The Assumption of Inconvenience
Early this week, I noticed a number of my favorite bloggers linking to this Elisabeth Rosenthal essay at Environment 360, on the mysterious greenness of European nations. The average American, as it happens, produces about twice as much carbon dioxide each year as your typical resident of Western Europe.
Rosenthal attributes much of this difference to behavioral factors relating, it seems, to Europeans' unique tolerance of inconvenience. She writes:
But even as an American, if you go live in a nice apartment in Rome, as I did a few years back, your carbon footprint effortlessly plummets. It’s not that the Italians care more about the environment; I’d say they don’t. But the normal Italian poshy apartment in Rome doesn’t have a clothes dryer or an air conditioner or microwave or limitless hot water. The heat doesn’t turn on each fall until you’ve spent a couple of chilly weeks living in sweaters. The fridge is tiny. The average car is small. The Fiat 500 gets twice as much gas mileage as any hybrid SUV. And it’s not considered suffering. It’s living the dolce vita.
She later adds:
Also, in Europe, the construction of most cities preceded the invention of cars. The centuries-old streets in London or Barcelona or Rome simply can’t accommodate much traffic — it’s really a pain, but you learn to live with it. In contrast, most American cities, think Atlanta and Dallas, were designed for people with wheels.
What makes this particularly remarkable is that she opens the essay by discussing an experience she has in Stockholm, in which she insists on taking a taxi from the airport, which ends up being much slower and more expensive than the train.
Brad Plumer frames the piece as a fascinating read in light of the "lifestyle taboo," writing:
It's not considered the height of political savvy here in the United States to point out that European lifestyles are greener than our own. Don't expect that line in an Obama speech anytime soon. Too many facets of European life—the cramped apartments, the clotheslines for drying laundry—would likely strike suburbanites as inconvenient, burdensome, or even downright primitive...
Rosenthal wonders whether similar measures could fly in the United States: "I believe most people are pretty adaptable and that some of the necessary shifts in lifestyle are about changing habits, not giving up comfort or convenience." Maybe so, but this sort of talk still tends to be taboo in mainstream U.S. green circles. Josh Patashnik wrote a terrific piece for TNR last year on Arnold Schwarzenegger's brand of "pain-free environmentalism" in California—it's all just peachy to talk about swapping out coal-fired plants for solar-thermal stations, but ixnay on trying to rein in suburban growth or coax people into smaller homes.
I see several problems with Rosenthal's essay and with Brad's framing of it. One is that it's not really correct to attribute the huge gap in per capita emissions between America and Western Europe to the charming European habit of drying their clothes on clotheslines.
As Brad notes, power sources play a major role, whether one is talking about greater use of natural gas, the French nuclear industry, or Iceland's geothermal capacity.
Climate is extremely important. Western Europe is fairly temperate relative to much of America (and especially compared to the dirtiest parts of the country). In the same way, Californians are much greener than Texans, thanks to the moderate conditions along the heavily populated Pacific coast, which reduce the number of days on which home heating or cooling is needed.
But there are lifestyle issues involved, particularly where transportation and land use are concerned. Read more...
