http://greencouple.com/2008/06/17/greenwashing-wired-style/ Learning to live green and live together Sat, 07 Apr 2012 15:27:22 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 http://greencouple.com/2008/06/17/greenwashing-wired-style/comment-page-1/#comment-1188 My laziness gets me in trouble | GreenCouple.com Fri, 20 Jun 2008 02:27:21 +0000 http://greencouple.com/?p=243#comment-1188 [...] post, I pointed to Wired’s article on heating vs cooling as a singular good article in the lackluster series. I did admit that they didn’t give much in the way of detail, but figured that was just a [...] [...] post, I pointed to Wired’s article on heating vs cooling as a singular good article in the lackluster series. I did admit that they didn’t give much in the way of detail, but figured that was just a [...]

]]> http://greencouple.com/2008/06/17/greenwashing-wired-style/comment-page-1/#comment-1156 Andy Wed, 18 Jun 2008 12:27:51 +0000 http://greencouple.com/?p=243#comment-1156 There is a major problem with assuming that cities are the way to go. If we are keeping our current population, than cities have the economies of scale which make energy and resource use less than for someone living outside the city. However, the we will never be sustainable at 6.5 billion people on Earth. It is just not possible. While it sounds great to have tall buildings with smaller apartments than country houses spread out, the fact is that there is drastically more infrastructure in a city, which has all relied on oil to be created, and requires much more maintenance to keep everything running. Cities also rely on much more land area than the defined city. When I think of NYC, I know that it would not be possible without of all the Catskill region (probably millions of acres) where a lot of farms grow food for the city, but it is also the watershed from which NYC has bought up huge amounts of land in order to get drinking water. So cities are not as good as they initially sound in terms of sustainability when all of the things they rely on are accounted. There is a major problem with assuming that cities are the way to go. If we are keeping our current population, than cities have the economies of scale which make energy and resource use less than for someone living outside the city. However, the we will never be sustainable at 6.5 billion people on Earth. It is just not possible.
While it sounds great to have tall buildings with smaller apartments than country houses spread out, the fact is that there is drastically more infrastructure in a city, which has all relied on oil to be created, and requires much more maintenance to keep everything running. Cities also rely on much more land area than the defined city. When I think of NYC, I know that it would not be possible without of all the Catskill region (probably millions of acres) where a lot of farms grow food for the city, but it is also the watershed from which NYC has bought up huge amounts of land in order to get drinking water. So cities are not as good as they initially sound in terms of sustainability when all of the things they rely on are accounted.

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