I've done a lot of work related to the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) over the years.  This area of the code generally covers commercial construction and multi-tenant housing for things like handrails, door swings and door hardware, ramps and thresholds, etc.

San Francisco has some of the most restrictive codes in the country, in some cases even specifying specific hardware that doesn't exist.  If you're not a bit of a jerk, you can get stuck with literally no options for compliance.  Usually the inspectors have some leeway in their judgment and a good faith effort combined with knowledge of the code can get you to a compliance level that is agreeable to everyone.
I was the lead on a commercial to residential zoning conversion in San Francisco and installed all of the handrails, braille placards and door openers for the building.  I even installed a second, lower set of call buttons for the elevators.  On the inside of the elevator, the top button on our panel was half an inch too high and the inspector asked us to change that.  After explaining to him that that would actually be a huge hardship, he decided that half inch was very important to him.  So then I told him that rather than moving the panel, we were just going to raise the floor.  After that, he signed off.  (Another funny thing that came out of that conversion was the fact that our Braille placards were required to be 5 feet high on center and we were not allowed to add additional ones at 42 inches where the elevator call buttons were.  If you were blind, you'd be fine and if you were in a wheelchair you were fine, but if you were blind nd in a wheelchair, there's nothing I can do.)

Despite the sometimes nuttiness of ADA codes, I strongly support them.  I'd like to see more homes incorporate basic ADA features on the ground floor of houses.  36" doors are a good start as is getting rid of the stoop step that seemed so popular at one time.  I've done a few jobs for a great long term care place in Bakersfield called John's Haven, and they went above and beyond what they needed to do for ADA (and a bunch of other things).  I helped them plan out their design so that if the code tightens in Bakersfield, they'll still be in compliance as well.

Just came across an interesting piece (via EcoGeek) that looks at green power and sets up a matrix of "response scenarios" for global warming.  It's a pretty cool way of at least analyzing the road ahead.  The drivers in the matrix are centralized/decentralized and precautionary/proactionary.  Also, I love me some matrices, so there's that too.

I'll snip a bit about the possible scenarios below:

http://www.openthefuture.co...

"Power Green" -- Centralized and Proactionary: a world where government and corporate entities tend to exert most authority, and where new technologies, systems and response models tend to be tried first and evaluated afterwards. This world is most conducive to geoengineering, but is also one in which we might see environmental militarization (i.e., the use of military power to enforce global environmental regulations) and aggressive government environmental controls. "Green Fascism" is one form of this scenario; "Geoengineering 101" from my Earth Day Essay is another.

"Functional Green" -- Centralized and Precautionary: a world in which top-down efforts emphasize regulation and mandates, while the deployment of new technologies emphasizes improving our capacities to limit disastrous results. Energy efficiency dominates here, along with economic and social innovations like tradable emissions quotas and re-imagined urban designs. The future as envisioned by Shellenberger and Nordhaus could be one form of this scenario; the future as envisioned by folks like Bill McDonough or Amory Lovins could be another. Arguably, this is the default scenario for Europe and Japan.

"We Green" -- Distributed and Precautionary: a world in which collaboration and bottom-up efforts prove decisive, and technological deployments emphasize strengthening local communities, enhancing communication, and improving transparency. This is a world of micro-models and open source platforms, "Earth Witness" environmental sousveillance and locavorous diets. Rainwater capture, energy networks, and carbon labeling all show up here. This world (along with a few elements from the "Functional Green" scenario) is the baseline "bright green" future.

"Hyper Green" -- Distributed and Proactionary: a world in which things get weird. Distributed decisions and ad-hoc collaboration dominate, largely in the development and deployment of potentially transformative technologies and models. This world embraces experimentation and iterated design, albeit not universally; this scenario is likely to include communities and nations that see themselves as disenfranchised and angry. Micro-models and open source platforms thrive here, too, but are as likely to be micro-ecosystem engineering and open source nanotechnology as micro-finance and open source architecture. States and large corporations aren't gone, but find it increasingly hard to keep up. One form of this scenario would end with an open source guerilla movement getting its hands on a knowledge-enabled weapon of mass destruction; another form of this scenario is the "Teaching the World to Sing" story from my Earth Day Essay.

What I also find interesting when reading through this is that people's reaction to a green future depends on which future they see as the most likely.  When people argue against going green, they often argue against it based on the first scenario.  When people argue in favor, they generally argue in favor based on the second or third (interestingly, I think Americans are biased towards the third).

When we talk to each other about our green future, maybe an understanding of this will help us to talk more to each other and less past each other.