Cohousing-L Mailing List: How is "cheap" green?

[Racheli Gai (racheli]

I don't get it: How is "cheapest" equal to "greenest", and how are old
trailer parks green?


Brian wrote (in part) :

> To a first approximation, the total of mortgage plus utility bill
> measures resource consumption.  Thus, cheaper is greener.  The
> greenest community may be an old trailer park.


> ....    They can tell you the cheapest per-unit
> housing development they've seen approved in the last couple years.
> That's the cheapest and greenest you will be permitted to build.
>
>                                         
I don't get it: How is "cheapest" equal to "greenest"?

And regarding  trailers: while are green in a sense - since they 
probably tend, on the average
 to have smaller footprints, and they also probably use less materials 
than conventional houses
(and therefore contain less embodied energy?)

Trailers are very un-green, though,  in many other ways: they are known 
to be made of
cheap/toxic materials, and as far as I know they (or most of them) 
sorely lack
in insolation, so they are not efficient in terms of energy use.

Racheli.