Maintainable vs. Sustainable

For decades now I have been griping to anyone who would listen about why we have to make so much of everything when we cannot take care of what we have already got. It all goes back to the concept of planned obsolescence which I first became aware of when I was old enough to fall in love with hot cars. The muscle cars I grew up with would self destruct in 50,000 miles while Volvos and Beetles were buzzing along nicely through 100K+. What galled me was the fact that the Big Three were building these grenades on purpose so the next model year was sure to sell. My frugal engineer Dad was always lamenting about Detroit Junk, particularity through the 70's and 80's.

So today we have WalMart, the landfill without the dirt, import cars that make US products play catch-up and stick built, leaky, poorly insulated tract/development homes (see where I'm going?) with through the roof energy consumption. So......if we want sustainable we have to create maintainable. No more throw-away life style. The good old US of A needs to wake up and weed the roses. Our housing stock is "Dying the Death of a Thousand Razors."

What I love the most about HERS Raters is that they all get this idea. It's not just altruism either. To woman/man raters want to see homes improve their energy efficiency and CONSERVATION. Being more efficient with your building envelope doesn't mean you can buy another plasma screen or leave the lights on. Back to the car analogy, we have improved the efficiency of the internal combustion engine 10 fold, and do we build smaller more efficient cars? Does SUV ring a bell? Why is the F150 still such a big seller?

How do we get us 'Merkans to figure out that conservation is the only way we can keep the show going? Maintain what you have, improve its efficiency, use less resource as a result.