Nag, nag, nag,

Global warming is all your fault again!

From the Washington Post:

Ask most home builders these days what they sell, and they will say a lifestyle. In most cases, that means a house on the outer fringes of suburbia with a yard for the kids and a garden for the folks. The house has plenty of room to pursue hobbies, entertain friends, bond with the family and get away from it all in a spacious master suite.

But is that lifestyle sustainable for the long haul? That is, in meeting our needs, are we compromising the needs of future generations? The needs of our children and our children's children?

Yes.

There is an even more critical reason to rethink the suburban lifestyle: the energy it consumes. More than 40 percent of the planet-warming greenhouse gases that we collectively produce every day are directly or indirectly tied to our buildings. Half these buildings are houses.

So what is a sustainable lifestyle for the long haul? Almonte, Ontario, energy expert William H. Kemp said: "A sustainable lifestyle uses less energy, less land and fewer resources. It's living in an apartment in a city like New York or Boston and using public transit or walking to work, school and shopping areas."

Etc., etc.

Actually, there are good arguments to be made for building communities that do not depend so heavily on cars and none of them have to do with global warming. This article does make a few of them. But, how many people can really afford to live in an apartment in New York or Boston? Even down here in the South, a one bedroom loft in the nearby Big City costs more than twice what my planet-killing three-bedroom suburban house does. Plus the public transportation system doesn't really go anywhere useful unless you live in a housing project. And we won't even start on the public schools. What are people with children supposed to do?

Another point that is danced around but never addressed is the reason more suburban houses are being built to begin with. There must be people buying them, mustn't there? Where are they coming from? Actual birth rates in the US are just below replacement levels, so it's not like there's another baby boom. It's true that more Americans are moving from small towns and rural areas to large cities and suburbs, so that would account for some of the increase, but then why are the sustainability people worried about using up farmland for housing? I would think there would be more of that available as the country and small town folk move to the city. Hmmmm, it must be something that is a very sensitive issue, something that would damage their liberal/environmentalist creds if they spoke of it in a negative way.

Can you tell the Compassionate Crank what the answer is?