The Green House
Via Dave Roberts, Barack Obama is looking to paint the White House green:
President-elect Barack Obama says he wants to make the White House “green.” In an interview with Barbara Walters, Obama said he plans to sit down with the chief usher for the presidential mansion and do an evaluation of its energy efficiency.
He says part of what he wants to do is show the American people that it’s not that hard to go green.
And good for him. I do, however, sometimes worry about the direction the whole “going green” concept works. If you look at how people live in the United States, the real green individual is the poor person who lives in a small apartment, rides the bus to work, and consumes beef relatively sparingly. That guy’s environmental footprint is probably smaller in most ways than that of a prosperous person who goes out of his way to consume green products. Obviously moving to a more modest dwelling is not an option for the President of the United States, and pushing federal buildings (including the White House, but also the offices all around the country) to get more efficient is an excellent way of not only making a direct contribution but also helping to develop and spread best practices. But “to go green” on a social level would probably look very different from what an individual upper middle-class environmentally minded consumer’s personal efforts to do so look like.
31 Responses to “The Green House”
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November 28th, 2008 at 10:39 am
You are right in a sense, but it’s worth noting that roughly 1/3 of north american energy use is heating and cooling their house, 1/3 is transport and 1/3 is consumer products. You can basically eliminate the heating and cooling cost using intelligent building design and todays technology. It is however, rather expensive. Living in a large well designed house is better environmentally then living in a cramped fifty year old apartment, even when you include the embodied energy of the new house.
November 28th, 2008 at 10:48 am
Living in a large well designed house is better environmentally then living in a cramped fifty year old apartment
I recall reading somewhere that, all other things being equal, multi-family buildings (e.g., apartments) are more energy-efficient than single-family structures. Not sure how relevant (or true) that is, though.
November 28th, 2008 at 10:56 am
the real green individual is the poor person who lives in a small apartment, rides the bus to work, and consumes beef relatively sparingly.
that’s basically me, but like a lot of people I don’t do it on purpose (well, except the beef part).
But Gordon is pretty on point. You can, however, reduce usage of transport and consumer products much more easily than heating and cooler. Depending on where you live, taking mass transit or carpooling when you don’t need to drive is easy. And reusing and recycling is normally a small lifestyle adjustment as well.
But reducing heating and cooling usage is tough depending on where you live. If you live in Florida, you can’t just turn the AC off and crack a window. New design techniques are great and all but we have an existing housing infrastructure that is not imminently replaceable. A lot of it is likely improvable, though.
November 28th, 2008 at 10:58 am
Yes, you can just reduce consumption, but you can also reduce the environmental impact of a given level of consumption through improved efficiency. Developing these efficient technologies is crucial because the developing world wants (quite reasonably) to increase their _level_ of consumption. Having all of those billions of people industrialize in an economy powered by coal and one powered by renewables makes a big difference.
November 28th, 2008 at 11:05 am
” recall reading somewhere that, all other things being equal, multi-family buildings (e.g., apartments) are more energy-efficient than single-family structures. Not sure how relevant (or true) that is, though.”
True & not a modest effect as long as there’s any control over the heat in your unit. Think about it: which are you going to need to heat more, a dwelling surrounded by outside air, or surrounded on most sides by other units heated/cooled to approximately the same temperature? In high-rises in Boston or Chicago, I generally have not needed to turn the heat on until December & there are many, many days where it doesn’t need to go on at all–in some cases, practically the whole winter if there’s a brick building & a south facing window. (South-facing brick buildings can need the AC a little more, but it’s nothing compared to winter heat for a single family house in a cold climate.)
Then there’s the square footage question. I actually don’t buy, at all, that a large “well designed” house is cheaper than a 50 year apt or even close to it, unless by “well designed” you mean some custom designed green building that is not practically available for most people.
November 28th, 2008 at 11:06 am
Will he and his staff continue to fly around on Air Force One, a Boeing 747 designed to haul hundreds of passengers? I mean, it’s hardly an appropriate symbol of a country going deeper and deeper into debt and far behind the rest of the developed world in energy conservation.
November 28th, 2008 at 11:07 am
I’m actually very well off, and enjoy living in a cramped NYC apartment, been a vegetarian for 20 years and haven’t owned a car since high school.
Gordon: “Living in a large well designed house is better environmentally then living in a cramped fifty year old apartment”
Where are you getting that info? I’d like to see some links to studies before I just take that at face value. Seems very hard to believe,
November 28th, 2008 at 11:21 am
Just replacing the windows and insulation in that drafty old White House would reduce energy consumption by 40%.
November 28th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
I’m basically the guy you describe: one-room apartment in NYC, public transit, pretty minimal everything. I haven’t ever owned a car. I can feel pretty good about my carbon footprint and generally non-materialist (except for books and art supplies) lifestyle.
But if I’m honest, I have to admit that my asceticism is enabled by rich neighbors whose taxes and expenditures fund the economic and cultural infrastructure I enjoy. I’m piggybacking on their extravagance. The truth is, if everyone lived like I do, the entire world economy would collapse.
November 28th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Obama has the right idea. And the message is this: if we all do what we are able to do given the confines, the restrictions, of our lives, we will make the world cleaner, healthier, and more sustainable in the long term. Every little bit counts. What the president-elect is saying is that he’s willing to do what it takes to lead the way to a greener future. He obviously can’t tear down and rebuild the White House as a “green” house, but new windows, energy efficient lighting, and really just being mindful of energy consumption as it pertains to water, food, packaging, recylcing, etc., is a huge contribution.
November 28th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
“I mean, it’s hardly an appropriate symbol of a country going deeper and deeper into debt and far behind the rest of the developed world in energy conservation.”
Funny, we missed your outrage about Bush’s energy consumption. And if you’re arguing that Obama opened the door to your bitching because he is promoting energy conservation, then you really don’t care about the issue one way or the other, and should just STFU.
November 28th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
“Going green” can mean many things, and is relativised by many cultural constructs. It’s true that suburban single-family homes have a larger physical footprint, and bring along with them many things like roads, parking lots, and don’t lend themselves to the efficient sharing of various kinds of infrastructure…
But the cultural context is that many people want to, and do, live in simgle-family homes in the suburbs. And there’s a lot of simple, relatively inexpensive things we can do to make them more efficient. Not installing solar panels on your roof, but insulating the building envelope, getting efficent heating (or cooling) systems, efficient appliances can go a long way to reducing significantly the impact of the suburbs. Also electrifying transportation. Basically, the goal is to make “energy services”–the lifestyle things we want–so efficient that we can power them on renewable elecricity. In the long run, we will probably be able to do this, so the suburbs will indeed be “sustainable” strictly speaking.
Personally, I don’t care for the suburban lifestyle–I live downtown, don’t own a car, and don’t eat that much meat. But I love music, and my stereo is on almost constantly. By one way of looking at it, it would be more “green” if I just turned my music off. But that’s a stupid way of looking at it. No one can reasonably say it’s bad to listen to music, or surf the internets (so long as your visiting erudite blog sites), even though these activities undoubtedly contribute to Global Warming that will eventually be responsible for children drwoning in developing countries. So if somebody really wants to live in a house in the suburbs, who am I to say “that’s a step too far, because it’s a step further than I would take.” It’s far better to work with other people to achieve a sustainable economy that allows for as many lifestyle choices as possible.
November 28th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
If you look at how people live in the United States, the real green individual is the poor person who lives in a small apartment, rides the bus to work, and consumes beef relatively sparingly.
To echo another commenter, this roughly describes me with the glaring exception of “poor person.” (I walk to work, and I’m a vegetarian.) I think you’re making a basically good point in this post, but please rethink your stereotypes.
Also, I’d want to see evidence of whether “poor people” tend to be semi-vegetarians as you describe; that hasn’t been my observation, but I could be wrong.
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