03.26.10
Why I am boycotting Earth Hour
This Saturday at 8:30 pm, millions of people around the globe will be joining together to turn off their lights for one hour in order to raise awareness about climate change. According to the official US Earth Hour website: “The movement symbolizes that by working together, each of us can make a positive impact in this fight, protecting our future and that of future generations.”
As somebody who thinks a lot about the future sustainability of our habitat on the planet Earth, this Saturday I am going to spend the night in my apartment in Chicago…with the lights on!
The past decade has ushered an unprecedented interest in environmentalism. We now have hybrid cars, solar power heating, even eco-friendly picture frames. Earth Hour aims to “symbolize” that “each of us can make a positive impact,” and symbolize is exactly what it does. It is symbolic of the bumper-sticker environmentalism which has swept over the world, blinds us from the true causes of environmental degradation, and makes a farce out of the entire movement.
Being “green” is not about token actions, such as turning off lights, recycling, or driving a hybrid, all of which are commonly billed as ways to “make a difference.”By all statistically relevant measures, living a sustainable lifestyle boils down to two questions. 1) Where do you live? and 2) What forms of transportation do you use? Both of these questions are tied to a single concept which should be the center piece of the environmental movement: density.
New York City is the single most environmentally sound place in the United States. With 27,440 people per square mile, New Yorkers consume less energy and produce less waste per capita than anywhere else in the country, and it has nothing to do with turning off lights, recycling, or solar-powered fuel cells. New York is energy efficient because it is dense. In the words of David Owen, author of “Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less are the Keys to Sustainability”
Living closer to one’s daily destinations, Manhattan-style, reduces vehicle miles traveled, makes transit and walking feasible as forms of transportation, increases the efficiency of energy production and consumption, limits the need to build superfluous infrastructure, and cuts the demand for such environmentally doomed extravagances as riding lawnmowers and household irrigation systems.
On measure after measure, America’s older, denser urban cores such as New York, Boston, San Francisco and Chicago, consume far less energy and produce less waste than national sprawl bombs such as Atlanta, Los Angeles, Dallas, and Phoenix. The worst offenders of energy inefficiency are suburban regions, the defining characteristics of which are extreme low densities (sprawl) and a dearth of public transportation options.
Transportation is tied directly with density, and this is why it is number two of two on the list. In addition to its direct effects (pollution and energy consumption), how we transport ourselves is a key factor in the density (read efficiency) of our cities.
American cities haven’t always been plagued by sprawl. Rather, the unraveling of American urban density has been facilitated through the widespread proliferation of private automobile ownership which first swept the nation in the years following World War II. Cars enable Americans to live further apart from one another than any other civilization in the history of urban humanity. Over the last 65 years, cars have given rise to the explosion of suburban developments which have taxed our energy reserves more than ever before.Concurrently, the resulting low densities enabled by cars have been the death toll to many American public transit systems which rely on density in order to be economically viable.
High urban density allows people to live carless and to rely on subways, buses, bicycles, and their own feet to get around. Reliance on these forms of transportation also keeps populations dense, as without cars it is impractical for populations to spread so thin. The cycle is self-perpetuating. Density encourages carless living which encourages density which encourages carless living. This is what makes New York City dense, efficient, and conveniently accessible without a car. For most newer American cities (those whose major growth periods occurred after World War II) and most suburbs, the opposite is the case. Car ownership encourage sprawl, and sprawl then encourages car ownership, which encourages more sprawl.
The defining variables for energy efficiency are density and transportation, and any environmental movement which lacks a focus on these issues is missing the chance to bring about real change.
Ok, so you get my point. Being “green” is all about density. Now then, what’s so bad about Earth Hour? What’s wrong with raising awareness and encouraging the whole world to work together?
To rectify our current environmental concerns, awareness and cooperation are not what is in need. People are more aware about climate change and the environment than ever before, and are willing to work together to bring about change.In our 21st Century Culture of Environmentalism, we are constantly bombarded with Greenspeak telling us to“reduce, reuse, recycle,” “buy organic,” “love our mother,” and minimize our “carbon footprints.” These simple, easily quantifiable, (and easily marketable) acts make us feel that we’re all “being green.” And to be sure, many of them are, to a nominal extent, good for the earth. The problem is that in creating a Culture of Green, we have excused ourselves from the responsibility for the primary causes of most of our energy-related problems: location and transportation.
The poster child for this national psychosis is the hybrid car, corporate America’s most egregious invention since the light cigarette. There is no such thing as a “green” automobile, even if it runs off of organic, recycled fairy dust. Cars are disastrous to the environment, not because of the fuel they consume, but because of the sprawl they facilitate. Regardless, automakers have toted hybrid cars as the panacea to the energy crisis, lulling customers with a false sense of civic responsibility.
Awareness and cooperation are only effective if they are coupled with an understanding of the real causes of the problems at hand. As in the case of the hybrid, civic responsibility can even be sublimely turned against itself with effective marketing.
No, what we need is not more awareness and calls to cooperate. Our cumulative world conscious are already overflowing with warm feelings and intentions. What the environmental movement needs is real solutions to our energy consumption woes. What we need is a push for an energy efficient lifestyle, consisting of dense urban living and minimal dependence on the automobile.
How is this accomplished? The first step is to consider where you live. It’s unrealistic to ask everybody to move to Manhattan, but it is feasible to envision a gradual exodus from our wasteful suburbs. If you live in a low density suburban enclave where you can’t shop for groceries on foot or conveniently access public transportation, your lifestyle is not “green.” No matter how many lights you turn off, how much you recycle, or how tricked out your house is with solar panels and other “greenware,” you are still living a wasteful lifestyle compared to urbanites who don’t embrace any of your pro-active environmental measures. Sure, you’re saving some energy here and there, but it’s all gravy compared to the inherent inefficiencies of the suburban lifestyle. If you want to make a real difference, where you live matters a lot more than what you do. To truly live “green,” one must live in a dense urban core.
If you do live in a dense urban core, the second step is easy: Get rid of your car. Notice I did not say “drive less.” One major cause of sprawl is car storage (parking). American cities waste thousands of square miles of otherwise useful urban space in order to store their automobiles which remain idle 95% of the time. Fortunately, if you live in a city with a dense urban core, you will find car disownership to be both practical and economical. A 2009 study by the American Automobile Association estimates that the average American spends $9,000 a year to support their car habit. This, not to mention the amount of time you can now allocate to more productive activities (walking, reading, studying, extension of work day, etc.) once you quit your job as an unpaid chauffeur and switch to manpower or public transit for your transportation needs.
I recognize that moving to a new location or even a new city and giving up car dependency for the sake of the environment might not be the most convenient way to show your support for Mother Earth. But that’s exactly the point. Being “green” isn’t always convenient (as we are reminded by a former Vice President). Real sustainability is not about making people feel warm and fuzzy inside because “hey, we’re all in this together.” It’s about affecting changes which significantly decrease the amount of energy required to support human civilization.
Environmentalism is not about token acts of “greenness,” and it’s not involved enough to allow for the creation of an entire subculture. Caring for the earth is about where we live and how we commute. Taking the focus away from these two issues only reinforces that the inefficient lifestyles of suburbanization, sprawl, and car dependency will persist in the decades to come.
The keys to solving our environmental problems rests on our understanding of their ultimate causes. Therefore, this Saturday at 8:30 pm, I plan to stay in my urban 3-flat Chicago apartment, in front of my computer…with the lights on. I’m going to be spending the hour online, reading about more ways to revitalize American urban cores, increase density, and support future capital improvements to our mass transit infrastructure. Only armed with knowledge can we educe lifestyle changes which affect the future sustainability of human civilization. Together we must fight the bumper-sticker environmentalism imploring to “go green,” while distracting us from the real causes of environmental degradation.
For those of you keeping the lights on this Saturday night, here are some reading recommendations which will further explain the intertwined issues of density, sprawl, transportation, and energy efficiency. Enjoy your Earth Hour, and make it productive.
Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less are the Keys to Sustainability by David Owen
Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream by Andres Duany et al.
The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs
Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took over America and How We Can Take It Back by Jane Holtz Kay
