Being an environmentalist is often like being a struggling actor. You spend your days trying to convince people to see your viewpoint, only to be rebuffed again and again. Yet, we keep coming back for more. In fact, for years I invented slight reassurances for myself as my own way to dealing with the rejection. “They’ll come around...” I’d say to myself, “eventually the world will change for the better.” (Hey, we all have our coping mechanisms.)

Yet from my perspective, today I find myself more hopeful, more excited and more enthusiastic than ever before. The evidence for my exuberance can now been seen everywhere, but twenty years ago the story was much different.

It was as a freshman architecture student (and an overly idealistic one at that), when I realized designing with a green eye would not be enough. My professors were not at all interested in sustainability, and I had to accept the role of the reluctant advocate.

Yet the more I learned about design and construction, the more apparent it became our traditional methods of building just don’t make much sense. In addition to justifying my designs, I had the added task of arguing why sustainability was important. So, my career began as a spokesman for green building. In our thesis class, everyone was given nicknames; mine was “Nature Boy.”

Years passed, and when the time came to start my own firm, I found myself arguing with my clients just as I did with my professors. If it’s possible to become skilled at arguing, then you could say I was gifted at talking my clients into things. While all of these early projects incorporated some green elements, many were greener than others as a result of my fighting harder for them. It quickly became clear this aggressive approach was not a solution, and that forever changed how I speak to my clients.

I realized sustainability wasn’t for me to argue; it was for all of us to simply do. People come to architects since we are professionals. They expect the building to meet building codes, to resist gravity; they even expect it to be beautiful. So, too, do people expect the building will not make them sick. Sustainability seemed an implicit part of our role as professionals.

Our duty is to make every building a green building. Pushing this to the point where we no longer make the distinction. In the future, saying “green building” will simply be redundant.

The poet Edward Abbey wrote, “Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.” Just as the past five years have brought the issues surrounding sustainability into the mainstream consciousness, the time for talking is over and the time for action has arrived.

This turning point fuels my boundless enthusiasm, so I happily continue my role as an advocate for green, with so many others joining me. We will look back at this time in history, this push toward a sustainable world, as the moment of the greatest opportunity, excitement and challenge in human history.