According to PLANYC2030, “our density, apartment buildings, and reliance on mass transit means we are also one of the most carbon-efficient cities in the United States; New Yorkers produce 71% less CO2 per capita than the average American.” I certainly agree with that concept; the specific number for carbon savings, however, is probably too high. Much of the world’s energy is used to make consumer goods and bring them to their point of consumption, and to produce the fuels needed to do so and meet other energy needs. But New York City doesn’t produce its own fuels, and doesn’t produce many of its own consumer goods either. These are made across the country, and across the world, and then bought, used, and disposed of here. Some of that coal being burned in China and diesel fuel being burned to move massive container ships, therefore, is needed to produce and ship goods that will be used in New York City. Properly counted, you can’t tabulate the city’s contribution to greenhouse gasses without asking “what about the stuff?”
The material lifestyle of the past two decades, particularly in the growing suburbs where most middle-income and affluent Americans live, has been dominated by the idea that more and bigger is better. The average new home built in 1970 had 1,500 square feet of floor area, compared with nearly 3,000 today. The “Econobox” cars of the 1970s have been replaced by large SUVs. The globalization of trade and production has substantially reduced the cost of many goods, relative to what many Americans earn — or at least what they have been able to borrow. As a result, used clothing has become virtually un-sellable in the United States and is typically shipped abroad, while a tidal wave of ever-cheaper stuff has been filling American homes, leading to a growing mini-storage industry. Televisions have grown in size even as motion picture screens have shrunk. The average American is eating a few hundred more calories a day, as portion sizes have expanded. The replacement of fewer, more expensive, more appreciated, often repaired goods with cheaper, more disposable, less important goods has accelerated the trip from the store to the landfill.
Projecting this trend forward, one might assume that in 50 years most Americans thought to be in the middle class will drive their own buses, live in 10,000 square foot houses with 10 bathrooms, and own personal warehouses to store stuff that is used, at most, once a year, or perhaps just once. In social science, however, linear projections are seldom accurate over the long run. In fact, the “more and bigger” trend has gone into reverse several times in American history.
One hundred and twenty years ago, as the industrial revolution threw up a new class of wealthy people and made more and more goods affordable to all but the poor, there was another “more and bigger” burst like that of the past 20 years. In the Victorian era, virtually every square inch of the typically very large homes was full of lots and lots of things. These large houses, however, became white elephants once middle class Americans could no longer afford the domestic help required to clean and maintain them. And once everyone had lots of things, having lots of things was no longer thought to be a lifestyle to aspire to. In reaction, you had the Arts and Crafts idea, with smaller but more meticulously crafted homes (bungalows), and fewer but higher quality and more unique things. This was followed by the similar “art deco” era. The 1915-built rowhouse I live in, in fact, has a few design touches similar to the arts and crafts bungalows.
There was another cycle from 1950 to 1985. The burst of wealth and productivity after World War II, the creation of a large scale mortgage market and subsidy, and the development of inexpensive materials like plastics and artificial textiles once again brought more and more space, and more and more stuff, within the means of more and more Americans. In the folklore of the 1950s and early 1960s, before people began fleeing from the cities due to urban decline, one reason they were moving to the suburbs was to obtain a separate bedroom for each child, an off-street parking space for the large family car (with tail fins) and – most importantly – more closets. By 1970, George Carlin pronounced that a house was just a place to put your stuff, and Alvin Toffler (in Future Shock) predicted that people would soon own their own helicopters, and use clothes just once and throw them away, based on a linear extrapolation of the trends of the time.
The energy crisis, the environmental movement, and the deep recession of the 1970s threw that trend into reverse. Older things with more natural materials, “you couldn’t build it today” housing, and smaller spaces once again became more popular. It was, among other things, the beginning of a return to the cities movement that continues, and least among a subset of Americans, to this day. Since I was born in 1961 and was age 12 to 18 from 1973 to 1979, the 1970s were my formative years. This may explain my point of view. Those who became aware of the wider world in the 1990s must have a radically different idea of what life is like; I have a feeling that they don’t know what might hit them.
Today, most Americans perceive that a less-space, less-stuff lifestyle means less affluence and a lower quality of life. But as the arts and crafts era ideas indicate, that isn’t necessarily so. People need to be reminded of this because the “more and bigger” ethic is environmentally damaging, economically wasteful, and incompatible with life in a place where space is at a premium – like New York City. Worse, it not only elevates the material over the social and spiritual, but it also devalues material things themselves – because they aren’t special or meaningful anymore. We aren’t just materialists, we’re bad materialists.
The “more and bigger” trend is likely to become more expensive. For the past decade, the United States has run an enormous trade deficit with the rest of the world. In effect, poor but growing countries such as China have been lending the United States money so its consumers could import — without exporting as much in return. This has been made possible, in part, by a housing bubble and people taking out second, third and fourth mortgages and spending the proceeds, which is about to lead to a tidal wave for foreclosures. Eventually, that trend will have to reverse – things that cannot go on forever eventually don’t. The catalyst will probably be a substantial fall in the value of the dollar and, therefore, a substantial rise in the cost of imported goods (and interest rates). Like the energy price rise, this has already started to happen. So people will have to adjust their expectations.
With less space, New Yorkers already have less stuff than most Americans. But the level of energy used as things also depends on the velocity at which such things pass through the home. Many people in our society will continue to determine the value and direction of their life by the things they buy. But it is entirely possible that, as in the early 1900s and the 1970s, they will once again choose to express themselves by having fewer, higher quality things with a higher craft labor input. Human energy contributes less to global warming than the fossil fuel kind.
Is there a public policy role in any of this? Reuse has its limits — reused mattresses are leading to bedbug epidemic, for example. But otherwise, high-quality useful goods (ie. not knick knacks) repaired, reconditioned and passed on uses less energy than lower quality goods purchased and soon disposed of. And the repair and reconditioning happens locally. Much of this happens in New York anyway — I have half a house of passed down furniture, and had plenty of opportunity to give and receive used kids clothes within two blocks of my house. In some places, however, there are specific official weekends for tag sales, and for unwanted and unsalable things left out to be reclaimed and reused, to facilitate the process. Having two such weekends per year, one in May and one in October, could be helpful here as well.
There may also be business opportunities. Many things that are used infrequently were once rented, but are now so cheap they are bought. After being bought, however, they most be stored. Perhaps they would be better off rented. There was once a whole industry making furniture and homefurnishings designed to fold and unfold to make living in small spaces better. These included the Castro Convertible sofabeds (before the company was sold and the product quality reduced), with springs good enough to actually sleep on, 18 inch deep tables that stood along the wall but with leaves unfolded for to a dining room table for 14, and folding dining room chairs for the holidays. With fewer people living in small spaces, at least in the U.S., such products are no longer available in the mass production economy, but could be reproduced at a more limited scale.
For the most part, cutting the energy use of goods consumption is personal matter, with the public sector in the role of cheerleader. Given how unusual New York City is in a U.S. context, I think it is fair to assume that most of those here are not here by accident, and living in a place where you can have less but can do more is a decision. To cut our imported greenhouse gas emissions, it is a decision to be expanded on.