Saving the planet, one eco-mansion at a time
'Living Small' in a 6,000 square foot abode
After reading the latest “Living Small” column in the New York Times Real Estate section, I came up with an elaborate conspiracy: “Living Small” is a competition among columnists to see who can find the least “Small” home and write about it there. Remember the man who bought himself and his dog a haute-rustic shack for $5 million? This was a “Living Small” column. There, at least, the house was physically small. The latest, so out-there I’m not even the first to get to it, is headlined, “Their Cape Cod Home Isn’t Small, but Its Carbon Footprint Is.”
Is Tim McKeough, the journalist, author of both columns and now that I think of it maybe of all “Living Smalls,” impressed with the owners? Or is he just extremely skilled at the very lifestyle-section thing of flattering the subjects of an article while writing about them in a way that will stoke class wars.
The profiled couple are bajillionaires who have spent merely several of their many jillions on a 6,000 square foot house on Cape Cod. It is their second home, which might not seem very sustainable, but the thing is, they tore down an existing property and put up a new one, which might not seem very sustainable, but the new one was built in some special way that involved flying people and materials in from Frahnce, which might not seem that sustainable, but… I’ve lost track of where I was going with this.
The gist appears to be that their enormous mansion has the carbon footprint of a… somewhat less enormous mansion, for which they should be congratulated. Instead of insulating their house with Styrofoam like the plebs, they use artisanal Western European hemp like the exchange students. The planet breathes a sigh of relief.
I am not a class warrior, I don’t think, maybe, who knows. Nor am I what was rather memorably subtitled on The Bridge as a “pathos-driven eco-terrorist.” I’m a Democrat, and insofar as I’ve thought about Canadian politics, am probably a Liberal. I’m a member of the International Basic Bitch political party in good standing. I don’t object to the existence, in this world, of people with bigger houses than my own, although if our house was the size of ours plus the house to which we’re semi-attached, I would have no objections.
There are plenty of people who have less than I do, and I nevertheless reserve the right to understand myself as the humblest of souls in the face of the lifestyle-section coverage of people with more than I’ve got. This is the point of lifestyle journalism, to elicit that response. But that the reported-on individuals have more strikes me, to a point, as neutral. I’m not (generally) imagining coming for them with proverbial pitchforks. But nor do I think they’re impressive and amazing and must have done something worthy for having as much as they’ve got.
Point being, I am not mad about the fact of a 6,000 square foot second home. Let it exist and be gorgeous (it’s nice, if not what I would do, which—and I know I’m not alone—would be to replicate the house from A Murder is Announced, complete with the draperies and the 1980s John Castle) What does get to me is the idea that they’re doing something noble and honorable by having their custom-built mansion. They are saving the Earth, unlike the rest of us.
It was actually a caption in the slideshow, not even anything about the house construction itself, that put me over the edge (she types, having clearly gone over the edge in question beforehand):
“When selecting furniture and rugs, they chose renewable, natural materials like cotton, linen, wool and hemp, avoiding plastics and synthetics.”
Well congratulations to them? Does anyone seek out “plastics and synthetics”? When we got our IKEA rug, was this after considering and rejecting high-end rugs because I said let the planet burn? Did I contact IKEA Etobicoke and say, please do deliver a rug woven from a mix of parabens and BPA? Have I ever done anything that could be meaningfully called selecting furniture, as versus needing something urgently for a space and pointing to the IKEA option that looked least bad?
I get that the point is on some level that these homeowners are eco-friendlier than others in the manse-constructing classes, which, maybe? Or not, given that they tore down the existing house because reasons? Whatever. What’s off-putting is this idea that they’re doing something objectively worthy of coverage in a column called “Living Small.” When there are people all around the world, living in much (much) smaller places, being ‘eco’ by default, which is to say, not buying new of everything every five minutes.
Brilliant.
What interests me the most is the mindset of their agreeing to the article without realizing how open to ridicule they would be. They spent their fifteen minutes of fame quite unwisely.
Ooo, what 1980s TV house would we all pick? I might want Jessica Fletcher's Cabot Cove house, complete with Maine seaside location, from Murder She Wrote. That's a good house.
The NYT Style section: objectively ridiculous content at all times is their motto.