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Earlier this month, Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Marcia Fudge was in Japan for the G7 Sustainable Urban Ministers’ Meeting. During this event, she signed a Memorandum of Cooperation (MOC) with her Japanese counterparts that (according to the HUD PR team) “establishes a plan for collaborative research and the exchange of ideas regarding issues like innovative housing policy, inclusive urban planning strategies, and best practices for the implementation of carbon neutrality and climate resilience in cities.”

On the surface, this seems like a mismatched MOC. After all, “innovative housing policy” is not something that one associates with HUD under Fudge’s leadership, while the mostly homogenous Japanese society seems like an odd source for advice on “inclusive urban planning strategies.” But the most remarkable aspect of this MOC would be the environmental aspects that Fudge highlighted.

“President Joe Biden and the entire Biden-Harris Administration have taken an ambitious stance towards decarbonization,” she said in announcing the MOC. “Our goal is to achieve net-zero emissions and a full clean energy economy by 2050. Getting there will take significant investments, and incentives, to research and deploy clean energy innovations in every aspect of the United States economy.”

Fudge’s declaration is part of the Biden Administration’s efforts to somehow put the blame for climate change on the housing market. Last summer, HUD published a paper under the “Evidence Matters” banner that carried the title “The Role of Housing in Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation.” According to HUD, the stakeholders in the housing industry are among the guilty parties in destroying the environment.

“Housing relates to climate change in two ways,” said the HUD paper. “First, the location, construction, and energy consumption of homes directly affect their contributions to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. Second, where housing is located and how it is constructed offer residents varying degrees of exposure to (and protection from) climate-related risks and hazards.”

The HUD paper added, “The manufacturing, transportation, and building processes of the residential construction industry constitute approximately 10% of total global energy consumption, mostly from nonrenewable sources. Energy use for those homes, once built, accounts for 19% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, an amount equivalent to that of the sixth-largest emitting country on Earth. As Krista Egger, vice president of Building Resilient Futures at Enterprise Community Partners, says, ‘People may not be aware [of it], but when we use fossil fuels in our homes [for example, by cooking or heating with natural gas]… we are contributing to climate change.’”

Now, I am more than cognizant about the threat created by an environment that is constantly under assault. However, the national conversation about climate change often becomes strange and shrill when emotions run ahead of facts, especially in regard to housing.

Consider the Sierra Club, which earlier this year published the article “How Climate Change Could Sink the US Real Estate Market.” That article carried this subhead: “Rising seas, fires, and outdated government policies threaten a repeat of the subprime mortgage meltdown.”  If you lived through the subprime mortgage crisis, you could appreciate the weirdness of that statement – especially when you realize the Dodd-Frank Act is being defined as climate change.

Over the weekend, NPR offered an article “How climate change could cause a home insurance meltdown,” citing how several big insurers including Allstate and State Farm either scaled back or stopped their home insurance businesses in California. However, the coverage failed to acknowledge a fact that has been trumpeted for years – the intensity of the wildfires would have been significantly lower had California and the federal government conducted something resembling competent forest management. While climate change may have exacerbated conditions, it was the dereliction in the duty of managing forests that literally fueled the flames.

And last month, Politico offered “Climate change and the affordable housing crisis,” which claimed something called “climate gentrification” is forcing lower-income and mostly nonwhite people of out their neighborhoods. The article quoted Valencia Gunder, a self-identified “climate justice advocate,” who lamented that her Liberty City neighborhood in Miami is changing for the worst due to “park renovations and coffee shops opening and new residents walking their dogs without interacting with the people who have lived in the neighborhood for decades.”

Yes, not only is climate change roasting the planet, but it is also forcing Americans to share their neighborhoods with dog walkers who don’t speak to everyone they pass on the street.

In reality, American homeowners and homebuilders are not destroying the planet. What Fudge’s HUD and the ecological pseudo-warriors do not want to acknowledge is that the U.S. housing market is not the main culprit behind climate change, or even the second or third most important villain. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency stated that both residential and commercial real estate accounted for 13% of 2021 greenhouse gas emissions – that is a very different figure from HUD’s 19% GHG emission for residential real estate only. According to the EPA, far more GHG emissions are coming from the transportation sector (28%), utility-scale electricity production (25%) and the grab-bag catchphrase “industry” (23%).

And global climate change is the result of the global community, not one country or a sector within that country. When I read so-called studies and badly researched articles linking climate change and American housing, I can’t help but wonder if their authors ever heard of China, which is the global leader in pollution with more than 10,065 million tons of CO2 released annually. Isn’t it funny how the Biden Administration will blame American builders and homeowners for climate change but won’t say a word about how China is mucking up the environment? I guess they’re afraid Beijing will ask Hunter for its money back. (Too soon?)

That’s not to say the U.S. isn’t without sin when it comes to the environment – we’re number two on the global polluter list, with 5,416 million tons of CO2. And rounding out the top five polluters are India with 2,654 million tons of CO2, Russia with 1,711 million tons of CO2 and (surprise) Japan with 1,162 million tons of CO2. Yes, the same Japan that Fudge is consulting with about “best practices for the implementation of carbon neutrality and climate resilience in cities.” Huh?

There is no debate that the goals of energy-efficient housing and sustainability in construction and property maintenance are important across multiple hues of green – both the ecological and environmental aspects. But don’t blame U.S. housing market alone for climate change – that’s not the cause of the problem.

And, for the record, GHG was in decline under Biden’s predecessor, falling nearly 5% in pre-pandemic 2018 and 2019, but it spiked anew once Biden took office – according to Scientific American, greenhouse gas emissions rose 7% during Biden’s first year in office. That’s something Fudge’s HUD doesn’t mention – I believe that’s what Al Gore would refer to as an inconvenient truth.

Phil Hall is editor of Weekly Real Estate News. He can be reached at [email protected].