A house with a white picket fence in the verdant suburbs has long been an American dream. It could also be a major hurdle for US chances of cutting climate-warming emissions, researchers at the University of Michigan said in a study on Monday.

People tour the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the United States, July 19, 2020. Long delays in getting COVID-19 test results across the United States is undercutting their usefulness, said Director of the U.S. National Institutes for Health Francis Collins on Sunday. Photo: Xinhua

US households account for one-fifth of the country's total greenhouse gas emissions, thanks partly to Americans' general preference for bigger houses and spacious suburbs. Those preferences also translated into an emissions divide between the rich and the poor, with wealthier households in recent years emitting around 25 percent more than their lower-income counterparts in smaller homes, the researchers said. 

To bring down the country's future emissions, Americans may need to rethink how they live, said Benjamin Goldstein, a coauthor on the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Structural change is going to be important and necessary," said Goldstein, a professor at the University of Michigan. Developers might need to look for more options in already dense settlements. Builders can consider reducing floor spaces. And residential buildings might reconsider using natural gas, a fossil fuel, for heating and cooking, he said.

Such measures may be especially important, given that more than 100 million new homes are expected to be built in the next 30 years, while the country's 328 million population is projected to grow by more than a third in that time. Because the average lifespan of a US house is around 40 years, the US risks a "carbon lock-in."
Newspaper headline: High household energy usage may balk US carbon cut