Green house gasbags and Noth Carolina

What do green house gasbags and the old Tar Heel state have to do with one another?

To find out, read Daniel Akst's opinion piece in the Jan. 13 Wall Street Journal. It begins:

In North Carolina, the owners of a 4,600-square-foot home that cost $1.2 million wanted it to be as "green" as possible, so they spent $120,000 on solar power.

In Colorado, using recycled materials, an architecture professor built a 4,700-square-foot home that uses geothermal heating and cooling and was on the market recently for $930,000.

And in Southern California, a husband-and-wife architect team who say that they "came of age during the '60s and '70s at U.C. Berkeley" also relied on recycled materials -- in building a second home six hours from their primary residence.
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The question, of course, is what on earth are all these people thinking? How "green" can huge and, in many cases, isolated houses be? Wouldn't it be better to risk traumatizing the children by squeezing into a 3,000-square-foot home, especially one close to shopping, schools and work?

How many less affluent, less guilt-ridden Americans can afford to build such environmental show houses?

These houses aren't just ridiculous; they're monuments to sanctimony. If architecture is frozen music, these places are congealed piety, demonstrating with embarrassing concreteness the glaring hypocrisy of upper-class environmentalism.

Good for Akst for saying all that. We hear so much from "environmentalists" like Sens. Kerry and Kennedy, who between them own 9 very large homes (or is it 10?), that we're apt to forget the hypocrisy of so many "environmentalists."

Now, what does Akst have for people seriously concerned about the environment?

Plenty, including this:

Homeowners (can save energy with) high-efficiency appliances, stingy heating and cooling, and advanced windows with energy-saving coatings and argon gas between the panes.

Computerized thermostats, compact fluorescent bulbs and fuel-efficient cars also make sense, whether your goal is to save money, save the planet or reduce our dependence on imported oil, with all its geopolitical consequences.

There's more. Read it all here.