Rock is right. If we even actually believed in AGW, versus paying lip service just until the shrill AGW fanboys shut up, we'd be expending the last of the fossil fuels to remanufacture our infrastructure and implement green energy sources in their place. But by and large, the American public does not believe in AGW and they don't believe in the peak effect for oil, natural gas, and even coal, either. So all the excess cash they have, they spend on European vacations, $100K Tesla/Mercedes/Lexus/BMW/Ferrari/etc. automobiles, fine art to hang on the walls of your FF-wasting residence (which requires large inputs of FF's to cool in Summer and heat in Winter), and "fine dining" which amounts to enough fat and sugar to shorten your life and make you sick.
I am facing this dilemma now as I house hunt in Wisconsin. Beautiful homes, many on the Western coast of Lake Michigan, but virtually all of them built to the building codes of 2012 or older. 2012 has a building code which requires a thin layer of insulation around the thermal mass of your basement masonry. In 2015, the codes toughened up so much that it's even difficult today to identify an architect or builder who knows how to build a code-compliant residence in heating zone 6 any more. I'm an engineer with 37 years experience, I have been reading the articles on code compliance in
Fine Homebuilding magazine, and I am to some extent baffled by the new requirements too.
The stakes are high here. Almost every rural residence in Wisconsin has a 500+ gallon propane tank sitting next to it, and they won't be habitable if it's not filled at the beginning of Winter. Virtually every urban residence is heated via a natural gas main, and they won't be habitable in Winter without NG flowing. Most homes on the market have about 10% of the insulation I figure they need, and they are still building such homes and installing HVAC equipment to the lax 2012 standards, and measuring them with inappropriate test criteria such as LEED and Energy Star and so forth.
This is a difficult conversation to have with the wife. Building a house I think we can afford to live in for 20+ years is going to cost 50% more than buying a beautiful existing home. The best and most attractive lakefront homesites are already taken, and even today, many existing homes cost $1000/month in fuel to heat every Winter. When (as it will be in 10 years or less) that cost escalates to $10,000 a month, these beautiful homes won't be habitable at prices most people can manage. Nor will the majority of residences in North America.
I know in my heart that I need a residence that can be heated and cooled without hydrocarbon fuels being burned. There are less than two dozen such buildings (which meet the "PassivHaus" European standards) in the entire state of Wisconsin, and none are on the market. But to build another such home, in a real estate market glutted with relatively cheap but beautiful homes in beautiful locations, is a difficult sell. Especially when one's spouse wants to travel the world while we still have the money.
I can imagine many such conversations across the country, but it is an agonizing conversation to have. I'm retired, she is still working, and I feel therefore a desire to honor her wishes, as she honored mine during my 37 year working career, when I was the main bread winner.
We watched the documentary
Rising Tides last week, and I recommended it to you in this thread:
http://peakoil.com/forums/rising-tides-documentary-about-sea-level-change-t72803.html...I still recommend it. I'll try to get her to DiCaprio's
Before the Flood, but I don't want her to develop fatigue about the issue.
Meanwhile I am going out for a movie with the guys I used to work with tonight, and (after the film itself) we always talk Energy Policy and Politics over first beer and then coffee.