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Re:Portland’s Small-House Movement Is Catching On by plan6 on Sunday October 02, 2016 @03:43PM (#12623878)
> Other cheaper insulation types are really good already.

This is short-term thinking.

I don't expect the insulation in my house to be sufficient for the significantly increased and/or decreased temperatures caused by deforestation, CO2 pollution, ice melting, etc.

Yes, we will have moved out by the time it will matter, but I think my children and their children could've potentially lived comfortably in our house had it been built with the best materials available today. And with more insulation, air conditioning wouldn't be causing even more warming:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/sunday-review/air-conditio...

Substantially improved insulation in new housing and stopping deforestation could get the world back on track.

Re:Portland’s Small-House Movement Is Catching On by nradov on Sunday October 02, 2016 @04:04PM (#12623964)
Only the wealthy have the luxury of being able to engage in long-term thinking about this stuff. Most regular people have to stretch their finances to purchase a house at all, so they have to make compromises on building materials.
Re:Portland’s Small-House Movement Is Catching On by plan6 on Sunday October 02, 2016 @04:55PM (#12624189)
By building smaller houses with better materials, we can reduce the energy requires to heat and cool them, slow acceleration of CO2 generation, and reduce maintenance costs.

If you can't afford to even build a tiny house with great materials, perhaps you can with the help of several family members or friends or we could work out deals where domiciles are time shared during the day; while you're at work, someone else can live there. We really only need a place to live for 1/3 of the day unless you're too young/too old/sick/diseased/injured.

If you don't want to think about the long-term future of humanity or just don't give a crap about your ancestors- fine, but I'm not with you on that.

We're past the tipping point now, so we have to come up with better solutions, or we're screwed:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/global-warming-be...

Re:Portland’s Small-House Movement Is Catching On by rtkwe on Monday October 03, 2016 @03:14PM (#12630418)
> If you can't afford to even build a tiny house with great materials, perhaps you can with the help of several family members or friends or we could work out deals where domiciles are time shared during the day; while you're at work, someone else can live there. We really only need a place to live for 1/3 of the day unless you're too young/too old/sick/diseased/injured.

That's great except most of the population (at least in the US) lives on, very roughly at least, the same schedule so they need the space at the same time between 8pm and 8am.