Cabins are not ‘earth-friendly’

Green: A marketing scheme used to sell environmentally destructive crap to unthinking dupes.

Here’s an eco-fantasy article crafted to sell second homes. Scaling from the French doors in one picture I calculate that this “cabin” is twice the size of my own two-story, two-bath, four-bedroom home in Seattle. Half of this visible wall is window, having half the insulation value of a typical wall:

Located 50 feet from the house are two solar-tracking arrays with a total output of 3 kilowatts. The system is tied to the power grid, feeding excess electricity back to the electric company in a process known as reverse metering. The home is designed to produce more energy than it uses.

Truth in advertising is an oxymoron. A solar array of this size in this area might produce more electrical energy than the home consumes only because the home will be empty 98 percent of the time, not to mention it is being heated with propane while empty (the tank is suspiciously absent in all photos).

Another mountain meadow bites the dust to fulfill the status seeking urges of a couple of upright walking primates. This home is not cool. It is a badge of shallowness. Spread the meme. Mockery is one way to change status symbols, which are relative. They can take just about any form, from a meadow-destroying cabin to a Mother Earth tattoo on your chest. We are in need of many cultural changes and picking appropriate status symbols will go a long way towards making those changes.