{"id":2441540,"date":"2019-03-11T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-03-11T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=301392"},"modified":"2019-03-11T10:22:19","modified_gmt":"2019-03-11T16:22:19","slug":"paul-andersen-monster-homes-triple-the-carbon-impacts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/paul-andersen-monster-homes-triple-the-carbon-impacts\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Andersen: \u2018Monster homes\u2019 triple the carbon impacts"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

The Two Creeks lift at Snowmass passes over a gargantuan excavation where a new \u201chome\u201d is being built. The foundation spans multiple wings. The footprint foretells of the volumes of natural gas this monument to more \u2026 more \u2026 more will consume.<\/p>\n

The pit into which all this material and money are being poured violates land-use sensibilities that might have tempered such ravenous appetites \u2014 if only such land-use regulations existed.<\/p>\n

The Snowmass building site is an arrogant display of excess at a time when the threats of climate change demand the moral choices of property owners, architects, contractors and local governments working in concert to curtail them.<\/p>\n

A report last week in The Aspen Times clarified that monster homes consume triple the energy use of a \u201cnormal\u201d home, quoting a study conducted by Resource Engineering Group:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe common expectation is that as a home increases in size, the energy used per square foot of home will decrease. Anecdotal evidence has previously shown the opposite. Indeed, hard evidence supplied by Holy Cross Energy and Black Hills Energy demonstrated the exact opposite.<\/p>\n

\u201cEnergy use per square foot of home increases as the home size grows \u2014 by three times,\u201d the study says. \u201cPut another way, a 10,000-square-foot home doesn\u2019t use 10 times more energy than a 1,000 square-foot home, but instead uses 30 times more energy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe study shows that energy use per square foot begins to rise more drastically once a house reaches 7,000 square feet.\u201d<\/p>\n

This exponential hike is due to luxury amenities such as expansive snowmelt systems, heated outdoor pools, elaborate spas, complex audio\/visual systems and what the study referred to as \u201cincreased expectations of thermal comfort.\u201d In other words \u2014 more heat in more forms.<\/p>\n

How can the Roaring Fork Valley pretend to take climate change seriously when local governments allow monster homes to proliferate? Pitkin County has at least approached the topic with overtures to reduce the current allowable 15,000-square-foot home cap.<\/p>\n

But what of Aspen and Snowmass? In both municipalities monster homes are part of the phenomenon of detachment from the real world by perpetuating the myths of inexhaustible resources and climate change denial.<\/p>\n

These \u201chomes\u201d are not even \u201chomes.\u201d They are real estate investments, private hotels and gross status symbols. They are playpens for childlike owners who feel no responsibility for the choices they make on land for which uses are regulated by local governments.<\/p>\n

These monsters sit empty much of the time, sucking down Big Gulps of energy and spewing tons of carbon. They exist in a vacuum where neither moral boundaries nor cautionary limits are in place to reduce the heights of conspicuous consumption and waste.<\/p>\n

Owners of these obscenities evidently derive great satisfaction from leveraging outrageous fortunes against the future of the global community. How conveniently they disregard and reject voluntary limits to the frivolous gluttony of part-time pleasure palaces.<\/p>\n

Architects and contractors must accept equal accountability for knowing that, for the sake of personal enrichment, they\u2019re doing harm to the future. Instead, they conveniently deny what science is proving \u2014 that climate change is a factor of human agency \u2014 their agency in the monster homes they build.<\/p>\n

Local governments must face up to the capping of home size, as Pitkin County has already announced. Otherwise, elected officials will cringe in retrospect for acknowledging that on their watch these approvals were given, that they could have done more to thwart climate change.<\/p>\n

Capping home size achieves more than sustainability. Caps will advance the rare virtue of humility before complex natural systems that science is only beginning to understand. Where individual initiative is failing, legislated limits must enforce ethical behavior in an interconnected world that\u2019s dependent on a healthy biosphere.<\/p>\n

Watching a monster home under construction means bearing witness to entitlements that can no longer be tolerated. The fact that approvals for monster homes are still being granted is a sorry admission of self-destructive hubris \u2014 and it\u2019s all about the money.<\/p>\n

How will this be explained 20 years from now? How will these structures be viewed by our successors? Who will take responsibility for gutting the biosphere and saturating the atmosphere? Our children and grandchildren will want to know.<\/p>\n

Paul Andersen\u2019s column appears on Mondays. He may be reached at andersen@rof.net.<\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Two Creeks lift at Snowmass passes over a gargantuan excavation where a new \u201chome\u201d is being built. The foundation spans multiple wings. The footprint foretells of the volumes of natural gas this monument to more \u2026 more \u2026 more will consume. The pit into which all this material and money are being poured violates […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2441540","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-15 04:31:05","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2441540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2441540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2441540\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2441540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2441540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2441540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}