Evolution of LEED - incremental change or sweeping updates?

All this discussion has caused me to reflect on past versions of LEED, and the changes that have brought us to where we are now. Having worked on projects in every LEED version focused on new construction since v1.0, I would say that change is generally a good thing. I agree that there are a handful of credits in 2012 that have serious (but not un-fixable) problems. However, I have come to think that if we ignore those few serious issues, the big LEED 2012 changes aren’t the problem – the problem is that the changes between prior versions were so small that the USGBC had to make sweeping changes to bring us (more or less) up to date – and the market has grown accustomed to small incremental changes. The last big change was a dozen years ago, between v1.0 and v2.0. The 2009 to 2012 change is arguably more sweeping than that one was. (Remember those days? Things were so simple back then!) In many ways, I agree with Barry’s comment below – we shoud keep the leadership in LEED – but I am not excited about doing so at the cost of losing large segments of the market. It’s my hope that the rollout of 2012 is slow, allowing overachievers to pick it up while still allowing “average” green building owners to continue with 2009. The onerous documentation is a separate concern, which does need to be addressed.