Green building or bioclimatic building is the practice of increasing the efficiency with which buildings and their sites use and harvest energy, water, and materials, and reducing building impacts on human health and the environment, through better siting, design, construction, operation, maintenance, and removal, the complete building life cycle.

"Buildings consume 40% of all energy resources, emit a third of all greenhouse gases and use about 12 percent of all potable water. Each year the world's construction industry produces 136 million tons of waste that finds its way to the landfills." (design-e2.com)

Green building is also sometimes known as sustainable building or environmental building, although there are slight differences in the definitions. The practice of green building can lead to benefits including reduced operating costs by increasing productivity and using less energy and water, improved public and occupant health due to improved $& _fcksavedurl="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indoor_air_quality">indoor air quality, and reduced environmental impacts by, for example, lessening $& _fcksavedurl="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm_water">storm water runoff and the $& _fcksavedurl="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_island">heat island effect.

Green building is an essential component of the related concepts of $& _fcksavedurl="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_design">sustainable design, $& _fcksavedurl="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_development">sustainable development and general $& _fcksavedurl="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability">sustainability.

Practitioners of green building often seek to achieve not only ecological but aesthetic harmony between a structure and its surrounding natural and built environment. The appearance and style of sustainable homes and buildings can be nearly indistinguishable from their less sustainable counter-parts.

Green design often emphasizes taking advantage of $& _fcksavedurl="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_resource">renewable resources, e.g., using sunlight through $& _fcksavedurl="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_solar">passive solar, $& _fcksavedurl="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_solar">active solar, and $& _fcksavedurl="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photovoltaic">photovoltaic techniques and using plants and trees through $& _fcksavedurl="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_roof">green roofs, $& _fcksavedurl="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rain_gardens">rain gardens, and for reduction of rainwater run-off. Many other techniques, such as using packed gravel for parking lots instead of concrete or asphalt to enhance replenishment of ground water, are used as well.

There are already plenty of vacant buildings and we don't really need any more. Building new "green" buildings is much more destructive than renovating existing buildings. Just think of all those fancy materials, coming from all over the world, how do they get to the building site? By wind powered truck? And what was on the land before it became a new "green" building site?

If we want to increase our chances of survival, a good first step would be to stop lying to ourselves.

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