For the record, I had planned to visit Greensburg, Kansas well before President Obama mentioned it in his speech to Congress on Feb. 23. A good thing he did, though, because it let me put his eye-catching name in the headline above. But, it’s not as if the town was some well-kept secret. Destroyed by a massive tornado two years ago, it is rebuilding green. It has already been in the news a lot, but many of the reports on it seemed somewhat breathless and left me with questions, like, why would a tiny, stagecoach burg in the middle of the country suddenly decide to spend a lot more money and develop an environmental consciousness after not really doing much in that direction since its founding in 1886? Maybe that sounds cynical, but if we’re really want to build in a greener and more-sustainable way, it’s important to understand what motivates Americans. What I found is in my video. Click away, but if you don’t like cliffhangers, the answer isn’t as simple as I had thought. Instead, like most of life, it’s a complex calculus of human nature, public relations, tax breaks and altruism.