I’ve been thinking about the rather odd fact that by living in the heart of Manhattan I am actually living the “greenest” American lifestyle. Strangely, it turns out that when you live in a crazily dense metropolis such as ours, you consume remarkably little energy.<\/p>\n
You walk everywhere (or otherwise, mainly taking the subway), you don’t own a car, you carry your groceries home from a place right around the corner, to which goods had been shipped efficiently in bulk (at low energy cost per consumer), the heat to warm your apartment in winter also warms the apartments around you (rather than dissipating out through a roof) – the list of energy savings from densely packed living goes on and on.<\/p>\n
It would be, quite literally, impossible for anyone owning a car and a house, no matter how conscientious or responsible, to achieve as eco-friendly a lifestyle as the average New Yorker obliviously going about life in Manhattan.<\/p>\n
This situation highlights an odd contradiction between perception and reality. In our society you don’t get “goodness” points for making the best choices – you get those points for having the best attitude<\/i> about your choices. Nobody pats Manhattanites on the back and says “Hey, way to go – thanks for helping to save our planet!” Because they know Manhattanites aren’t working for it. We happen to live in a highly earth-friendly way compared with other Americans – but there’s no effort going on.<\/p>\n
And sure enough, I confess to feeling no sense of accomplishment about my naturally green lifestyle. I do sometimes feel bad for all those millions and millions of people in the U.S. who don’t get to live in Manhattan. But for entirely different reasons.<\/p>\n
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I’ve been thinking about the rather odd fact that by living in the heart of Manhattan I am actually living the “greenest” American lifestyle. Strangely, it turns out that when you live in a crazily dense metropolis such as ours, you consume remarkably little energy. You walk everywhere (or otherwise, mainly taking the subway), you … Continue reading “Earth Day in New York”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=980"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":985,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980\/revisions\/985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}