From Georgia State University and the department of “let’s just all live in uniform state sponsored mud huts“, comes this latest inanity, blaming carbon emissions on your ability to get a tax deduction for the American Dream of owning your own home. I wonder what sort of home Kyle Mangum lives in?
US housing policies increase carbon output, Georgia State University research finds
Land use policies and preferential tax treatment for housing – in the form of federal income tax deductions for mortgage interest and property taxes – have increased carbon emissions in the United States by about 2.7 percent, almost 6 percent annually in new home construction, according to a new Georgia State University study.
Economist Kyle Mangum, an assistant professor in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, measures the effect of various housing policies on energy use and carbon output in “The Global Effects of Housing Policy,” which he recently presented at the IEB III Workshop on Urban Economics in Barcelona.
Mangum’s empirical study uses data on local construction activity, housing consumption and density, labor and materials cost, and local populations and incomes for the nation’s 50 largest metro areas, ranking them by annual carbon output per person.
Policies that affect the amount of housing consumed per capita and housing density are the two major drivers of carbon savings, he finds.
“Larger homes consume more energy,” Mangum said. “Lower density home sites increase gasoline use. Also, many ‘easy-building’ Sun Belt regions that have attracted more new home building are higher energy-use locations.”
His research suggests removing federal tax subsidies for housing and updating land use regulations to encourage higher density in higher energy-use locations would lower the country’s overall energy use, reducing its carbon emissions.
“I find that the federal tax treatment of housing has added a nontrivial amount of carbon output by increasing housing consumption,” he said. “Also, imposing stricter land use regulations in high carbon output cities would decrease the nation’s overall amount of carbon output by approximately 2.2 percent – about 4.5 percent in new construction – primarily by decreasing the amount of house used per person and then by encouraging movement to more efficient low-carbon cities.”
Mangum also finds:
High carbon cities contribute about twice as much per person as the low carbon cities;
Many quickly growing cities are above the national average in energy consumption;
Cities with more housing area per person use more electricity per person.
Download a copy of Mangum’s working paper at http://www.ieb.ub.edu/files/PapersWSUE2014/Mangum.pdf.
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They continue to worry about “carbon”, when isn’t it “carbon di-oxide” they wish to worry about?
I’ve begun to think this isn’t an error, but shorthand for carbon-based life forms, especially humans, and, perhaps coincidentally, carbon-based (lumber) housing.
My specialty is construction. Our industry is the definition of energy-intensive. We build infrastructure that can last a century, as most homes do. So, if one seeks to assess our carbon-consumption, the assessment must be made over time span consistent with the life-cycle cost of infrastructure – between one century and one millenium. A useful assessment would be the life-cycle of the city of Detroit, which includes a de-population and reduced density phase and spans a couple centuries. Such assessments must account for the availability of rail transport, which is what permits low-energy commuting over large distances and large time frames, and bedroom-community social and commercial concentrations. These assessments require such a multi-disciplinary approach (energy calculations, economics, and history) that it’s impossible to believe the research reported has sufficient rigor without first assessing the qualifications of the researchers. The first clue that’s something’s amiss is that the study discusses “cities” not a “city,” or even a small selection.
Can thus guy estimate the energy cost of producing clinker for grinding into cement? What about the difference in efficiency between a modern steel construction smelter and the old rolled beams running out of Bethlehem Steel? (Modern construction steel is almost completely recycled.) Does he know the materials cost or shipping cost for wood I-joists (made from crop-grown timber)? What about the shipping distances for typical ready-mix hauls (usually locally operated and owned)? And I’ve not even touched the materials outside my specialty – structural engineering. Imagine all the costs associated with insulation, roofing, wiring, HVAC systems, gypsum sheathing inside the house, and furniture and fixtures. Just: wow.
Nope, he’s studied the problem based on ANNUAL “carbon,” and the home mortgage interest deduction is the problem. Genius!
Gentlemen, the objection I have to this study is that it suggests further government intervention as a solution. The goal of such publications is to adjust the distribution of winners and losers among various regions and cities, and this adjustment favors established infrastructure contrary to economic drives to abandon the infrastructure for more favorable efficiencies. That, and it’s not merely a rent-seeking proposal, it’s slave-seeking.
Not letting people build outside the tropics would reduce home energy use immensely.
Agenda 21 manifest, lets cram humanity into high rise ghettos
Here in the UK we lost our mortgage tax relief years ago. So the proposed policy must work, because Britain has a much smaller carbon footprint than the US, so its all down to our mortgages eh? Here’s me thinking it was due to our relative size, but hey, you live and learn.
So here we have, on the one side, those seeking to decarbonize our energy production, and on the other those who assume there will be no decarbonization. Have these yokels from Ga State
U travel just a little to the north, into South Carolina, in say, 30 months from now, and they’ll find that increased energy consumption has virtually no effect on carbon emissions, thanks to SC’s mostly nuclear-generated electricity. They also apparently aren’t buying into the notion of
practical electric cars arriving on the scene anytime in the foreseeable future, which again places them at odds with their fellow Greenies. Sounds to me like their suggestion to cram folks together rests on some pretty shaky assumptions all around.
We all know a couple of high carbon users with too large houses, Al Gore and James Cameron. Hypocrits par excellance.
For centuries the few remaining liberal arts graduate students left after collapse of the higher education bubble of vastly inflated tuition based on government loan sharking will use Internet archives to study human differences, in collaboration with geneticists, as a record of human folly revealed by the perfectly obvious climate deception being taken up as a culture wide cause, and why the temperamentally anti-science instincts of religious parties helped being it down.
No mention of energy efficient building materials. More of the same, but no different.
If you build a bigger house you probably use more wood and thus more carbon.
Unless they are talking about CO2, of course …. .
Utter stupidity. Time to throw students out of uni when they graduate and get them into real work.
As written above, no mention of energy efficient building techniques that can quickly render any mention of big houses = “bad” nothing more than “big house” envy. Lower density homes usually have more green space and trees. I would call that a carbon (dioxide) sink! Oh, and even if I live in a big energy efficient house on a large block (which I do), I can choice to take public transportation to work (which I do). So. In your eye! BTW, show me a picture of the mud and bark hut, constructed on a vacant lot that you are living in Mr Mangum. Live by example, not by edict.
I agree completely with the professors arguement and we will start by requiring college professors/lectures to live in dormitories in order to reduce their carbon footprint and promote better contact with students
And a couple other things! No mention or accounting for live style choices. I am fanatical about recycling. On our large lot we have several raised garden beds which we grow what we can. Compost piles in various stages. When required I get my son off is iPad on the weekends and get his hands dirty pulling weeds and cutting the grass with a push, rotary mower. It all goes on the compost piles with any food scraps we have. My son and I do projects together, like build box solar ovens and cook what we grow because we can.
The tools of Obama, gathering his Red Brigades.
Also, I love your “And Then They Came For…” series, Anthony. Keep it going. Regards,
Hmmm, Wonder if Kyle Einstein will also calculate the number of lives saved, especially children, by lowering of the crime rates? Why does he hate children?
Anybody remember how Al Gore’s utility bill was tracked down? Any hope of finding another?
How about the counter argument that higher density housing, based on statistics, means higher crime rates, higher murder rates, and shorter lifespan.
Really!!! Is this guy drinking kool aid?? Or is he on the same disconnected channel as Kerry!?
A better solution would be to live in the temperate environment of the underground. Build large underground cities. We would soon become the Morlocks of an HG Wells fantasy.
Sometimes what appears to be a good idea at first is just another way of turning us into Morlocks; like living in high density housing.
Just an example of one way that “mitigating” carbon dioxide will send us all into poverty. Except the Al Gores and UN leaders etc of course.
Roger
http://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com
What is the positive reason why people should recieve a subsidy in the form of lower taxes to buy a house?
Liberals have been trying to get rid of the Home Mortgage deduction for years. This is just another justification for their attempts.
But an interesting thought occurred. Liberals are of course all for open borders – allowing MORE people in. It is known that the US, without immigration, is on the same level as Europe – in other words, we are not having enough children to sustain our population. So all this new home construction, which causes global warming, is due to immigration, which also is a pet cause of liberals.
So this quack from GSU is saying the major cause in the US of global warming is the liberals own policies. Kind of poetic justice.
What does who owns the property and pays the mortgage and taxes have to do with how much energy is used? Are they suggesting that renters use less energy than owners? I would take issue with that as it is pretty well understood that those who do not have a financial stake in property tend to do less maintenance which leads to higher costs in time, money and energy in the long run.
Again… assuming that there IS any global warming to “fix”…
17.9 years and counting.