I’ll admit I suffered a twinge of liberal guilt when I bought my last car in November. I went for an Infiniti G35, one of Infiniti’s low-end models but hardly anything to be ashamed about. Moon roof, 280 horsepower, standard leather interior. Its drawback is relatively poor gas mileage – about 18 in the city. My last car was an Infiniti, and after I bought it I promised myself my next vehicle would be a greener model. Maybe one of those hybrid jobs.
Hurricane Katrina threw me off of this plan, as she has off of so many others. She killed my old G35 in its infancy, after only 15,000 miles and 18 months of service. I knew when I left it behind I would never see it again. But I was afraid to evacuate New Orleans with my family in two cars – we might get separated in the traffic – and the other car was larger and could carry more stuff. That is another story.
When I came back after the storm and verified that my poor car had taken on 12 feet of water, I reacted like someone who just lost a beloved pet. I had to have another one, just like the last. The green promise went out the window. Oh, I tried. I thumbed through many a car guide. I even subscribed to the on-line Consumer Reports new car guide and ran every model I could think of against the G35. Had to have it. It was more a matter of putting things back the way they were, than any consideration about what was the best car. So I bought it, and screw the environment.
Lucky for me, my petty liberal guilt was assuaged by a column in the Wall Street Journallast week. In speaking about so-called “green” houses, the author, architectural critic David Akst, pointed out quite acerbically that green is relative. He noted that most green homes are single-family dwellings with high square footage. What is green about a 15,000 square foot house, he asks, even if it is solar heated? You still have to chop down and process trees, chemically treat wood, manufacture paint and plastic to build a house. The bigger the house, the more natural resources have to be consumed.
Green is small, a mobile home, for instance. No one with the resources to build green builds modest. Green houses are usually ostentations mansions, and thus a waste of building materials. A real green building is a tenement with 600 square foot apartments, or a house with 3 families living in it. Efficiency makes something green, and efficiency does not mean solar power. It means people living modestly, in close quarters.
Akst makes the point that people who design and live in green houses often make lifestyle choices that negate the benefits of the houses. For instance, a green home that is a 2-hour commute from work is hardly green, is it? Even if the owner buys a hybrid car that gets 60 miles per gallon, the wear-and-tear of the commute uses up the car, meaning more frequent oil changes, battery changes, new tires, and in the end, a new car at an earlier date.
Which brings me to my green gas guzzler. I live in a small country town, and my office is literally next to a cow pasture. My house is 7 miles from my office, and I can make the drive in 9 minutes flat. I fill up my tank once every 3 weeks. Who is greener, I in the country gas guzzler or the Los Angelino who lives 25 miles from work, takes 70 minutes to get there, and owns a hybrid but still has to refill the tank every weekend? Even if he carpools, the Angelino will have a devil of a time keeping up with me. And if I turn off my air conditioner and open my moon roof, well, he’s whipped.
So I am green after all. Not green because my car gets low mileage, but green because I have made a lifestyle choice that permits me to use less non-renewable resources. Green is not about what you choose to buy. That is mindless, consumerist thinking. Green is about how you choose to live.