Prior to the pandemic, we commissioned ClearPath Strategies, a global public opinion research company, to conducted in-depth national qualitative and quantitative research on people’s views of the environment. Both Standard Issue Vol. I and II provide a look at perennial challenges we face in the green building community and beyond. These reports provide valuable context in understanding our recent past and why we have to shift to prioritizing connecting the dots between public health, a healthy economy, and a healthy world.

As Standard Issue Volume I showed us, there’s real confusion around buildings and their profound impact on the intersection of healthy places, healthy people, and healthy economies.

We’ve learned that we have to start engaging wider audiences to convince the public of the reality of climate-related threats. We’ve got to illustrate the importance of small, everyday actions. And we’ve got to connect the dots between public health and the planet we call home.

Changing public perception will take nothing less than a radical re-framing of our communication methods, particularly our heavy reliance on data and numbers to prove our cause. Scientific language and startling statistics have their place. But if we are ever to reverse the dangers of climate change, we’ve got to bring more humanity and health centric arguments into our conversations.

This second Living Standard Report shows us that the way to reach people is through encouragement of small, gradual changes. It’s through meeting them where they are and finding the story inside of every statistic.

Standard Issue Volume II is intended to help you get started. Not only do we highlight new research from the general public, we’ve also included an Action Toolkit which provides a variety of tactics for talking about the world’s most pressing challenges.

Individual and collective efforts will lead to giant leaps forward, where intention becomes action and action becomes lasting change.