And you wonder why the American Dream is caving in on itself? It's called UNSUSTAINABILITY!
News: The American Dream just keeps growing. Since 1970 the size of the average new home has ballooned by 50 percent. “Great rooms,” Viking ranges, 10-acre lots—can moats and turrets be far behind?
March/April 2005 Issue
Since 1950, the average new house has increased by 1,247 sq. ft. Meanwhile, the average household has shrunk by 1 person.
The National Association of Home Builders’ “showcase home” for 2005 is 5,950 sq. ft. That’s 15% bigger than last year’s model.
The Unabomber’s legal defense team cited the size of his shack—10’ x 12’—to buttress his insanity plea.
1 in 4 Americans want at least a 3-car garage.
88% of American commuters drive to work.
76% of those drivers commute alone.
The number of Americans with commutes of longer than 90 minutes each way has increased 95% since 1990.
Since 1982, 35 million acres—an area the equivalent of New York state—have been developed.
More than 50% of exurban lots are 10 acres or larger. Exurban homes account for 80% of residential development since 1994.
In 1950, 1 in 100 homes had 2.5 baths or more. Today, 1 in 2 do.
14 million households own 4 or more TVs.
Americans spend more to power home audio and video equipment that is “off” but still plugged in than they do to power such devices while actually in use.
Such “energy vampires” consume 5% of the nation’s electricity.
Extreme Makeover: Home Edition recently gave a 6-bedroom, 7-bath, 7-television house to a family of 4.
Americans with cable TV have 30 hours of home-improvement programming available to them each day.
Sales of Sub-Zero and other “premium” and “superpremium” refrigerators have been rising by 15% a year.
1 in 5 new homes is larger than 3,000 sq. ft.—the size at which it becomes unmanageable to clean without hired help.
The average cost of a luxury kitchen remodel is $57,000. That’s $10,000 more than it costs to build a typical Habitat for Humanity home.
Suburban and urban kids use illegal drugs, have sex, fight, and steal at the same rates, but suburban kids are more likely to drink and smoke.
0.03% of U.S. homes are fueled by solar energy. 0.4% lack complete plumbing facilities.
People who live in cities use half as much energy as suburbanites.
If Americans bought only appliances with an“Energy Star” rating over the next 15 years, the reduction in greenhouse gases would equate to taking 17 million cars off the road.
1/3 of a home’s heating oil is used for hot water. Multiple-head shower systems can drain a 40-gallon tank in less than 4 minutes.
The average new home requires 13,837 board feet of lumber and 19 tons of cement.
Since 1976, federal housing assistance has been slashed by 48%.
Last spring, the Bush administration proposed an additional $1 billion cut to the Section 8 housing subsidy.
87% of homeowners are white.
Overall, blacks receive subprime loans 2.83 times more often than whites. The disparity increases when affluent blacks are compared to affluent whites.
If it were a state, New York City would rank 51st in energy use per capita.
Suburban white men weigh 10 pounds more than men in cities.
Only 2.7% of San Francisco’s teachers, 5.7% of its cops, and 4.2% of its nurses can afford to buy a home there.
1 in 4 Californians are considering moving out of state to reduce their housing costs.
Rush Limbaugh’s Palm Beach estate is worth 15 times the value of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s Chappaqua, N.Y., home.
7% of all homes are in gated communities.
7% of all homes are mobile homes.
Since 2001, the number of Americans who have bought second homes has increased by 24%.
7 comments:
Reid, I am still all up for forming our own foraging tribe - are you gonna buy your dads land? :P
This shit makes me nervous...very very nervous....what the hell do we though? Sure each of us can do 'our part' but it's just not enough...We'll just have to wait for the world to end, re-discover a warm little island and start over :)
Yeah -- I like the warm southern Pacific island idea. We could even name it 'Feminista'. Eat pineapple and breadfruit naked all day...Manitoba's too shitty and cold.
I REALLY hope that I'm overreacting and that in twenty years I can look back and say "Wow, was I ever paranoid and cynical in my 30's".
But I really think people are completely oblivious to the pervasiveness the petrochemical industry has over our lives. It affects everything, artificially boosts our carrying capacity out way beyond what is natural, and without it everything falls apart. All the alternative energy sources currently understood and controlled wouldn't even come close to fulfilling any energy requirements left by the oil legacy. The oil age is a one-time event, baby. If we get this conversion to a new energy source wrong, we're completely screwed. Even if we manage to make it through the next fifty years (global resource wars and global warming nonwithstanding), contraction is going to be the norm. There is going to be major hardship across the board for everyone. It's just a rational path of logic to come to this conclusion.
Wow, now I'm upbeat! I try to stay positive, but it's really hard.
I don't think it's that simple, Jeff. No one knows for sure how much oil there is left. Oil companies are infamous for overstating their reserves in the name of shareholder value. And no offense, darling, but you're talking from the oil company perspective, which of course is going to say that everything's okay. What else are the oil companies going to say? "We're running out, so come on alternative energy, make our day!"? I don't think so. 'Depletion' is a very dirty word to the investment community. Whether we have reached Peak Oil or not (we will not know for sure until a few years after the point has passed), the rate of discovery of new fields and wells peaked decades ago, and whatever's left is either harder to find, harder to extract, or of poorer quality (sour vs. sweet) than the first half that we've already guzzled up like a bunch of crack addicts, thus the price of searching, processing, and speculation keeps going up and up. You're instilling a lot of faith in the unknown when you say technology and market forces will save us...that's based on the premise that we have an oil-based economy to begin with! What about those 3000 square foot houses? When the price goes to $100 a barrel and/or natural gas runs low, is anyone going to be able to afford to live in them? Entire tracts of suburbia will be unaffordable, possibly unliveable with the current energy distribution infrastructure. Our entire North American economy is based on keeping suburbia growing and consuming. If that goes, so does our economy, globalism, Wal-Mart and our way of life. Globally, we consume 27 BILLION barrels of oil a year. China's imports have doubled in the past five years, and India isn't even on board yet. It is estimated there is maybe a trillion barrels left in reserve on the planet. By my estimates, it won't take long before the big consumers start fighting among themselves for what's left.
What's there to be concerned about?
Sorry Jeff. I really hope you're right, and there's WAY more oil and NG in remote places that can be extracted, but even so, who's going to be able to afford it? Our society is based on it being cheap. Lose that foundation and everything starts unravelling.
Very good points, Jeff. I can wish along with everyone else that some new technologies will come along that will save the environment and replace oil and bring food to Africa, however it's about as real to us now as the Internet would have been to Benjamin Franklin. We just can't see it yet. It all comes down to a matter of timing. Will things fall into place at the right time in order for things to carry on? I guess we'll see. I guess I shouldn't worry about it so much. It's really all out of my hands.
I'm not sure if I'd boil it down to that. Sure, we have to use things and produce synthetics and such, but the big problem is that we've had uncontrolled growth for so long and to such a degree because of the artificial jump in the Earth's carrying capacity that oil has provided. There were a billion people on the planet at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and now there are over six times as many. What would happen if we can't replace our energy needs to the degree we have now, that supports six billion people? Contraction or collapse, that's what. Our economic system's focus on maximum growth has allowed us to grow big, but not grow smart, and for that we're going to get a big kick in the ass inevitably. It's not a matter of it, but when.
In the meantime, let's party and enjoy the company of our friends and the ones who love and care about us. It's all that really matters anyways.
ugh this conversation is not helping my headache
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