Ban Mansions

A 2020 study found that Americans living in lavish houses in rich neighborhoods are responsible for 25% more greenhouse gas pollution on average than those living in more modest homes in poorer areas, mostly because heating, cooling, and powering more space requires using more energy.

Another 2019 report found that building super homes—defined as those larger than 25,000 square feet (2,323 square meters)—requires chopping down 380 trees, while the average U.S. home takes just 20. Left untouched, those extra trees could all be sequestering greenhouse gases. All the extra concrete and glass—both carbon-intensive materials to produce—further increase mansions’ wasteful footprint.

Then there’s the land or buildings razed. Wagner noted that “sometimes entire little woods are torn down to build these subdivisions full of mansions, like neighborhoods of McMansions, and so you’re losing trees which are part of the carbon cycle and you’re losing space for wildlife.” If it’s not woodlands, it’s often other buildings being torn down. That essentially wastes the energy that it took to construct the original building—a concept called embodied carbon.

Mansions all look different. Drake’s 50,000-square-foot (4,645-square-meter) Toronto manor includes an NBA-sized indoor basketball court, while Jeff Bezos decked out his $165 million, 13,000-square-foot (1,208-square-meter) estate with seven fern gardens. One of the newly divorced Kim Kardashian and Kanye West’s mansions, worth $60 million, employs (ironically) minimalist design elements, like a massive stone bathtub that they could fit their entire family into. But the common thread is that all these monstrosities take a ton of resources.

That means rich people’s mansions are gobbling up our dwindling carbon budget.