A couple of years ago, the This Old House Guy did a commercial for Energy Star appliances, but in the background behind him was a very large house on a very large lot, with the three garage bays clearly visible. What’s wrong with this picture?
I’ve recently read, with fascination and appreciation, several articles and essays that powerfully extol city living as the highest and best green living. This reality is probably counter intuitive, and these readings likely uncomfortable, to suburban and rural dwellers. But their cases are compelling, and I would say are must-reads for those sincerely wishing to be green.
The authors of these pieces pull no punches. They criticize the popular green energy and other technology “accessorizing” as something that suburbanites and ruralites do to try to lower their impact, but that in reality doesn’t do much to offset their fundamentally, seriously inefficient living locations. They say assertively that an ‘ungreen’ apartment building in the city is greener than a far-flung single-family house with Energy Star appliances and even solar panels. One even hammers Thoreau–the “patron saint of American environmentalism”–for living irresponsibly high-impact out in the woods.
Check out the short pieces below–I’d say they are required reading for those really wishing to be green.
Glaeser, Edward: Green Cities, Brown Suburbs. City Journal, Winter 2009.
http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_1_green-cities.html
Rybczynski, Witold. The Green Case for Cities. The Atlantic, October 2009.
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200910/solar-panels
Owen, David. Green Manhattan: Everywhere should be more like New York. The New Yorker, 18 October 2004.
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/10/18/041018fa_fact_owen
Vaughan, Adam. City dwellers have smaller carbon footprints, study finds. Guardian.co.uk, 23 March 2009.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/23/city-dwellers-smaller-carbon-footprints