"I never really calculated the premium for going green, because we didn't think of doing the house any other way," [SF green homeowner Jordan Harris] said. "We probably spent close to a million dollars."It reminds me very much of Tom Wolfe's classic 1970 piece, Radical Chic.
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
It's Not Easy (or cheap) Being Green
A simply astounding column by Alex Beam about people who spend millions to remodel their home with a proper ecological pedigree. Read the whole thing.
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Being "green" means you either have to give up any of the comforts of modern life - things like electricity, running water, heat in the house. OR you have to have a huge budget to buy all the special items that make you feel virtuous when you use them to build a house. I don't care how rich people spend their money - but it is amusing to watch them justify it.
I did like the bit where Dwell magazine thinks everyone should read newspapers online, but gee, buy their magazine please. Cracks me up.
"All things in moderation" I believe someone famous most certainly said. The problem is the semantics involved in phrases like "being green" and "all natural". They are really just the catch phrase that nobody bothers to define. At least with the word “organic” there exists an FDA standard. The couple used as an example in that article went to extremes that were probably unnecessary and certainly unrealistic for the population at large. Fortunately for the author, everyone in the world does NOT live like him so to make him feel guilty for his perceived excess is kind of ridiculous. And this coming from me an environmentalist. Try to make the best environmental choices you can when you can and they are more likely to become habits. Page 53 of the Oct 16, 2006 of Forbes magazine has a nice example of how a major corporation has done just that. Oh and I’m for keeping the newspapers. They are made from recycled paper anyway and computers rely on electricity which ultimately rely on the burning of fossil fuels.
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