Edward Golding: Housing costs and climate change

Massachusetts faces two important, related problems: a shortage of housing, especially affordable housing and the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. A recent article about discussions in Hadley over the adoption of an even more stringent building code highlighted the tension between these two. Simply put, housing costs in Massachusetts have surged sky-high in recent decades leaving many struggling to buy a home, or even to rent one. At the same time, greenhouse gas pollution has created a slew of serious problems, from coastal and inland flooding to summer heat waves and damage to agriculture.

The vision of creating a “carbon neutral” society is an enticing one, although unfortunately one whose economics are extremely difficult. It would take billions and billions of dollars to make all our housing conform to that dream, and in the meantime, there would be much less money for education, health care, highway maintenance and other necessities. And given the high energy consumption of the millions of existing homes in Massachusetts, whether or not a relatively small number of more expensive, harder-to-build new houses are merely quite energy-efficient, or extremely energy-efficient, will not make a lot of difference in overall emissions.

What overly aggressive building codes will do, however, is continue to squeeze more and more people out of the housing market. So what should we do? Solutions like those based on building codes try to solve our problems exclusively through structures and machines, leaving people largely out of the equation. But what if a range of inexpensive, decentralized remedies could make a significant dent in greenhouse gas emissions?

Let’s start with driving less powerful gas trucks and cars, routinely drying our clothes on outdoor clotheslines or indoor racks, consuming less hot water (including teenagers’ showers), and using serious insulating curtains and shades in all our windows in winter. Some of our building codes may in fact need strengthening. But if more of us were willing to take more responsibility to save energy in other ways, inexpensive, low-tech solutions could also make a serious dent in our problems without pushing already sky-high housing prices even higher.

Edward Golding

Hadley