Housing 2.0 creator Sam Rashkin argues that climate urgency is not landing with mainstream buyers, and makes the case for listening-based climate action: simpler home ratings that people react to emotionally, and messaging that reaches the same outcome by a different route.
00:00:00:21 - 00:00:29:14
Mike Collignon: Everyone. Welcome to housing 2.0. If this is your first time joining us. Welcome to housing 2.0. And if you've attended one of our seminars or workshops or action groups, welcome back. We're embarking on year five of the program. Yeah. Year five. My name is Mike Collignon and I'm the housing 2.0 program manager. And if at any point you have questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to me via the chat box or by email.
00:00:29:14 - 00:00:55:03
Mike Collignon: I'm going to put my email into the chat box in just a little while. Now I am joined today by the creator and teacher of the housing 2.0 content, Sam ration. That content that we're talking about is based largely on his latest book, housing 2.0 Destruction Survival Guide. You know, the full program was established to help empower you, our building professionals, to design and construct higher performance, healthier, more sustainable homes at a fraction of the cost.
00:00:55:04 - 00:01:16:02
Mike Collignon: Now, before he did all that, he had something to do with the Energy Star and Zero Energy Ready Home programs. Maybe you've heard of those things is going to lead us through today's seminar, and he's also going to address your questions at the end. Now, before we get started, we have to recognize our sponsors. The first is Panasonic Healthy Indoor Living Solutions.
00:01:16:03 - 00:01:50:14
Mike Collignon: You know, they're helping builders across the country differentiate themselves with powerful, code compliant and cost effective indoor air quality solutions that provide a safer environment for home buyers. And we also have LG with us. They are a leading proponent of the electrification movement, and they're proud to pave the way with arguably the broadest portfolio of home electrification products, from air to air and air to water heat pumps for the HVAC systems, two water heaters, clothes dryers, washer dryer combos, even advanced energy storage systems, EV chargers, and super efficient appliances.
00:01:50:14 - 00:02:19:19
Mike Collignon: Including the industry's first Energy Star certified induction cooktop. LG's innovation and technology will help us promote decarbonization and collectively create a better life for all. Now, for those of you who might have been with us before, we're going to traverse through 2025 a little differently than prior years. Instead of doing a couple series, you know, one of the spring, one of the fall, we're covering 11 different topics throughout the course of the year.
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Mike Collignon: That means you'll have a new housing 2.07 hour to enjoy every month except July. Stay tuned to your inbox for all the upcoming topics, dates, and times. Now, during the course of today's presentation, you can submit questions. You can submit questions for Sam. Simply use the questions box inside the go to Webinar Control panel. I'm going to look over those questions and give those to Sam after his presentation.
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Mike Collignon: All right everybody ready to go. All right, let's do this. I now hand it over to Mr. Sam Raskin.
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Sam Rashkin: Hey, thank you so much, Mike. Welcome, everyone. Like Mike. Incredibly grateful for really great sponsors that make this program possible. Panasonic and LG. So let's move in today's topic. This is a new approach, as Mike mentioned. And this year we have in our core seminar series, five Rethinking Seminars Today's Rethinking Climate Action. And I think with a new sheriff in town and new administration and are keen awareness that the world is different right now.
00:03:26:29 - 00:03:56:02
Sam Rashkin: This is a really important topic I think we all need to address. So I'm going to first set the stage for the five seminars we're doing this year. And we're thinking today we're doing Rethinking Climate Action. April 3rd, we'll do Rethinking Scaling Systems built Homes May 15th, Rethinking the Perfect Wall, September 11th, rethinking Affordable Housing November 6th. Rethinking the rethinking the Herz index score.
00:03:56:09 - 00:04:23:27
Sam Rashkin: As Mike mentioned, we also have a leadership discussion series where thought leaders come in and we really address how we address big changes that are happening. And we also have a very important series on how to avoid mistakes getting to zero. So stay tuned for all that. And let's jump into today's topic. First, a disclaimer I'm not suggesting taking our foot off the climate action pedal, so there's a lot of content today.
00:04:23:28 - 00:05:00:17
Sam Rashkin: I don't want anyone to assume that's what's being suggested. I am suggesting we leverage opportunities to be smarter scaling climate action. When we look at how we have progressed and the situation we're in today. I think there are opportunities to just be more effective scaling and addressing the great urgency we have now. Next, I'm not suggesting rapid that my or I'm not suggesting that my recommendation is all work and not delusional that everything I say today absolutely is the answer.
00:05:00:23 - 00:05:23:11
Sam Rashkin: What I'm saying is that the recommendations should be starting conversation. I'm looking at things a new way. I'm trying to rethink how we really address the new forces acting on climate action. And that's all I'm doing. So don't get upset if some things make sense or don't make sense. This is just starting the conversation. What we'll do today is four key things.
00:05:23:11 - 00:05:55:09
Sam Rashkin: One was I always review the housing 2.0 program background very quickly. So you understand the context where I'm coming from. Second, why climate urgency now. Third, why climate urgency is not being heard. And then the last listening based climate action same outcome, different message. So moving into the background for housing 2.0, it all begins for me understanding that housing is the ultimate consumer product.
00:05:55:10 - 00:06:20:00
Sam Rashkin: Nothing comes close. And when we think about a consumer product, we have to be focused on the whole product experience and research from national lab surveys and studies show we look at where we spend time every day at residences, at work, dining, outdoors, vehicles, other indoor locations. We are in our home nearly 70% of the time now. This is done.
00:06:20:00 - 00:06:59:07
Sam Rashkin: 2001 this particular survey I'm going to submit probably post-Covid, it's getting closer to 75% where we spend our time. Home is where life happens. This is the product we have to get right. So that's the foundation for housing 2.0 and why I pursue this program so much is my passion for housing. The reason I exist is I'm about homes where life happens better, and in terms of providing what we can do to solve that opportunity, I provide a framework that has fundamentals for consistently delivering a better user experience at lower cost.
00:06:59:09 - 00:07:23:23
Sam Rashkin: Now my life is focused on high performance, low carbon housing, but I recognize that will not hold up the housing user experience. Stool. It's a five legged stool. You also have to optimize community design quality and the sales experience, particularly service. So this is a holistic concept to optimizing the product. Will we spend over 70% of our lives.
00:07:23:23 - 00:07:52:02
Sam Rashkin: And how we do that is with 160 best practices. And the way that kind of parcels out is, the first thing we do is we have two business models. One is the typical lowest gross cost business model most builders apply. The second is a housing two business model, which is an optimization for the user experience. And so the first step is to in the process is to invest in the experts and special features.
00:07:52:02 - 00:08:29:17
Sam Rashkin: For sure thing user experiences, experiences we know every homeowner would want to have. It takes extra costs for experts and features. Make those investments go beyond first cost. But the secret sauce is step kit. This is where we optimize our total cost, and we have all these tools to extract tremendous savings rightsizing versus excessive space, simple versus complexity, integrated systems versus non integrated systems, lean design and lean build versus excessive waste and enhance productivity versus lack of productivity.
00:08:29:18 - 00:08:58:24
Sam Rashkin: All of these tools can really extract tremendous cost savings. And at the same time, because of this focus on user experience, wind up with added value, better experiences, better wellness, lower ownership cost. And when we calculate those out through housing, 2.0 will come up with 30 to 70% greater value with this business model. So that's why we this is a completely different, unique approach to taking housing to the next level.
00:08:58:24 - 00:09:27:20
Sam Rashkin: And the important thing is it's backed up by a lot of data. Here's one point I'll show you where one builder took one experience design with a obsessive focus on just extracting all the savings possible from every design decision. And this is lost. Construction in a multifamily housing project in Portland, Oregon, and achieved 24% lower cost than the prior project on the same site, building a very similar housing.
00:09:27:20 - 00:09:54:19
Sam Rashkin: So it's amazing all these outcomes that can be achieved. And this is the basic resource housing 2.0. So just so you know, where the context where I'm coming from. So let's go into why climate urgency has been such a critical the topic for so many of us to focus our lives. And the first thing I want to do is talk about predicting, predicting the visible future and hard versus soft trends.
00:09:54:19 - 00:10:24:02
Sam Rashkin: And I love this basic concept from a book Flash Foresight by Daniel Burris. You can predict the future accurately. You just have to leave out the parts you can be wrong about. That's all you got to do. And the way you do that, the key is knowing how to distinguish between a soft trend and a hard trend. Now, a soft trend is a a specific color or counter preference that might be in vogue at this time.
00:10:24:05 - 00:10:55:29
Sam Rashkin: A hard trend is that housing prices are going up, and it's a very big difference in terms of understanding and planning for the future. When you parcel out the hard trends, it's it's about knowing and recognizing certainty. And when we look at climate and we look at hard trends, we realize we're in uncharted territory. When we look at virtually every curve for every major Earth system affected by human activity, they all seem to have a similar curve.
00:10:56:00 - 00:11:38:25
Sam Rashkin: This is work done by Stockholm Resilient Resilience Center in Sweden, and essentially they identify 12 earth systems, and all of them virtually, are going in this very similar curve in what they call the great acceleration. The magnitude and frequency of change indicate the Earth is entering a new geologic epic. The Anthropocene said this is their finding, and I can take all 12 of these curves for carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane, stratus, surface temperatures, ocean acidification, all these Earth trends, and they all look basically some variation of this curve of a exponential growth curve.
00:11:38:25 - 00:12:22:02
Sam Rashkin: And so the reason why we're so concerned is the reason this represents uncharted territory is scientists can identify a planetary boundary condition where once that Earth system exceeds that level, then it gets really difficult to reverse back and mitigate these impacts. That can really hurt human life on the planet. So we have a whole bunch of these Earth systems and metrics that are exceeding the planetary boundary conditions CO2 in the atmosphere, biodiversity, deforestation, biogeochemical flows, all those have exceeded the planetary boundary condition.
00:12:22:02 - 00:12:49:21
Sam Rashkin: And you have a whole bunch of these Earth system metrics right at the cusp of the planetary boundary level, ocean acidification, freshwater use, atmospheric aerosol, novel entity chemicals, all those things are just sitting right there at the boundary. So over the last 50 years, we have a hard trend. We've seen the most rapid transformation of the human relationship with the natural world in the history of our humankind.
00:12:49:21 - 00:13:14:18
Sam Rashkin: And so that's why we feel it's urgent. And then the hard trends reveal themselves every time we measure the data. It just it just reveals these curves are real. So this is a this is a chart showing gland a global land and ocean temperature anomaly. So you have the degree centigrade compared to the industrial age 1900 to 2000 before and after.
00:13:14:18 - 00:13:47:13
Sam Rashkin: And you see basically that where right now the global land and ocean temperature anomalies about approaching almost 1.3°C above those the pre-industrial level. And so we're rapidly going to a point where we're dangerously, dangerously close to the 1.5°C above pre-industrial level threshold needed to avert the worst impacts of climate change, and which we already are experiencing on a regular basis.
00:13:47:20 - 00:14:13:29
Sam Rashkin: We don't have to speak about the wildfires in Los Angeles, the hurricanes that occurred in North Carolina and Florida. We can keep going through the laundry list of all the horrific climate events that are happening at the same time. On this curve, we can map the carbon levels, the globe, the global atmospheric CO2, and we see it basically tracking these temperature anomalies in lockstep.
00:14:13:29 - 00:14:40:17
Sam Rashkin: So today, we've exceeded the 400 parts per million level of CO2 in the atmosphere that also supposed to exceed the planetary boundary conditions. And again, all the alarms going off, we have a climate crisis on top of that. The evil twin of global warming is ocean acidification. Over a third of the carbon that's emitted in the atmosphere is absorbed by the oceans.
00:14:40:20 - 00:15:08:14
Sam Rashkin: They keep getting hotter and more acidified. Aragonite is the main measuring tool to measure the acidification, and basically 150 billion metric tons of carbon absorbed by the world sees in the last 200 years. And it's threatening fragile, finite marine life and food security and livelihoods and local economies, global economies. This is just a huge threat. It's an evil twin that we don't talk about as much as the atmospheric temperatures.
00:15:08:14 - 00:15:42:24
Sam Rashkin: And we have the visual evidence as well. You know, 1991, you know, this was this was the polar ice that was on the surface. And then we fast forward 25 years or so, we we see the shrinkage note from this to this. Visually we see the hard trend. We see the warming in the melting of the ice three times faster sea level rise estimated in the next 30 years compared to the past 100 years, three times faster in the next 30 compared to the last 100 years.
00:15:42:24 - 00:16:20:04
Sam Rashkin: So all these hard trends compound. And similarly biodiversity is another one. We look and measure the percent increase in extinctions and how that's happening. And again, in lockstep with when the industrial age happens. We see the exponential curve kick in and all these species are experiencing tremendous impacts on their livelihood or their on their existence. One study done at Tufts University, 30 to 50% of species going extinct by 2050, and this is 1000 to 10,000 times faster than the normal background rate, which you see in the dotted line at the bottom of the curve.
00:16:20:04 - 00:16:43:20
Sam Rashkin: So we know we're just losing species an incredible rate. And what you don't even see on here for instances, other extinctions like we're worried about, like bees, which are needed to cultivate crops and their populations are dropping exponentially faster as well. So, you know, we're just losing biodiversity, which all the scientists claim are critical to the planet's well-being.
00:16:43:23 - 00:17:09:24
Sam Rashkin: And then, you know, just what's driving all this probably goes back to human population. And, you know, it correlates the explosion and growth to the availability of fossil fuels. That's when it just goes up vertically. The first billion humans took 300,000 years. The fifth and 6 billion only took 12 year, 12 years. That's how fast human population is growing.
00:17:09:24 - 00:17:44:13
Sam Rashkin: And you know, the logic just follows the this population growth correlates the exponential growth and carbon emissions, and the exponential growth and carbon emissions correlates the exponentially greater risk of Earth systems we just discussed. And finally, therefore, minimizing risk to Earth systems correlates to reducing carbon emissions exponentially. So this is just why it's so urgent. And the last thing I'll say about this hard trend is the hard trend in scientists converging and having consensus that this is happening.
00:17:44:20 - 00:17:59:16
Sam Rashkin: It's being driven by this human activity. And I always go crazy when we have countering scientists on shows who will give the opposing point to climate.
00:17:59:19 - 00:18:25:22
Sam Rashkin: Climate threats and climate risk when we have 97% of climate change is happening in human cause, all we need to do anytime these alternate views are being expressed is just put this graph on the on the screen. Know this is yeah, you can always find people who can be motivated to have this countering point. But when you have 97% of scientists agree this is a hard trend.
00:18:25:23 - 00:18:53:15
Sam Rashkin: So clearly climates urgent, but for some reason the message is not being heard. So this is this is really the conundrum now. And no, the yellow, the skies and fire or everything is going to collapse on us. It seems to get everyone numb to to taking action. So let's talk about this. And why is it not being heard?
00:18:53:15 - 00:19:18:04
Sam Rashkin: I'm going to start with this concept of well-being. And there are three metrics that were used for one study about well-being life expectancy, which is a likelihood of a long and healthy life. Education, which was the degree of access to knowledge based on enrollment in school and educational degree attainment, and then meeting earnings. Financial wellness, the standard of living for full and part time workers.
00:19:18:04 - 00:19:47:26
Sam Rashkin: So those are three metrics and three different maps for each one of these metrics for developed mapping well-being for life expectancy, education index, median personal earnings. And in each map, the darker the color gets, the better the well-being, the lighter the color, less the well-being, and one map was done to create a overall kind of human development index for all three well-being factors.
00:19:47:26 - 00:20:14:06
Sam Rashkin: And you can see this is what it looks like. And again, like the other maps, the darker the color, the better the well-being, the lighter the color, the worse the well-being. And what's interesting is you look at the areas between where you have low well-being and high well-being, and it approximates a two times gap difference in well-being from the lowest to highest regions.
00:20:14:12 - 00:20:39:15
Sam Rashkin: So there's a huge gap in well-being, the experience in this country, people are living different lives and different life experiences depending where you are. And next was I just kind of map these areas. Second, use them for superimposing and other maps. And I went and looked and collected other maps like this 2024 political map of how people voted.
00:20:39:15 - 00:21:12:25
Sam Rashkin: And if I superimposed those well-being areas, well-being was best. It should really jump out at you that how much blue and dark blue is in the areas of well-being, and even the areas of well-being that have a fair amount of red. There's a big blue epicenter that's probably driving the well-being performance in that region. And so what's really important here is this correlation between areas of high well-being and support for climate protection leadership.
00:21:13:02 - 00:21:39:05
Sam Rashkin: You know, the areas where you have well-being, people tend to vote for leadership that prioritize climate and, and, and take action on climate and areas that don't have well-being. They vote the other way. And another way to see this is by looking at maps of climate change deniers. The simplest one for me to plot was this one. Which state by state degree of climate denial?
00:21:39:06 - 00:22:04:03
Sam Rashkin: The darker, the blue, the least denial. As you move to dark and darker reds, it gets the most denial. And it's about a six times gap between the areas with the least and most climate. And when I superimpose again, the areas are wellness again. It's again should jump out that the that there's a high correlation between areas of high being and states of the lowest rate of climate deniers.
00:22:04:04 - 00:22:36:27
Sam Rashkin: So it leads to a hypothesis for me, where people are experiencing vastly worse health, education and earnings. It's incredibly challenging to earn the support for climate policies when it's advocated by leadership they believe have ignored their well-being. For past 50 to 75 years. Governments and institutions have failed them, and what happens as a result is that fear and blame become much easier to hear than save the planet.
00:22:36:27 - 00:23:07:01
Sam Rashkin: When you're underserved and they're chronically underserved populations. And we're at a point where the with the disparity in wellness is so great, and the correlation to aligning with non climate priority leadership is so strong that you wind up in situations like we're in today, where we do not have a strong leadership basis for promoting climate action. So which leads me to a conclusion.
00:23:07:06 - 00:23:39:13
Sam Rashkin: Decades of failure to ensure well-being appear to correlate with winning support. We need for persistent and coherent climate action. And put another way, well-being. Now, in my mind, Trumps climate is a greatest existential threat to the planet. Clearly the this massive urgency of climate action. But we can't get there. When you have such disparity in well-being that won't create a leadership that will take us there, so we can't ignore it.
00:23:39:15 - 00:23:59:21
Sam Rashkin: If we're going to promote climate action, we have to really embrace this concept. Is my conclusion. That and recommendation. So let's talk about listening based climate action where we get the same outcome but a different message. I think we can live with that. And what I mean by what I mean by listening is not saying I'm going to impose my worldview.
00:23:59:28 - 00:24:19:06
Sam Rashkin: You have to believe the sky is falling. It's all human activity fault. Humans are to blame. Humans are horrible people. They don't do the right thing. And I'm going to ban you to do certain things. Went to regulate you and put tax burdens and do everything I can do on you to you embrace my worldview. It just doesn't work.
00:24:19:11 - 00:24:44:09
Sam Rashkin: So let's talk about what we do. First, we start by recognizing the link between homes and well-being. Okay. Because my field is housing that that's a strong basis point for me. And if I if I get I start with this realization that we spend nearly three fourths of our time in our homes, homes where life happens. There's a huge link between homes and well-being.
00:24:44:11 - 00:25:08:27
Sam Rashkin: If people are there three quarters of their life and we don't get homes that nurture well-being, they won't experience while being they won't vote for climate action. So it's a tremendous correlation between all of these points on raging raising. So what is a low carbon home and why does it link to well-being? So dive a little deeper. A low carbon home basically first optimizes enclosure.
00:25:08:27 - 00:25:32:21
Sam Rashkin: And it does that with comprehensive building science. Then it optimizes the operation of the home by making efficient and smart. It used to be a 15 was enough. That's not enough anymore. If you're not marrying efficiency to smart as well. Smart home operation it you just not building for the future, then you have to optimize health. And that begins with indoor air quality.
00:25:32:23 - 00:26:09:14
Sam Rashkin: I'll submit. There's a whole bunch we got to do about mitigating food deserts and and educating people about diet. And, you know, there's a lot more to health than that. And creating communities with open spaces and where people engage socially and there's activity and there's so many things we need to do for health. But when it comes to the house where we're spending time, that starts with indoor air quality and then on resilience, we have to optimize that by making homes ready for the prevailing disaster risks, and we optimize the ever increasing water constraints by creating water efficient homes.
00:26:09:14 - 00:26:40:14
Sam Rashkin: And the outcome is wellness, financial illness. Because we have lower ownership costs, we maybe have to invest a little bit higher first cost, but are tremendous advantage financially occurs because of monthly cash flows and savings and extra value of the home. And then we optimize health by reducing health expenses. And we optimize future ready wellness, better protection by building homes that are ready for disasters, ready for water constraints, and ready for being smart.
00:26:40:15 - 00:27:02:18
Sam Rashkin: So these outcomes are all critical. And what's frustrating is we keep assigning zero value for them when that's the wrong answer. And so these homes deliver lower cost of construction because enclosure we can extract all sorts of cost savings. We build them smarter, we can. The electrical and plumbing systems can be done for much lower costs and high performance homes.
00:27:02:18 - 00:27:28:12
Sam Rashkin: And then we have the aforementioned lower cost of ownership, utility bills, maintenance, health expenses, water bills, insurance costs, revenue from solar systems. Health is better. We enjoy living healthier lives, we experience superior protection, and we're ready for the future. Our homes of smart disaster ready and electric ready and zero zero answer. So I do. Back in the envelope calculations.
00:27:28:12 - 00:27:54:22
Sam Rashkin: If you read housing 2.0, I do. I do really kind of envelope pop in the envelope just analysis to come up with some basic numbers to get off zero. These are my answers. For instance, on health expenses it's $40,000 over 30 years. And I get that by taking the annual health expenses out of pocket for the average household is somewhere around almost $900.
00:27:54:24 - 00:28:14:15
Sam Rashkin: I assume about a third of that can be saved with comprehensive indoor air quality improvements. And then I get the cash flow, amortize it over 30 years and calculate it. And it's 40,000, which is greater than the energy savings from the utility bills. And that's because the energy codes are getting so much better. But you see these numbers are still really significant.
00:28:14:16 - 00:28:48:04
Sam Rashkin: And when you count them all up together, it's like 150 to $250,000 of cost advantage for a low carbon home that makes us financially well, makes us healthier in terms of wellness. And we're fine. We're also better protected because our value and our safety are better position for the future risks that we're exposed to. So this is huge benefits, and it's massive to me that will assign zero value for all this benefit.
00:28:48:06 - 00:29:14:03
Sam Rashkin: So what do we do. So let's talk about listening based climate actions I'm going to recommend three buckets. Again just to start the conversation three buckets of ideas. We want a message well-being versus carbon power messaging, curse of knowledge and unforced errors. And three things I want to talk about in terms of how we can do this. So in terms of explaining what a power message is, I love this example.
00:29:14:03 - 00:29:39:21
Sam Rashkin: If you have ten in my workshops and particularly the sales workshops, I use this all the time, but it's so powerful. It was really difficult to sell Patagonian toothfish, sea merchants and mid 80s went down to Columbia or somewhere in South America. Found this amazing fish with great texture, color, great taste. It was just an amazing fish and they brought it to America and it just rotted on the shelves.
00:29:39:28 - 00:30:05:05
Sam Rashkin: For some reason, the American seafood eating public did not want to fish. So I went back to the drawing board, said, what do we do? And they thought about it and they came up with a brilliant solution, a power message enhancement. They changed the name to Chilean CBS. And just the name change, just using words that resonate created such a demand for this fish.
00:30:05:07 - 00:30:40:07
Sam Rashkin: It was almost fish to extinction. They had to put all these controls and measures in place to protect the species from going extinct. I'm happy to report it. It's kind of rebounding quite a bit, but more important is the power of words to change behavior. I look at our industry, I look at what we do and how we message, and we just think it's like scientists and researchers and we want to just promote what we understand and not what will resonate and really cause behavior change with who just wanted to do it.
00:30:40:07 - 00:30:57:16
Sam Rashkin: Because we say you have to do it. So you should do an energy audit. But if I serve a 1000 Americans and ask, you want an audit, I'll get 1000 rejections. No, I've done that survey myself with audiences all across the country for years. I ask how many people want to be audited. I don't get a single hand raised.
00:30:57:17 - 00:31:25:21
Sam Rashkin: Why? When words are free, would you choose a name for such a valuable service? People should want on the most valuable asset. They own their homes to ensure its wellness. Why would you call it an audit? You can call it anything you want. Words are free and so I recommend calling it Home Wellness Checkup. It's you're leveraging a term that already has value rather than using a term that Americans reject.
00:31:25:23 - 00:31:52:08
Sam Rashkin: This. This isn't part I call this kind of behavior change science. This isn't hard concepts. So Home Wellness checkup, we take our physical bodies in for checkups, our cars and for checkups, things we care about. We know it's important to have checkups and call it a home wellness checkup. Again, financial health ready for the future. This is so much more resonant than the term we're using, and it's no cost to do that.
00:31:52:09 - 00:32:16:28
Sam Rashkin: Similarly to the industry, always try to say, why are we calling things by their technical function? Ventilation system is great. A house needs ventilation by the illusion, so you get more fresh air in and we exhaust the still. They're out. If I ask a thousand Americans, how many of you think ventilation is important? Maybe I'll get a few percent saying yes or 10% by ask Americans how many people think it's important to have fresh air in their homes?
00:32:16:28 - 00:32:40:08
Sam Rashkin: I'll get 100%, so why not call it a fresh air system? That's the simplicity of this first concept. I want to start easy because it's probably something we all can recognize. We have to start dealing. We have to listen and understand what people value. And when we have an asset, we have low carbon buildings that have so many benefits and that people want.
00:32:40:11 - 00:33:11:14
Sam Rashkin: Let's message to the benefit, not what we want them to understand. That's complex and hard to have any understanding about. So enough of that. But let me give you some basic framework or principles for messaging. One has to be short to optimize your attention to. It has to be simple to optimize clarity. Three has to be motional compromise inspiration, particularly inspiration to change from what you're doing and forth.
00:33:11:14 - 00:33:40:05
Sam Rashkin: It has to be universal to optimize resonance. You can't have a name that people have to audience already reject. And this is where the one where we fail the most people, you know, half your audience in the country with anything that's named carbon climate will reject it. Why would you go with those names? It's fine internally when you're doing planning and analysis and within your programs to understand and use those terms.
00:33:40:05 - 00:34:05:07
Sam Rashkin: But you have to recognize when you if you want your programs to have resonance and be embraced by your total audience that need to believe in your message. You want to filter your words, your message, to know it's universal. So let me give you an example. These are actual programs. I'm going to convert a non listening program name to listening based program.
00:34:05:07 - 00:34:29:00
Sam Rashkin: And just leverage this wellness connection between low carbon zero carbon buildings and wellness. So an actual program is the white House National Climate Task Force. So I would just change it to the white House National Wellness Task Force. Doesn't cost me any more to use the word wellness and climate, so why not do it? HUD has a HUD climate action plan.
00:34:29:00 - 00:34:56:09
Sam Rashkin: I call it the HUD Wellness Action Plan. You kind of see how this is working. Massachusetts has Massachusetts climate ready housing program. I want to pivot to the Massachusetts Enhanced Wellness Housing Program, a Harvard Radcliffe Institute Climate Change initiative, Harvard Radcliffe Institute Wellness Initiative. And there's a research program, I think, that is running at the Climate Resilient Housing Research Program.
00:34:56:09 - 00:35:26:19
Sam Rashkin: I want to call it the Disaster Resistant Housing Research Program. Pivot from names with substantial opposition to names based on universally desired outcomes. If a 1000 American 100% of Americans believe wellness is something we should all aspire to, but only 45% believe climate is, let's use the 100% term. That's all I'm asking. Next concept curse of knowledge. And this one will drive me crazy.
00:35:26:19 - 00:35:51:20
Sam Rashkin: And then in federal government at EPA and do Serena by researchers all my life. And they're the most brilliant, wonderful people and so blessed to know them. But they will drive me mad with this curse of knowledge. When subject matter expertise makes it difficult by missing the perspective of those without the same knowledge. I'll give you an example of curse of knowledge in action.
00:35:51:21 - 00:36:12:11
Sam Rashkin: This is the National Fenestration Reading Council label for windows. It's not for the architect. It's not for the engineer. It's not for the designer. This is a label that goes on the window and it's ship, and it'll be on the home when the people go to see their home in a construction. So this isn't for the engineer's education.
00:36:12:11 - 00:36:33:15
Sam Rashkin: They've already specified the window before they ever see this label or the architect. So there's this label on the window. This is an opportunity to convey a product performance metric that inspires people, makes them feel good if they got a good window, or help them make a decision to buy more low carbon product. And this has zero clarity.
00:36:33:18 - 00:36:59:10
Sam Rashkin: Way too many metrics and no contrast. I can't if I'm an average consumer. How do I know the window on the left is a basic energy store window, and the window on the right is a triple glazed superior window. And these all these metrics are completely different coefficients and factors that no home buyer would know about unless they were in the field.
00:36:59:10 - 00:37:23:21
Sam Rashkin: So to me this is useless. So I get away from the crescent ology and say I want to move people from double pain to triple pane window and colder climates, maybe climate zones five through eight, six through eight. And this is a label they put on the window. What about this? A double glazed window in a tenure in a cold climates, a ten year window within ten years will be obsolete.
00:37:23:28 - 00:37:51:03
Sam Rashkin: You know, we had the thin triple coming out. We had better technology, cost of energy going up. People won't accept the amazing degradation on whole wall or value that windows provide. A window that's an energy store window may lose as much as 50 to 70% of the whole wall R-value, depending how good a wall you build, where a triple glazed window will lose a fraction of that.
00:37:51:06 - 00:38:20:23
Sam Rashkin: You put all this my new expensive wall, but you don't build it the right window. So a triple glazed windows, a 50 year window. It will stand the test of time and be relevant for 50 years. Now it's much easier for me to spend another 15 to $18,000 for a triple glazed versus double glazed window package. If I understand, I'm getting five x greater durability and persistence of that window, but it's very hard for me to invest in other 18 20,000.
00:38:20:24 - 00:38:39:21
Sam Rashkin: Just looking at these two labels. We've got to make it easy for people to make choices that are smarter than themselves, so they recognize it's in their best interest. You want to get to your window. It's going to be one of the biggest investments you make in your home. You get five times a relevant lifetime out of that choice.
00:38:39:26 - 00:39:04:18
Sam Rashkin: Again, getting out of the personality and just thinking what is emotion? Now what is clear and understandable? What is contrast that will provide clarity? All these things have to be done. We cannot be inefficient and how we go to market with better climate solutions. And here's one. It will really drive me nuts, because these were so much part of my life and I was doing EPA.
00:39:04:23 - 00:39:25:08
Sam Rashkin: On the left is a home energy score. On the right is a first score. Both rate performance of homes. First thing, neither one of these metrics had anything to do with each other. Why are there two different ways of measuring existing and new homes? It's that is already confusing to me as an architect, chief architect at Department of Energy.
00:39:25:08 - 00:39:44:25
Sam Rashkin: And then I'm supposed to hope that a homeowner can look at either one of these labels and have it even the beginning of an understanding of a concept of what is the value of the score and what it's going to mean to them. It's insanity. This is just not giving them any basis to understand the value and make the right decision.
00:39:44:28 - 00:40:07:22
Sam Rashkin: Yeah, they you can spend billions and billions of dollars in education trying to get a homeowner to know that a home energy score of 8.4 is a lot better than one. It's 5.9 or 6.4 and emotionally relate to that. What a huge task. And then in the home energy score A.
00:40:07:24 - 00:40:30:14
Sam Rashkin: The higher the score, the more efficient it is. And the resonance score, the lower the score, the more efficient it is. So they have nothing to do. Look at these labels and all information. What a waste of a label. In contrast, you have assets that can be leveraged. You build on what is working rather than trying to fix what is broken.
00:40:30:14 - 00:40:55:06
Sam Rashkin: If you want to scale climate action, this is such an important concept for change. We so much want to solve the problem. We think we need a way to have accurate measurements, and we come up with this. And what we need is a way to create people to make the right decision. Nobody wants a home with a two star label, a one star, even a three star label they already emotionally react to to star ratings.
00:40:55:09 - 00:41:13:25
Sam Rashkin: Why don't you leverage that? Why are you creating a whole new solution? When they see this label a home, they don't want a home to go to market. They plan to sell that has a low rating. They'll be motivated to make efficiency improvements. They want to buy a home that has a low star rating for anything. So this is just a freebie.
00:41:13:26 - 00:41:44:18
Sam Rashkin: It's out there in the market. And the stunning thing is the Herz rating score. When I was first introduced in the early 90s and mid 90s was a 1 to 5 star rating, and then they got rid of it. The other option I like a lot. So one being used in Europe, it's the A through G rating where I like what I love about this is everyone understands A through F, everyone reacts emotionally beginning to see a D and F.
00:41:44:20 - 00:42:08:28
Sam Rashkin: We hate that on our school. We already have built in hardwiring to emotionally go. I do not want that. If they get any assessment of the house that comes back as a DNF, they hate that they react emotionally. They'll do something about this, they'll take action and we ignore it. Now, what I would do to build on the European experience is get rid of the E and the G.
00:42:08:29 - 00:42:37:18
Sam Rashkin: We don't need it. All these five metric. There's five tiers of all you need a, b, c, d, f. We understand it, but what react to it will change our behavior to get that A or B. So you get where I'm going. This is the reason we have this is the curse of knowledge. And if we simply got away from ourselves and our engineering biases and just looked at the market, we would choose these kinds of solutions.
00:42:37:20 - 00:42:59:12
Sam Rashkin: We have to be better climates, too important with taking actions that are not getting the outcomes we need. Okay, now the third thing I want to talk about in the list I should use unforced errors. I play a lot of tennis, so I like this term because basically tennis, there's this unnecessary risk you take when you go for a shot you don't need to go to.
00:42:59:13 - 00:43:15:03
Sam Rashkin: It's too close to lining you miss or you, you don't clear the net enough. Whatever it may be, you just hit a shot. We didn't need to hit that shot. And you lost a point when you could have taken a shot with maybe 7,080% greater probability of success and being the point and still have a chance to win.
00:43:15:03 - 00:43:44:29
Sam Rashkin: And so I really praising unforced errors when we got a solve problem it's not listening action problem. So I'll give you an example of client policies that take unnecessary risk. Not always. Sometimes the only option, but it's almost like if we want to do a program to get efficient homes almost by default, we're always thinking rebates and tax subsidies, and we're always going to these regulations and codes.
00:43:44:29 - 00:44:11:03
Sam Rashkin: We're always going the path that is the least. We resonate with our audience. So there are three buckets here. I don't think we should take away freedoms. Acceptance. The ultimate last resort, bans codes, regulations that are perceived to take away freedoms you don't want to do. Two you don't want to do policies when you ignore true cost. I'm going to talk about the fossil fuel subsidy cost.
00:44:11:03 - 00:44:37:18
Sam Rashkin: And I always talk about ownership cost of housing, not the first cost, because ownership cost is what you should care about. That's what will either impose a financial burden or not living in that home. And then third, imposing expensive tax burdens, taxes, rebate subsidies always conjures up negative emotions. So when you do these, you know that you're choosing to create a lot of opposition.
00:44:37:20 - 00:45:02:14
Sam Rashkin: Now you have no other choice. You do it. But I'm only asking if you make it the last resort not to go to first choice every time we need to take action. So let me give you in California has a zero energy code that requires every new homeowner for the privilege of buying a house, to also purchase a micro power plant on their roof to produce power.
00:45:02:17 - 00:45:25:28
Sam Rashkin: And I go, that's just like overstepping. I think the alternative that's listening, that's not taking the state with the least affordable housing, sometimes by order of magnitude or five x, more expensive to stay with the most expensive housing. Why don't we just have a wellness stretch code? And why don't we pair it with no cost incentives like we get an expedited permit?
00:45:25:29 - 00:45:50:11
Sam Rashkin: If your house is zero energy and you give a builder an expedited permit and they'll jump, and are there ways we can just do other choices that won't offend people but get us the same outcome? No, it's the same. It's a different message, but the same outcome. So that's my question. But there aren't. Then you do the code EV regulation again.
00:45:50:11 - 00:46:09:03
Sam Rashkin: In California, all vehicles have to be electric vehicles by 2035. Whatever the regulation is, what you do is you educate to the business case. Oh, in this case, electric vehicles to me are incredibly more.
00:46:09:05 - 00:46:30:24
Sam Rashkin: Superior user experience. You know, I can charge them at home. I don't have to go to gas stations anymore. Quieter. They they have amazing comfort and so many quiet benefits. We can just people will want cars if they just drive in them and just we can create other incentives that are not regulations to get people to buy electric cars.
00:46:30:29 - 00:46:53:06
Sam Rashkin: The reason you see resource efficient concrete foundations was a was against regulations that would block concrete from being used. I think we can educate people to use, for instance, precast concrete foundations, say 70% of the concrete. Why not just educate on the business case for that? Our natural gas cooking ban got a lot of bad press because it's obvious you just take away a freedom.
00:46:53:06 - 00:47:26:26
Sam Rashkin: It's a stupid unforced error. You don't need to go after gas cooking. It's such a small part of the fossil fuel consumption. We can just use voluntary labels to translate a far superior experience. You don't. You want to use induction cooktops because they're faster, better, safer and more healthy. You're and just have a label. You look at the power of organic as a label on food to get people who are looking for a healthier choice, and they spend $55 billion a year in organic food just because of that label.
00:47:27:03 - 00:47:51:26
Sam Rashkin: I know we can get people to induction cooktop, so just it's an amazing, superior experience. We just need to leverage that experience. Clean technology subsidy. Again, I'm going to recommend something called ensuring free markets with fair pricing of energy and more about that in a second. And the 45 bill tax credit rebate, I think we can do more efficient government solutions.
00:47:51:27 - 00:48:17:03
Sam Rashkin: I'm going to talk about a wellness mortgage instead of the mortgage interest deduction. These are the two we're going to spend most time and unforced errors. I want to talk about moving to fair pricing of energy and and a wellness mortgage as a more efficient government. So let's go there. So first and foremost error solution for ensuring a free market is something I call fair energy pricing.
00:48:17:05 - 00:48:43:07
Sam Rashkin: Well, I'm asking the world to do is integrate all the fossil fuel subsidy impacts into the cost of energy. Now, asking for a subsidy for renewals is like offending huge amount of decision makers in Congress and the public. Whereas I'm saying I just want fair pricing. I want all energy to be pricing on the common basis that all the costs are accounted for.
00:48:43:09 - 00:49:12:29
Sam Rashkin: Now, how do you object to that concept? It's a way you ensure a free market when you distort market. If you don't do that, you have used taxpayer costs being imposed. You're distorting the free market because you're eliminating a level playing field. You're suppressing innovation because lower cost innovations are not going to market when there's unfair pricing that that unfairly prioritizes fossil fuels.
00:49:12:29 - 00:49:32:11
Sam Rashkin: And the bottom line is your reducing launches for all Americans when you don't get the lowest cost and the healthiest and the least environmentally damaging choices. So this is just all I'm asking for. Can we have free energy pricing? I don't care about subsidies. I don't care how we get there. Just want free and fair pricing. We're all costs are accounted for.
00:49:32:14 - 00:50:03:14
Sam Rashkin: And boy, the costs and fossil fuel are huge. The oil hidden military costs, for instance, just the price of the Iraq war, which has a strong correlation to our interest in the region, has been estimated 4 to $6 trillion as a final price tag for both the Afghanistan, Iraq War, Iraq wars, and that amounts about 16 to $24,000 for every American taxpayer, and the largest amounts for future house health care of aging veterans.
00:50:03:14 - 00:50:36:21
Sam Rashkin: But this is a Harvard Kennedy School. School study. 4 to $6 trillion is not a small number. So we can debate, argue the correlation to the oral interest in the region and get either full accounting for that value or portion and the other military concepts. Hidden is the amazing cost of pay to protect the shipping routes for all that was estimated $8 trillion to protect the US shipping in the Straits of Hormuz since 1976.
00:50:36:22 - 00:51:05:02
Sam Rashkin: $8 trillion. That's a crazy number. And this map shows the chokepoints and the royal routes. And then our military presence basically is a massive expense to protect those high risk locations where most loyal is being shipped. And then there the cleanup cost. You know, this just one event, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Now, I guess the Gulf of America was $62 billion.
00:51:05:05 - 00:51:31:21
Sam Rashkin: And and I don't think that accounts for all the effects on livelihoods, on economic activity, on on persisting environmental damage that will happen for for decades and decades and decades. Just a price tag so far that's put in that 62 billion. The Baldies was the next one, the next biggest spills. That was most famous in Alaska. That was $7 billion to clean up the Exxon Valdez.
00:51:31:24 - 00:52:03:22
Sam Rashkin: And again, I keep reading stories about persistence of expenses and more and more impacts that just want to counter for in that total. And then our energy security title, we have so much dependance on having all available. We have to have this big strategic petroleum reserve. We spent about $228 billion in 2022 to ensure our energy and economic security tied to the dependance on petroleum and crude oil.
00:52:03:22 - 00:52:32:27
Sam Rashkin: So that's a huge expense, and it's just paid by the taxpayer and never shows up at their pump. And of course, you can also imagine the environmental damage that's that accounted for where all the where all the storage of the royal takes place. And then the other environmental aspect of well is the pipeline spill cost. There are 300 plus oil and gas pipeline spills per year, and they have a devastating toll on people and wildlife.
00:52:32:27 - 00:52:59:07
Sam Rashkin: So those costs never show up at the gas pump and at the Or by natural gas, at our at our homes and buildings. And then the coal mine costs are huge as well. Seven and a half to 10 billion, nearly price tag for cleanup and reclamation just due to mountaintop removal and other coal mines recovering huge swath of the eastern states, seven eastern states, and a lot of studies have been done to the count.
00:52:59:10 - 00:53:25:01
Sam Rashkin: The numbers has a lot of good analysis done that we can refer to. But this is a huge price tag. And then there's the health care costs. One study puts it at $820 billion per year of health costs attributed to fossil fuel generated air pollution and climate change. And most significantly, that burden falls heavy heaviest on vulnerable low income communities.
00:53:25:02 - 00:53:50:03
Sam Rashkin: So this is done by the National Resource Defense Council. If the numbers half or third of this number, it's a huge number. And then there's the economic impacts, the return on investment in terms of jobs and growth to the economy. One study done at the Department of Energy was nearly three times more jobs created by created by clean energy than fossil fuels per $1 $1 million invested.
00:53:50:03 - 00:54:21:06
Sam Rashkin: So that's that's just that's people's livelihoods. Again, more work and better economic growth, more tax revenue. So many things happen from these investments. The return of investment is so much greater. Where is that counted for in the economic decisions to support one fuel over another. And then you have unfair energy pricing. You'll have a lot of narrow partial look at the cost of, let's say, subsidies, federal subsidies and incentives.
00:54:21:06 - 00:54:52:04
Sam Rashkin: And observe the 85% of federal subsidies went to renewable and energy conservation and energy efficiency in 2022. This was done by the Ushe. And you tabulate these numbers. Bingo. Yeah. That's just the subsidies for paying. And this is where you get in trouble with subsidies without including all costs. When you include environmental impacts, foregone consumption taxes, it's closer to $7 trillion total subsidies for fossil fuels.
00:54:52:04 - 00:55:16:26
Sam Rashkin: And you see the explicit subsidy subsidies and dark red are a small portion of what's really going on in terms of subsidizing fossil fuel. So all we're asking for is fair price, fair pricing. We think all the costs incurred by taxpayers, the economy, health expenses, we think all those should be accounted for. And let's know, I think we're researching the wrong thing.
00:55:17:02 - 00:55:54:18
Sam Rashkin: We're just researching innovations to reduce carbon when we should be spending as much effort or large effort researching these numbers and getting consensus on the actual cost associated. For all the energy choices, we make 5 trillion costs just for these mental and foregone consumption taxes. So I did some back of the envelope calculations. I looked at the global consumption of of electricity and gasoline, and I divided up at 5 trillion, and I divided it appropriately into electricity and gasoline.
00:55:54:20 - 00:56:30:18
Sam Rashkin: And the basic subsidy subsidies of fossil fuel add up to $0.20 a kilowatt hour for fossil fuel generated electricity and $3 a gallon for gasoline. So you wonder why fuel is $6 a gallon in Europe and $3 a gallon in the US? I might surmise it's because Europe is pricing gasoline to account for all the costs and subsidies, and has a fair, free market price of free energy, fair energy pricing for free markets.
00:56:30:18 - 00:56:53:08
Sam Rashkin: That's why they do it would be my answer. So the idea is a pivot to tax policies and incentives that optimize wellness for all Americans. And you can't do that if you hide $0.20 a kilowatt hour of real costs, $3 a gallon of real cost for electricity and gasoline from fossil fuels. So the answer is figure it out, solve the problem.
00:56:53:10 - 00:57:14:00
Sam Rashkin: Come up the way I don't know. It means it's a carbon tax. Do it. But don't call it a carbon tax. Call it a no free market adjustment. And if it's if it's a regulation that's all electric cars and call it a free market correction for the maximum wellness for all Americans. So I don't know. The answer is for everything.
00:57:14:00 - 00:57:49:14
Sam Rashkin: I just know this needs to be accounted for. Okay. You look second one I want to talk about was this wellness mortgage I think would have to be more efficient in government. I've worked in government for 27 years, and I think we're foolish if we deny government is grossly inefficient. Because Americans know everyone has gone to Department of Motor Vehicles, got a building permit, got a passport.
00:57:49:17 - 00:58:02:23
Sam Rashkin: Got went through immigration. Anyone who's done anything with the government knows by experience just how inefficient the government is. Why do we deliver mail?
00:58:02:26 - 00:58:27:17
Sam Rashkin: Six times a week to Americans when we get 90% less communication via mail, or 80% less communication versus now, can I get nil every other day? Can I just cut the mail service in half? And I don't understand it. What is so urgent that mail has to come to me every day now except for Sunday? But we do it.
00:58:27:19 - 00:59:00:23
Sam Rashkin: We institutionalize six day, six days a week of mail and that's how government operates. Climate action can't be that inefficient. If we're asking buildings and homes to go to zero energy by being maximum efficient and maximum lane, I think climate action needs to walk. The talk needs to be maximum efficient programs and maximum lean with less waste programs, just like we're asking the buildings.
00:59:00:25 - 00:59:21:04
Sam Rashkin: And I think, you know, we argue that this, you know, asking government to be more efficient is just a political thing. It's not everyone knows government's not efficient and we've got to be more efficient. I spent ten years at Dewey devoting my life to making Dewey programs more efficient. I just want. That's all I wanted to do with my life.
00:59:21:05 - 00:59:58:18
Sam Rashkin: I refuse to run a national research program. I just wanted to take our assets and repurpose. And I got them to be more efficient and lean. And about 6 or 7 initiatives, I found five, ten cost savings and impact increases just by doing them more efficient. That's what I did for ten years at doing. No one knew. And then when I left, I don't think anyone's continued it because that was just a big opportunity for me to leverage my success with energy, start and let me do what I wanted to do when I got there.
00:59:58:20 - 01:00:24:26
Sam Rashkin: So let me suggest one option I actually submitted when I was at Geary that got left at, which is a wellness mortgage that converts the mortgage interest deduction from a huge liability to a massive revenue generating asset that improves wellness. Well, Americans, I'm talking 100 x difference we'll get to. And I thought you can't do it because it's you know that this is the way it is with institutionalized and interest deduction.
01:00:24:29 - 01:00:54:11
Sam Rashkin: Let's not talk about changing it. And I don't believe any problems too big to fix. I know we could do it, but let me show you why. First, mortgage interest deduction is a huge chunk. Huge chunk of the $1 trillion lost revenue for exemptions, deductions, credits and loopholes known collectively as tax expenditures. And there's the mortgage interest deduction is the second second highest tax expenditure.
01:00:54:15 - 01:01:23:29
Sam Rashkin: So these numbers are much greater. These are from 2011 when I can get the data. But the important point is just this is a huge tax expense, the mortgage interest deduction. And I want to convert it from a liability to an asset. And one of the reasons I want to do that is it's so income regressive 80 in 22,009, I was able to graphically figure that it was about 80 plus percent.
01:01:24:01 - 01:01:54:19
Sam Rashkin: Tax benefits go to households with income over $100,000. Now, fast forward 16 years later to 2025, I'm going to guess 80 plus percent go to households with incomes over 150,000 as a gift right now. It's amazingly regressive. It goes most of the people with the higher income households, which is fine. I mean, except for it, we should expect something in return.
01:01:54:19 - 01:02:20:05
Sam Rashkin: It shouldn't just be an entitlement for rich household. Now, the housing issue says it's the basis for them to sell homes and people to buy homes again. It's everyone's so worried about losing the market people. We don't have nearly enough housing. We have such a housing shortage in the country. And I think we can do this by improving the financial burden rather than worsening, worsening the financial burden of every household.
01:02:20:07 - 01:02:54:17
Sam Rashkin: And how do we do that? Well, we we leverage existing assets. We have zero energy ready home, substantially improves homes, wellness, financial health and makes them ready for the future. And we have the home energy score. The aforementioned home injury score that I'm not a fan of, at least, is a there's a tool that's out there we can use to ensure we improve existing homes 15, 20, 30% or more efficient again for better financial health and future readiness, wellness benefits.
01:02:54:19 - 01:03:21:13
Sam Rashkin: And the opportunity is great because less than 15% of the 1 million new homes built per year are built to zero ready. Well, less than 5% are built to zero ready. That was Energy Star in zero rating number 15, and less than 3% of the homes in the country, 100 million homes have been improved with home upgrades. So like your opportunity and we have tremendous assets.
01:03:21:13 - 01:03:54:09
Sam Rashkin: So what do we do? It's a simple policy change. Convert the mortgage interest deduction by just adding a prerequisite prerequisite to qualify for the now wellness mortgage deduction. Your new home. If you purchase a brand, newly constructed home has to be certified as zero. And as you ready and insist market mix ready, energy efficient mortgages so that there's zero extra down payment and zero extra income required to buy those properties.
01:03:54:09 - 01:04:21:22
Sam Rashkin: And remember the incremental cost for the energy improvements funded by the Energy Efficient Mortgage results in a monthly additional mortgage. That's less than the monthly energy savings typically. So no extra financial less financial burden on existing homes. You have to have a minimum home energy score. Let's say it's 7.5. It would be a guess of a number achieved within a year.
01:04:21:22 - 01:04:52:20
Sam Rashkin: And again, with energy improvement mortgages mandated to be in a market by FHA and USDA mortgages and others, and energy improvement mortgage is the same as energy efficient mortgage for new homes. You separately fund within the mortgage the improvements to make the house high performance and the monthly incremental costs should be easily and matched by the energy savings from the improvements.
01:04:52:23 - 01:05:14:15
Sam Rashkin: So again, less financial burden, more protection, house ready for the future, healthier home and to make sure low income homes. And that left out all the revenue that you generate from this program because a big chunk of homes will not get that, say, the mortgage interest deduction. It normally would apply that to making high performance, affordable, attainable housing.
01:05:14:18 - 01:05:51:20
Sam Rashkin: I love about government programs that I think is really important is that they should reward good behavior, tie the existing tax benefit to purchasing homes that optimize wellness for the home buyer, for the community, for the country, for all the planet. And that's just a simple policy change. I know we could do it. So I had this guy from McKinsey and company on loan to BTL Building Technology office at Doe, and I went to management and stole them for two weeks and let me have them for two weeks.
01:05:51:20 - 01:06:22:19
Sam Rashkin: This guy was genius and I asked him to create a spreadsheet model so we can calculate all the impacts of this kind of wellness mortgage. Assuming a paltry market penetration in 10 or 12 years of 33% of the homes, the mortgage interest deduction is something like eight, nine, $10,000 a year of tax benefit per homeowner, no homeowner, very few homeowners would not do the energy survey, home or the home improvements.
01:06:22:20 - 01:06:49:28
Sam Rashkin: Most people want those improvements. They want better windows and want more insulation in existing homes. So I think that 33% market penetration we send in 10 or 12 years. I forgot the number was way understated, but with that understated assumption, we calculated one. We would get to a full market transformation ten times three times faster than we would with the existing programs.
01:06:49:29 - 01:07:19:20
Sam Rashkin: We had like again, 45 L and others, and we'd have $9,270 billion of construction revenue per year, 120,000 to 360,000 persistent new jobs in persistent green technology, jobs that couldn't be outsourced, and 2800 to 2400 million metric tons of carbon emissions reduced and cheaper. We would eliminate 4 billion that we normally would be spending on 45, that tax expenditure.
01:07:19:22 - 01:07:45:16
Sam Rashkin: We would generate 350 billion to train dollars of utility bill savings, a one and a half to $4.5 trillion of additional tax revenue. And the big dead bands are because we had some widely varying assumptions. But that's not important. It's the scale of the numbers for talking about. This was a quick two week model we put together, and without this genius from McKinsey, it never could have been done.
01:07:45:18 - 01:08:26:23
Sam Rashkin: But these these are the outcomes. And the key thing is the wellness mortgage efficiency in terms of government program compared to the 45 live bait government program, is 100, 100 times less tax expenditure and ten times greater impact. Carbon savings, energy security, jobs. This is just doing what we're asking buildings to do with being ultra efficient and ultra lean and using the assets we have the certifications, a tax policy that is income regressive and we're repurposing it for all this benefit.
01:08:26:23 - 01:08:41:22
Sam Rashkin: This is how I operate as I do. All I cared about was my grand experiment clarity, purpose, programs to be more efficient, more lean and get ten times impacts, ten times greater impacts.
01:08:41:25 - 01:09:04:13
Sam Rashkin: Okay, you kind of get where I'm going. I want to be smarter. Being successful, getting climate actions we want. So some final thoughts about thinking. Rethinking climate action. The most most invasive species that I go do research, I can come up with a whole array different list. Here's one. This is a typical list of the most invasive species on the planet.
01:09:04:14 - 01:09:41:26
Sam Rashkin: Water hyacinth. Northern Pacific seastar. Small Indian mongoose. Asian longhorn beetle. Zebra mussel. Asian carp came to European starling, Coosa, which I hate. And the common rabbit. Okay, this is just one list. What's stunning is what's missing from this list. Those pesky units. Okay, we're. We're approaching 9 billion of us by 2050. 11 billion by 2100. And the waste in carbon that we're producing is shocking the planet.
01:09:41:29 - 01:10:09:24
Sam Rashkin: And that's only the partial story. The soil erosion, the trash relates to the sewage waste, the plastic waste, the forever chemical was spent nuclear fuel waste, e-waste, CFCs. I can keep going on the waste that nine, ten, 11 billion humans on the planet are producing is getting untenable. This is the Pacific garbage patch. It's a basically, it's supposed to be the size of Texas.
01:10:09:26 - 01:10:44:28
Sam Rashkin: It's all the plastic just because of currents. Coagulating one large area decomposing into microplastic particles that then get eaten by the fish. If I recall the statistic correctly, something like 40% of fish, that is that we are getting from the sea for seafood contain plastic particles and the tissues that we eat, it's just stuck out our activity and our waste is visually just exploding at us in so many ways in the planet.
01:10:45:05 - 01:11:15:04
Sam Rashkin: This one really stuns me. This is a remote Pacific island with 38 million pieces of trash and zero inhabitants. We can't even keep the trash reproducing from floating up onto the on these remote islands. It's just insanity just how invasive the species we are. Okay, we just have to realize that. So the good news? It's not like humans are bad.
01:11:15:07 - 01:11:51:02
Sam Rashkin: We have this ingenuity where we can completely change these incredible Earth system trends, hard trends, and get them back in control. So stratospheric ozone is one of the greatest examples. We turn it around. We collectively join forces as a global human intervention to reduce emissions in the atmosphere. Aerosols and we reverse stratospheric ozone. It can be done, but we just have to be smarter.
01:11:51:02 - 01:12:24:03
Sam Rashkin: So yes, we can. But my last word, as it all begins with listening to truly know people lagging in well-being. Again, the greatest existential threat is the exponentially growing gaps in well-being from haves and have nots. And then seeing these people deeply and internally, being deeply seen by them. And the key part is through words and actions that make a difference in their lives.
01:12:24:04 - 01:12:45:17
Sam Rashkin: We can't keep saying we're doing wonderful things for you, and they don't see any difference in their lives, which is what we've been doing for half, for half a century. We keep telling we're helping you or helping you or helping you, but what are we really doing? A great reference on how to be really good at listening and seeing deeply and being deeply seen.
01:12:45:20 - 01:13:08:26
Sam Rashkin: Is David Brooks book had an old person? You ought to seeing others deeply and being deeply saying, not a great book, but an important book. And this morning I saw a quote from memory Levins that I loved. You can't depress people into action. You shouldn't be depressed. You should be focused on building what is working, not trying to fix what is broken.
01:13:08:26 - 01:13:37:11
Sam Rashkin: You'll be exhausted. That challenge is so daunting. You won't know what to do. But when you grab hold of things that are working and there's so many things that are working, we can transform the planet. So I leave you with that thought, I hope I didn't send anyone. This is just me trying to share a lot of experience and learning and just passionate about what I do, and my joy working with so many of you that listen to these seminars.
01:13:37:13 - 01:13:42:13
Sam Rashkin: I hope some of this makes sense. Mike, back to you.
01:13:42:16 - 01:14:12:12
Mike Collignon: All right. Thank you Sam. And if anyone does have any questions, please send them in via the questions box or the chat box over on the go to webinar control panel. I'm going to throw one out there for you. Sam, I think the Well-Being index, what a fascinating metric. Or for someone to kind of look at and come up with, who is it that produces that?
01:14:12:15 - 01:14:21:18
Sam Rashkin: Let me go back and pull the reference up. Somebody excuse me folks, I'm going to.
01:14:21:20 - 01:14:30:07
Sam Rashkin: I just skip me. Who was the.
01:14:30:09 - 01:15:04:23
Sam Rashkin: So this is done by the measure of the Social Science Research Council, a new group. To me, this came out in 2018, and this was a human development index that basically kind of curated all three individual components life expectancy, education, median income into a single index called the Human Development Index. But it's the measure of America of the Social Science Research Council.
01:15:04:25 - 01:15:39:13
Mike Collignon: Yeah. I mean, just what a what a fascinating thing to look at. And it it really does paint quite a picture and tells a story of kind of how that has been played out. I think your hypothesis is very interesting. You know, there were a lot of people who were stunned, not just at the election results, but now stunned at some of the dismantling of some of the measures that have been in place for energy efficiency, for sustainability.
01:15:39:16 - 01:16:14:10
Mike Collignon: And it left me wondering throughout the winter, you know, why, why, why did we go this way? Why did this happen? And I just find it to be an incredibly interesting hypothesis of that correlation of well-being. What's happening in your face daily versus a larger, you know, systemic issue like the planet's climate system, which seems, you know, so far out of reach.
01:16:14:11 - 01:16:34:13
Mike Collignon: And it's so slow of changing. And, you know, it's not it's different than not that the two are the same, but it's very different than a car accident. Right. Oh it happens. It's right there. Oh my gosh. It was very traumatic. This is very slow moving and it's just very hard to perceive it.
01:16:34:15 - 01:16:50:17
Sam Rashkin: Even lying in a tub with the spout dripping one drop at a time, you eventually drown if you don't get out of the tub and you lying down in the tub and it's stopped.
01:16:50:20 - 01:16:56:24
Mike Collignon: Yeah, that's a good analogy right there.
01:16:56:27 - 01:17:00:13
Sam Rashkin: Drip drip drip drip drip.
01:17:00:16 - 01:17:27:23
Mike Collignon: Yep, yep. Well, I don't I don't see any other questions other than mine. And you know, you and I can sit here and talk all day, but I want to leave some for the other seminars that we're going to be having, because while this was the first one of 2025, there's going to be ten more to enjoy and to learn from throughout 2025.
01:17:27:23 - 01:17:49:00
Mike Collignon: We hope that you will join us. Our next seminar is actually going to take place on February 13th, three weeks from today, and it's going to start at 12 p.m. eastern time. So a little bit of a different start time. We're going to be discussing microgrids with Sid Kitson of Babcock Ranch. So I hope you're able to join us for that.
01:17:49:06 - 01:17:57:07
Sam Rashkin: Let me check. That one is we're locking in. That's a tentative.
01:17:57:09 - 01:18:09:05
Sam Rashkin: Next session. We're still looking at logistics, trying to get Sid lined up and get on his schedule. So we'll just I'll just share that that we're we're still in works getting all the details.
01:18:09:08 - 01:18:30:12
Mike Collignon: Okay. Well, there's my plea to Sid. Please join us on February 13th at £0.02. And if if for some reason we're able to get Sid but at a different date and time, we will definitely let you know. So stay tuned to your inbox for a registration link, which will obviously have a date and a time for that webinar.
01:18:30:13 - 01:18:46:10
Mike Collignon: So thank you all for attending today. Thank you to Panasonic Healthy Indoor Living Solutions and LG for the generous sponsorships of the housing 2.0 program. Until next time, stay safe, stay healthy and take care everyone so long.