"Green" development

[chelidon]

Remote Florida site eyed for new green town

Nice, but...for "green" development to be more than another yuppie trend, it has to be something that can be done for the vast majority of people not shopping for $500,000 homes. "Green" has to become affordable, not a luxury.

But the notion of "affordable" is going to change as well. Our whole notion of what is normal, and what we are entitled to, is going to undergo massive change as energy costs rise. Smaller will be better, simple and durable will be not only virtuous, but essential.

How to put into words the sure sense that our roller-coaster car has tipped over the peak of the first long drop, without sounding like an apocalyptic nutcase? Well, maybe ya can't. But it's coming, for better or worse, and we're slowly but inevitably starting to pick up speed and momentum into whatever lies ahead. I try to be optimistic about the future, but one thing seems certain, it's going to be one hell of a ride. Like it or not, we live in interesting times, and I sense they will keep getting more interesting.

Comments

[anthologie.livejournal.com]

Cities out here are beginning to go green in various ways -- and make it easier for residents to do likewise. Green-building requirements are really going to be the best thing they can do for people at all income levels, but yeah, it's changing, and changing fast.

[chelidon.livejournal.com]

You're definitely ahead of the game out there, or, rather, at least not so far behind as most of the rest of the country... ;> There is something of an economy of scale, where you have to have a certain number of people doing something green for the costs to drop.

One of the looming problems, though, is that a lot of the "green" solutions -- local power generation, solar, super-insulation, and so on, themselves become harder and more expensive as energy costs rise, because of all the petro-based inputs currently required. I hope that as time goes on, green building gets less expensive (at least compared to the alternatives), but I'm not nearly smart or informed enough to guess how that'll all play out.

[blue-sky-48220.livejournal.com]

I was going to mention the economy of scale as well. And, as demand for technology increases, the price falls. When cell phones were introduced they were prohibitively expensive for most people. The same was true for computers, DVD players, microwaves, air conditioning, and so on and so forth and scooby-dooby-dooby. One advantage of capitalism is that development tends to follow demand. (Honestly, I don't know much about what goes into developing green technology. I don't know much about the history of any of the other technologies I mentioned, either--but I'd be willing to bet that folks once thought that those were toys that would be exclusively the domain of the super-rich, and that they probably had good reason for thinking so, too.)

Of course, it's very possible that we've gone too far already to go back now, regardless of how green we get. In which case, I hope the fossil record shows us in a favorable light.

[chelidon.livejournal.com]

In which case, I hope the fossil record shows us in a favorable light.

lol. Time will tell. It always does...

There's definitely a sort of chicken and egg aspect to alternative energy and green development, which is why I support some level of government incentives/rebates to jump-start demand. It's not a good sustainable long-term strategy, simply because of basic economics, but it could push us over the edge of the adoption curve.