Posted: Jan 17, 2017 5:10 pm
Macdoc wrote:More land area actually gives you far more scope for unsustainable practices, especially in terms of overbuilding for your needs
that is not a given ....if a place is off the grid and running an EV who cares how big it is.
It's like me being told to cut down on electricity use in Ontario....why??? it's my money and since we have no fossil fuel plants how is my "cutting" down helping at all. If anything my high use is subsidizing the less well off.
Sustainable does not and should not mean shivering in the dark with a pile of twigs for fuel.
If we work towards it....we can have all the self indulgent conveniences and extra space without impacting the environment.
With travel distances....IF you have an EV ...and the Bolt has a 200 mile range ...why do you care unless your grid is coal powered ( unfortunately much of Aus is ).
But conflating generous even indulgent use with unsustainable is an error.
It's like having a field of ripe strawberries and limiting yourself to a couple... there are times when being indulgent does no harm at all and in fact may fire you up to do good deeds....like hosting some back packers in your spare room for cheap or free.
Yes, as I said:
OlivierK wrote:More land area actually gives you far more scope for unsustainable practices, especially in terms of overbuilding for your needs, than a smaller plot, and so it's necessary to be more mindful of sustainable design where its not forced on you to a degree by site constraints.
It's important to be mindful of sustainable principles if you have the potential, given a large area, to produce a very unsustainable result. Nothing in that implies that that large land area guarantees an unsustainable result, and the part of of my quote that you chopped out actually implies the opposite.
We're on bigger land than yours, and yet we feel we've done pretty well at limiting our impacts (100% renewable energy, building using a large percentage of recycled building products, highly fuel efficient cars, grow at least some of our own food, and buy local produce as much as possible for the rest), so I'm the last person who'd be lecturing you that large land = bad.
The worst thing we've done impacts-wise is have three kids, but we kinda like them, and put that down to indulgence. Even so, they've been brought up to tread lightly, and they've learnt by the example of not only ourselves, but our entire community, which has the highest recycling rates and one of the highest percentages of off-gridders and renewable energy use in the state, and likely the nation.