Not so very long ago, a variety of right-wingers delighted in pointing out that Bush’s house in Crawford was more environmentally friendly than Gore’s mansion. However, now that Bush has apparently decided that the pretense of being a cowboy is no longer necessary, the family seems to have purchased a large new house in Dallas. Is there any indication of how environmentally friendly the new residence is or isn’t?
(Placing this in GD because that’s where the other Bush/Gore threads seemed to congregate.)
I don’t think the Bushes are giving up the Crawford ranch; they’re going to keep it as a vacation/weekend home. Bush will doubtless still be doing at least as much brush clearing there from now on as he put in during the last eight years.
As for the new house in Preston Hollow, it’s about 8500 square feet and was built in 1959, which are two strikes against eco-friendliness. On the other hand, it’s described as “recently renovated”, so maybe the developers scored some sustainability points in the renovation. That’s all I got.
Turns out that www.treehugger.com has promised to report if the Bushes obtain green-building certification for their Dallas house, so watch their space for further developments.
Understatement of the year, I’d say, and it’s still only January!
But this only makes it all the more noteworthy if the Bushes do decide to go for the green-building option in their new home. If even a belligerently anti-environmentalist ex-president supports sustainable home design and energy conservation in his private residence(s), that sends a powerful message.
Ooh! I grew up in Preston Hollow! I went to Preston Hollow Elementary! Of course, I lived east of Preston Road, so not in the rich part of Preston Hollow, but still.
But yeah, a president who has done staggering environmental harm (by refusing to acknowledge or deal with AGW) doesn’t build an enviro-friendly home? Color me shocked. And it’s not like *he *was criticizing Big Al’s lifestyle; it was conservative bloggers and commentators. So this doesn’t make the needle climb on the douche-o-meter.
So, clearing a lot and building from scratch is more ecologically friendly than renovating an existing building?
It seems to me that you are either going to have to clear an undeveloped lot which contributes to sprawl, or demolish existing development contributing to a landfill. I would think that renovating an existing building would be best option in terms of saving the environment. Maybe I’m wrong.
Then again maybe this is one of those things that’s only bad when Bush does it.
Not necessarily, and I certainly didn’t claim that it would be in this case. I was just noting that a house constructed in 1959 was most likely not “green-built” (since environmental sustainability was not such a hot topic and not a top priority in home design in that era), so it probably didn’t start out very high on the “environmentally friendly” scale.
Well, it depends: sometimes the best way is to start over from scratch with green construction, but you’re quite right that in most cases the eco-friendliest option is to save/reuse as much of the existing structure as possible when renovating for greater sustainability.
And if you had bothered to pay attention to any of my first post after the part where you imagined I was dissing Bush, you might have noticed that I said, “On the other hand, it’s described as ‘recently renovated’, so maybe the developers scored some sustainability points in the renovation.”
Try to restrain that jerking knee, pal. I wasn’t picking on Bush or jumping to the conclusion that he’s not trying to make his new house environmentally sustainable. I was merely pointing out the simple fact that older houses are likely to be less eco-friendly.
The message I got from Gore was that an environmentally friendly house can wait until I make my first 10 million in speaking fees. In other words, wealthy people shouldn’t be expected to pay for it.
But I’ve always driven economy cars and started using CFL’s when they first came out so my desire to follow his example would be pretty low to begin with.
The man is gone, is of no account, completely devoid of power and influence and we must concern ourselves with how environmentally friendly his house is?
Meh.
Now if you asked about Obama’s house in Chicago, that would be a whole lot more relevant.
As long as he doesn’t put on a sweater and say that the thermostat should be lowered…
I’m going to go with ‘who cares’ as the answer to the OP. Bush isn’t really very relevant anymore after all. My guess though is that his house will probably be fairly ‘green’ since that seems to be his personal orientation based on his ranch design.
I havne’t laughed that hard in quiet a while. What’s he going to do, install double pane bullet proof glass? I imagine the R value of single pane bullet proof glass is pretty high already. Is he going to insist they add another 3 feet of concrete to the bomb shelter below?
Here’s an idea, fix your own house (figuratively and literally) as an example of what individuals can do and keep your hand out of my already empty pocket. That trillion dollar IOU is wearing a hole in it.
This gives me hope that some conservatives, somewhere, understand that Democrats react less to Democratic politicians’ sexual peccadilloes than to Republicans’.