overall, you have to read the directions. And I hate reading directions…

…Basically, you can’t build a good home in the same manner that I cook dinner…

So, when going to explain something that is very specific such as the building industry, which requires a conglomerate of professionals and is easily transformed by new knowledge, culture… and, well, politics…the language needs to adapt to the person listening to you. 

Lesson learned for William and I? Because we talk to a wide variety of individuals and groups about our beloved project, the language we use must change according to who is listening to us. Especially if we want people to be just as excited about our home as we are!

The range of listeners include….

~Those who see the necessity of Passive House to a better building future, but believe that Living Buildings are an unattainable (and unaffordable) ideal that slow the true progress to a greener world.

~Those who are utterly enthusiastic about Living Buildings, and see Passive Homes as just ‘not enough’ to forward a more holistically sustainable society.⁵ 

~Those who know what Passive House and Living Building Challenge are, and believe that they are both expensive standards that are unattainable to the average homeowner, and a lot of work.

~Those who understand building science and value energy efficiency, but have no idea what Passive House or Living Building Challenge are. 

~Those who think we are literally crazy tree hugging loons and are listening to us either out of obligation…or amusement.

~Those who don’t understand a thing about building science, but they are curious and want to learn.

~Those who don’t understand a thing about building science, and are not curious in the slightest, but they love us…so they at least want to listen. 

None of these individuals are categorically ‘wrong.’ And none of these individuals are categorically ‘right.’ They all have their own thoughts and beliefs that are formulated based upon past experiences, surrounding environments, and internal motivations. As two people who want everyone and anyone listening to us to grasp the words that we say, we must acknowledge these factors ~ both the internal and the external. 

OVERALL, no matter how we adjust our language to those who are listening, we cannot, under any circumstance, talk AT people. We must talk WITH people. Us, and others with passions and morals they want to forward, cannot treat the person they are speaking with like they personally are a part of the problem. Treat them like they are a part of the solution. Because, THEY ARE. Even if they don’t know it yet. 

The end. 

Thanks for reading!

Shelby