Which woman is living 'sustainably'?

I got a phone call from my old friend “Jane” this week. Jane and I went to high school together. We’ve kept in touch over the years as our lives took radically different directions. She became a city mouse: got married, moved to Seattle and became very involved in the sustainable movement. I became a country mouse: got married, moved to a small farm in Idaho and helped start a woodcraft business. Jane’s burning ambition is to get me to live as sustainable a life as she does. She can’t understand why I don’t embrace her vastly superior green lifestyle.

"And I'm sure it was very "comfortable" in that Louisiana mugginess in the dead of summer without the air conditioning. But you use air conditioning now don't you? It's a modern convenience that makes life easier to bear in the heat and humidity.

Oh, absolutely...you'll only get my AC (heat pump, actually) from my cold dead hands.....

"I also grew up in the 60's in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona. The heat was brutal there but without the humidity. I live in Florida now and miss that "dry heat" every summer here.

But 'tis the humidity that makes the difference between La and places like Sonora. Back around 1980 or so, I was attending a technical conference for chemists that for unknown reason was held in the Disneyland (not -world)hotel in the summer. Southern California was undergoing one of those periods when the wind blew directly from the Mojave (Santa Ana winds, I think). Daytime temps were in the 120's. I'm in suit and tie and walking around thinking "heck....this doesn't feel all that hot".

the NYC subway system is not only more efficient per energy miles than those SUVs out in typical traffic, but also big cities enable much shorter commutes for many more people

About NYC commutes: the average New Yorker spends 48 minutes getting to work - 13 minutes above the national average

Of course urban planners, the NY Times, and leftist universities are going to promote urban life with half truths. It's a highly politicized subject.

Would you agree that price is a good proxy for energy consumption / pollution output that cuts though most of the politics? For example gold and diamonds cost so much because ultimately they require significant energy consumption to obtain.

When comparing transportation methods you have to look at total costs, not just direct energy cost. NYC subway construction costs more than $1 billion per mile, which indirectly results in about $1 billion in energy consumption, and there are significant maintenance costs. You also have to include the costs of all the government workers required to operate the system. Every penny of their cost becomes indirect energy consumption/pollution.

It's a big subject and there are a lot of lies and hidden motives out there. For a quick take on what is more energy efficient you can simply look at the total price. Many families cannot afford the total price of urban living without greatly reducing their standard of living. The higher total price is ultimately because of much higher indirect energy consumption. Not only are big cities highly unnatural environments and harmful to families in many ways, they are not green. That's a big libtard lie.

There’s no doubt that it’s expensive to tunnel below the earth to expand the subway system. However, you haven’t looked at long-term benefits of using the subway. I’m the wrong person to ask because I’m not an engineer. But it’s pretty safe to say that it’s far more efficient to remove thousands of drivers from our highways and bring them all underneath the earth for transportation. Obviously, there will be less smog as well.

But it’s pretty safe to say that it’s far more efficient to remove thousands of drivers from our highways and bring them all underneath the earth for transportation.

If that were true underground transportation would be cheaper. In reality it's the most expensive / energy consuming option and is only taken when there are no others.

The undeniable fact is that the vast majority of eco oriented liberals crowd themselves into congested urban areas from which they meet, engage in "activism" and plot on how they can tell the rest of us how to live...and what interests me about these "congested urban areas" is that, at least in Philadelphia, they are because of the massive amounts of concrete used in building them always a couple of degrees warmer in temperature than their surrounding areas - Philly weather forecasts always indicate expected and actual temperatures at least two or three degrees above the suburbs - if in fact there is such a thing as man made global warming, more than anything else it may derive from the "Smart Growth" movement that has encouraged the elites to, as you say, cluster together to plot to tell the rest of us how to live....

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