I share Daniel Akst's disgust for lip-service, upperclass environmentalists who indulge their environmental vanity while looking down their noses at the rest of us who don't have their resources.
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. ...
Bear in mind that merely building a gigantic house consumes an enormous amount of energy and other resources, which is why it costs so much to do so. Situating a home all by itself on a large piece of land, far from the pre-existing community infrastructure, does not make it a model of environmentally conscious design. And having a second home--which takes nearly a day of driving to reach--is unlikely to make a dent in global warming.
Now, there's nothing wrong with wanting a large house, lots of privacy or a vacation home, but how can we pretend that these places exemplify some standard of eco-design that others should aspire to? In the first place, most people can't remotely afford it. Consider that Sim Van der Ryn, a California architect who pioneered environmentally conscious building, once designed an astonishing 15,000-square-foot "green" residence--a home, in other words, the size of three NBA basketball courts.
More recently, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette described an "environmentally responsible" house in Pennsylvania that made ample use of recycled materials--but exceeds 4,000 square feet in size, boasts an in-ground pool and sits in a 4.3-acre "woodland setting," where it is presumably nuzzled by squirrels and other grateful wildlife. The house's salient feature: a 45-foot observation tower, which must be useful as a refuge from thinking about the utility bills.
The article lists many other extravagant "green" homes that cost fortunes and preserve little other than the owners' egos.
I'm not comfortable with the reverse-snobbery against people with large houses, so-called "McMansions."
There's tons of room left in the US for housing, anyway--a large house, in and of itself, is not inherently bad. I don't see the point of these huge homes myself, but there are better things to complain about than the square footage.
The point is not that they have large houses... the point is rather that they preach to the rest of us about being eco-friendly, i.e., "green", and then go and build about the most un-green houses you can imagine. I'm totally OK with people building large, expensive, and remote houses (I'd like to do the same, as a matter of fact), but if you're going to do that, then keep your eco-friendly mouth shut in regards to the rest of us who have to make do with what we can afford.