Corbett, "Go Green"

In Margaret Roosevelt’s article, “To go green, live closer to work” she brings up the point that global warming can be combated by people simply living closer to where they work. She notes that transportation is a major cause of the emission of greenhouse gases, and says that “The U.S. Department of Energy projects that between 2005 and 2030, driving will increase 59%, far outpacing an estimated national population growth of 23%” (Roosevelt). She sees this as an easily fixable problem, and all that needs to be done is housing needs to be built near business so people have to travel less.

While this idea seems well thought out, and easy to enact it runs into two major problems. The first of which is that in some places in California, for example silicon valley, living expenses close to where people work are way more than an hour’s drive away. People constantly choose Fremont over San Francisco because the cost of living is much left, and they can handle driving for an extra hour each morning. So while it sounds good for people to move where they work, often times they cannot afford it and other times they simply don’t want to. This brings up the other main obstacle stopping this idea from working. People simply don’t want to. James Burling said it best at the end of the article, “So long as people ardently desire to live and raise children in detached homes with a bit of lawn, there is virtually nothing that government bureaucrats can do that will thwart that” (Roosevelt). There is a reason suburbs exist away from big industrialized cities, because people want to live there, and unfortunately nothing is going to change that so a different solution to global warming must be arrived at.

Roosevelt, Margot. “To Go Green, Live Closer to Work.” Los Angeles Times 21 Sep. 2007: B1