Green McMansions For The Stars?

Image via WikipediaThe NY Times has a story today about LEED certification housing becoming the new status symbol in Hollywood and beyond (meaning among the wealthy). This is similar to the phenomena of Prius acceptance that occurred when Leonardio De Caprio starting driving one.

Unfortunately, one of the precepts of green living requires reduced consumption, which is in direct conflict with the hierarchy of status: how can you be above someone in society when you occupy the same size housing that they do? Stars John Cusack, Pierce Brosnan and his wife, ardent environmentalists during their free time between movie productions, can’t, simply CAH-NT, entertain the notion of living “in 2400 square feet”. And those pesky LEED regulations are, well, just too rigid for their own good.
This, intones architect David Herst, who is designing a home for the Brosnans. They may adopt “some environmentally sound building techniques” he notes…but apparently, their commitment to the environment is. Elastic.

So, how can residents of industry dependent towns, like Hollywood, or even Houston, ever possibly attain an 80% reduction in carbon emissions by 2015 (goal of Kyoto) when the privileged among us believe they are entitled to consume MORE than the average human on the planet? And that their slack will be taken up by others “who don’t contribute as much”?

The real target of “green living” is reduced growth. To exist below the equilibrium point required by our environment to regenerate itself. Understanding that the regeneration happens through multiple, dependent cycles of stasis. That you cannot have end over end growth without interrupting those cycles, increasingly forcing us to consume and exude waste that pushes us to exceed that equilibrium.