Is an American middle class lifestyle sustainable environmentally speaking? Yes, no maybe so?

People have been feeling good as we move closer to a vaccinated society here in the United States. The ability to be out and about more has definitely been nice, but I am also filled with dread. It has been unusually hot here in the Twin Cities for an unusually long period of time at an unusually early time of year. Saint Paul Schools just cancelled school for half of the week - I can't remember this happening because if was too hot, too cold yes, but not too hot. Lake Mead, a man made lake, is at its lowest levels in history. The tundra is melting. Bird populations in the United States continue to decline dramatically. And over the past year or two, I have become more aware of how much my own American middle class lifestyle consumes. 

You probably know from my post on laundry from a few months ago, that we purchased solar panels last year and the real time updates on energy consumption have been eye opening. It takes a lot of energy to run a clothes dryer. It takes a lot of energy to take a hot shower. Microwaves use a lot of load for a short period of time. When this hot spell started, we went without without AC for a couple days, but we broke down and it has now been on for several days. 

Our solar panels are largely covering our electricity use this week because hot and sunny means good solar production. But we are a long ways from carbon neutral. We heat our home with natural gas and while our electric provider has made progress in using renewables (and operates a nuclear plant), our gas provider has not. We have shored up insulation and we do keep our temperatures in the moderate range (I could go lower than my housemates, but that is a separate post). Even though we try to walk or bike many places, we still drive the majority of the time. Even our decade-old Prius uses fossil fuels and we are due for a new one soon. Although arguments still continue in our family on the tags we are putting on towels and napkins and where they are and who they are still continue, we have actually become more disciplined about laundry and how many loads we do in a week. I even hung of load outside to dry this week. 

 We need to all be working toward carbon neutrality. Although there are technologies that can help like the solar panels we already own, but I don't know if we can truly "build" or way out of this. I still wonder, can we as a society continue to take a shower every day? Should we be hang drying our clothes. Should we be driving anywhere? If we don't have solar panels, should we really be running air conditioning even if we have solar panels?

What are your thoughts?  Should we be doing the things we take for granted?