The environmental lessons that New York and other dense cities offer are not necessarily easy to apply—and, even to city dwellers, they can often be difficult to discern—but the most important of them can be summarized simply:
- Live smaller: The average American single-family house doubled in size in the second half of the twentieth century, and the size of the average American household shrunk. Oversized, under-occupied dwellings permanently raise the world’s demand for energy, and they encourage careless consumption of all kinds. In the long run, big, empty houses are no more sustainable than SUVs or private jets, no matter how many photovoltaic panels they have on their roofs. As the cost of energy inevitably rises in the years ahead, and as the long-term environmental and economic consequences of our accustomed levels of wastefulness become clearer and more dire, we are going to need to find ways to reduce the size of the spaces we inhabit, heat, cool, furnish, and maintain. (A notable countertrend: while the typical American single-family house was doubling in size, rising real estate values in New York City were reducing the size of the living space of the average Manhattan resident, thereby making it more efficient.)
- Live closer: The main key to lowering energy consumption and shrinking the carbon footprint of modern civilization is to contract the distances between the places where people live, work, shop, and play. Unfortunately, the steady enlargement of the American house was accompanied by the explosive growth of low-density subdivisions and satellite communities linked by networks of new highways and inhabited by long-distance commuters. Living closer to one’s daily destinations, Manhattan-style, reduces vehicle miles traveled, makes transit and walking feasible as forms of transportation, increases the efficiency of energy production and consumption, limits the need to build superfluous infrastructure, and cuts the demand for such environmentally doomed extravagances as riding lawnmowers and household irrigation systems. The world, not just the United States, needs to pursue land-use strategies that promote high-density, mixed-use urban development, rather than sprawl.
- Drive less: Making automobiles more fuel-efficient isn’t necessarily a bad idea, but it won’t solve the world’s energy and environmental dilemmas. The real problem with cars is not that they don’t get enough miles to the gallon; it’s that they make it too easy for people to spread out, encouraging forms of development that are inherently wasteful and damaging. Most so-called environmental initiatives concerning automobiles are actually counterproductive, because their effect is to make driving less expensive (by reducing the need for fuel) and to make car travel more agreeable (by eliminating congestion). What we really need, from the point of view of both energy conservation and environmental protection, is to make driving costlier and less pleasant. And that’s as true for cars that are powered by recycled cooking oil as it is for cars that are powered by gasoline. In terms of the automobile’s true environmental impact, fuel gauges are less important than odometers. In the long run, miles matter more than miles per gallon.
