Old Habits Not Easily Given Up

This is going to be the Greta Thunberg thing again, if you want to know where this is going. But let's start with a more local thing. We bought a car, a Toyota, for two retirees to drive.

It runs on gas. There might be some hybrid cars or plug ins that are in our price range. But we actually drive 8 hour drives at times. The plug in would not work. We need the rack on top and a trailer hitch in the back for a bike rack. And I have to be able to sit in the driver's seat. This one is just barely my size. But I have no other needs than getting to nearby state parks and nature areas. So this is what we bought. It was a down size from a bigger SUV we had for 13 years.

So we didn't change very much, though we will waste a little less gas with this. Moving on to houses:

That is not our house, but is similar. We have more lawn and trees. We live in a single family home with a heat pump. I always prefer gas heat, as it is made from propane and other gases that have less of a carbon footprint than plain old coal. We are now essentially heating with coal, as the electricity is made with that.

If we lived in a row house condo, heating costs would go down. We would give up a little privacy and would decide on common things such as roof work at condo association meetings. If we lived in an apartment condo, the carbon footprint would be even less. Underground garages give plenty of warmth for cars and any hobbies with tools you need to do.

We have a couple of million people here in a state in the prairie. I have seen the other extreme, in a developed county, South Korea. Tens of millions live in a rather small country. It still had a lot of land left for some farming, and the cities are rather crowded. Public transportation is there, but many use taxis, as they are cheap, probably subsidized. Buildings in Cheonan, a city of 500 000 just South of Seoul on the fast train line, are from three to 20 stories tall. A typical hotel was 10 stories.

Now we get to the GIVING UP part. People are reluctant to give up things. The majority of my Democrat friends have the same cars and homes that the Republicans of the same income class do. A few single people have chosen to live in apartments near the university where they work. But they would be a rather small part of the Democrats. Some more extreme green party types are around. Some live with family in run down old houses. Despite claiming all kinds of green ideas they support (veganism, various other conservation issues, wind power) they still end up paying the same for heating the house as the average republican in the middle class. We have those, about half the city are Republicans, and many are not rich.