Greenbuild 2008 keynote -- Rick Fedrizzi is the founding CEO of the U.S. Green Building Council and Master of Ceremonies for today's keynote session.

People were in line at 6:00 AM today for the Greenbuild 2008 keynote addresses. There are 10,000 people in the auditorium and the excitement is extraordinary. A sizeable overflow crowd, including almost everyone in the media, has been ushered into a separate room with a video feed of the keynotes. There are 30,000 attendees at the conference, including 2,000 walk-ins yesterday.

Index to Greenbuild 2008 Day-by-Day at Energy Priorities

Boston Mayor Thomas Menino welcomed the audience and enumerated all Boston is doing in the area of sustainability. This Mayoral welcome was more dry than past addresses, but it's always interesting to hear local leaders tie the conference to their communities.

Rick Fedrizzi

USGBC CEO Rick Fedrizzi is a wonderful speaker, with a great speech writer. He charges the audience up and stage-manages the keynote to make the most of the opportunity.

"This movement is in high gear," Fedrizzi proclaimed, citing the highest-ever attendance -- with 80 countries and all 50 U.S. states represented.

A video prior to Fedrizzi's speech celebrated the USGBC's 15th anniversary. Fedrizzi noted several historic events at the time of its founding, among them the Biosphere Project. Its two-year mission proved we can't reproduce our environment by artificial means. We must instead protect the one we have.

"Revolution is a powerful word," he said, and it can be measured in many ways, "but what counts the most is that we are changing people's minds about what matters." He said we have gone beyond the revolution of ideas and achieved a revolution of values.

"Obama has inspired us with a clear vision of change," Fedrizzi said, and while we're in a seismic shift in priorities, there are some who still want to pull us backward or doubt that we can affect that change.

It is up to "we the people" to keep the faith and not doubt ourselves, he said, because "it has always been about we the people, not Wall Street, not Washington...we are the people we've been waiting for, and we must invite the world to come along with us."

"We have to say to institutional arrogance, 'your time is up.' We have to say to those who would dump waste in poorer countries, 'think again -- or just think!'"

Fedrizzi made more mentions of energy than in previous years -- renewables, energy efficiency, ZEBs -- he called clean energy the "moon shot challenge of this time."

Greenbuild 2008 keynote -- Archbishop Tutu is the headliner. He has led a crusade for social justice and racial conciliation in South Africa as then-General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu

He introduced Tutu as a man who "has dedicated his life to making us all more human." Tutu’s many accomplishments include receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984; the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism; and the Magubela prize for liberty in 1986. He is committed to stopping global AIDS and has served as the honorary chairman for the Global AIDS Alliance. In February 2007, he was awarded the Gandhi Peace Prize by Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, president of India.

Tutu said to the audience, "you are the cat's whiskers" -- asking the audience to applaud ourselves, then do it again with more enthusiasm. There's no shortage of enthusiasm in Boston today, and the crowd responded. He asked us to applaud our accomplishments, saying that today, "not to care about the environment is like not caring about human rights violations -- that is what you've accomplished." He said that a political candidate who doesn't think the environment is important is viewed like one who doesn't care about women being abused or children starving.

Congratulating Americans on the election outcome, Tutu said, "you have helped to usher in a new era....you are one of the craziest countries I know.... an incredible nation, incredible people... he's an incredible guy! I'm not jealous, no!"

Tutu recounted people he has met in parts of the world where climate change is affecting people today. Global warming is not something that is impending, he said, it is a disaster happening now. In Greenland the ice is too thin to support their way of life. In the South Pacific the sea is rising over islands and contaminating the drinking water. In Africa, drought is shrinking pastures and people are fighting over what's left.

He said, "there is enough in the world for everyone's needs, but not enough for anyone's greed," noting that "a fraction of what we spend on death and destruction would ensure that children everywhere would have clean water to drink, enough to eat."

In closing, Tutu called upon the audience to help God bring peace and prosperity to the family of beings on Earth. "We won't win a war against terror as long as there are conditions in many parts of the world that make God's children desperate," Tutu said.

Greenbuild 2008 keynote -- The entertainment included multimedia extravaganza, a 15th-anniversary video, and this African Children's Choir.

At two points during the keynote we saw performances by the African Children's Choir, a group of about 15 children from all parts of Africa.