Let Them Eat Fake

Gilded Age housing fantasies worsen CO ₂ pollution and lead homebuyers astray.

If you haven’t watched “Citizen Kane” in a while, it’s worth checking out. There’s a free streaming version here. In this classic film, the obscenely rich, friendless media magnate, Charles Kane, gains all the material wealth in the world but loses his soul. He builds a giant mansion on a hill called Xanadu. 

“Charlie,” says his wife, “we’re different, ’cause we live in a palace…”

Kane: “You said you wanted to live in a palace.”

Wife: “A person could go crazy in this dump.”

Living large remains an entrenched American conceit. We still believe, on the whole, that more is better. More glass. More garage space. Slap on another ton of air conditioning and the heat won’t come for us. We’ll be able to hunker down as an idle spectator, not a perpetrator or participant in the overheating world outside. 

What a mean-spirited illusion.

In fact, the latest climate trends suggest that no house, big or small, will offer a permanent safe haven from climate change. And the threats are global. If the heat doesn’t get us, the floods might, or the rising seas, or the AMOC collapse, or the tornadoes, or the hurricanes. 

It’s not hyperbolic to say that we’re skirting the edge of self annihilation. 

Will we be shaken off the Earth like so many fleas on a dog? Possibly. As the late comedian George Carlin aptly pointed out, “The planet doesn’t need to be saved.” Can we save ourselves from ourselves?

Not if we keep following the same patterns. For example, I just received the announcement for the 9,423-square-foot “New American Home” (TNAH) from the NAHB. Each year, this dreadful project offers a shocking and wasteful “up yours” from the building industry to everyone trying to build greener, improve products, or live more sustainably.

The excuse is always the same: The house is “aspirational” or meant to “showcase products.” Let’s pause for a minute. Do we really want people aspiring to wine cellars and three-car garages? Shouldn’t we instead be presenting creative multi-purpose rooms, ways to drive less, or transition to electric vehicles, live smaller, and CHANGE? 

The people likely to buy a luxury home like the TNAH represent a big chunk of our pollution footprint. The top 10 percent of U.S. earners cause 40 percent of the country’s CO₂ emissions.

As housing leaders, we need to start listening more to what’s really going on in the country and stop pretending it’s okay to build like it’s 1990. Or 1910. Throwing up our hands and creating another monstrous Gilded Age fantasy is irresponsible and insulting. Impressions matter. Ideas matter. 

Picture the millennial mom who’s building a new home in Pennsylvania. She won’t be pouring 9,000 feet of concrete. But she might see TNAH and decide she needs larger bedrooms, a workout space, a bigger garage, a wine cellar, and on and on. Extra resources used. Extra CO₂ pollution.

She’s set up for unpleasant surprises: Her property taxes double or triple almost overnight. Her extra-large house needs to be painted and reroofed—an extra-large expense when it needs to be done. Along with hastening the pace of the climate disaster, she’s soon drowning in monthly bills from the albatross of a home that now owns her.

Can’t green products mitigate the ecological damage from these bloated homes? Of course, even a Xanadu could be built for net-zero performance. But the high CO₂ costs of construction will take many years to recoup. To be fair, some of the products in TNAH have strong sustainability stories. However,  their messaging is lost. Even companies working hard to create environmental product declaration (EPD) reports and do the right thing get tainted by touching this thing.

My recommendation? Next year, companies serious about addressing the climate meltdown should boycott inclusion in The New American Home, unless the project is shrunk down to about 2,000 square feet or less. It’s that simple to do the right thing. 

Encouraging people to build larger homes exacerbates CO2 pollution, vastly increases the owners’ costs of living, and puts them at greater economic risk.