This is why my own "doomerosity" has a gradual upward trend also. As mentioned in another post, I rent a bitty apartment but the fridge is huge. The way the sink works, the only way to use warm water without scalding yourself is to have the water gushing at full stream. Oh, and the sink clogs if even a grain of rice falls down there or for no reason at all, so the garbag disposal has to be run, for a minute or so is best, whenever dishes are washed and periodically anyway. Air-drying laundry is  illegal here so when you do laundry, unless you keep it as secret as a pot-growing operation, indoors and hidden, you have to use the dryers as well as the washers in the laundry room. Doing your own gardening is likewise forbidden, there's the gardener, or one of 'em, who comes around with a poorly carbureted leaf blower and blows the leaves around. Sprinklers water the plants nightly, and most of the water runs off, taking soil nutrients with it - it's amazing anything grows the way the humus is cleaned away and the soil water-leached 365 nights a year. The apartments are heated by HUGE electrical heaters which I've never used, it's along one wall and I have storage shelves along there, so I use a small space heater when necessary. The stove is electric, thus ensuring one more highly ineffecient step (burn nat gas to make electricity to use in the stove here instead of just a gas stove). Needless to say the sink drips unless the taps are really shut off tight, and sometimes even then it does. Frankly, this place is almost designed to waste as much energy as possible under the circumstances.

Since at least a third, I think higher, of the population of the US are renters, mostly without the knowledge and awareness I have, to use compact fluorescent bulbs, a more effecient heater, etc., and almost all of which have the universal US household idol, the biggest TV possible, you can see what we're up against here.