The Oil Drum

Yes we do use more energy.  My guess is that we have similar building standards and colder weather.  I have to ride my winter bicycle to work 4 to 5 months each year and this is in the warm south and I use my summer bike whenever possible.
On this university campus nearly every building has NO insulation!  The new buildings have about 2".  The home standards changed in 1991 and were upped from 4 to 6" in the walls.  My father was doing that for custom homes in the late 1960's.  We have an industry that only adopts whatever standards we can get the government to pass.

Energy is so cheap that nobody cares yet.
Come on - taxes on my house are over 2x what it costs for natural gas, hydro and phone.  The car is similar - purchase, maintaince and insurance dwarfing fuel costs.
In the case of my 1991 Chevy Sprint (around 60 mpg US) it cost more for brake and exhaust repair than gas!

"Green" friends live in nice neighbourhoods with good "community" but pay for it with old houses that have no insulation to speak of.
We sure see a lot more trucks / SUV'ish things on the roads in Michigan than here although I see enough mini-vans and that ilk to make me puke.  Cars choking the streets and surburbia out the wazoo is the way we've gone too.  Howver, unlike friends in the USA, up here you don't pick neighbourhoods because they are safe or because the schools  are not going to have the roof collapse in winter.

Going into a different threat.

I want to believe in the book Fire and Ice and that we are diverging from the USA.  Frankly the USA scares the @#$#@$ out of me.  The government is disconnected from the people and US moderates / progressives I know are getting pretty scared of the way their country is going - but it doesn't seem to stop.  There should have been riots over Robberts nomination to the court and I see that Alito will likely walk right in without a sacrifical Dem in the way.

My only consolidation is that you're destroying your own country now with the mountain top removal for coal; having the polluters in charge of the EPA etc etc - except that we're also getting the mercury in the air ...

There are very progressive factions within the USA - but I've pretty well given up on them.  With thousands of white collar jobs now going overseas where PHDs are a dime-a-dozen you're not going to have a middle class much longer.  It's a great place if you're rich or have a marketable skill.

The USA dream that I grew up in during the 60's is dead, gone and burried.  The fangs are bare now, the blood is dripping - nobody harbours illusions about what the country is about except perhaps our Regressive Conservative party up here.

Exactly, Stoneleigh

A favorite book of mine and combined with Jane Jacobs'
Cities and the Wealth of Nations (that our cities are in transactions of decline)

and James Kunstler's-
"In The Geography of Nowhere I argued that the post-war enterprise of building suburbia as a replacement for towns and cities in the United States was a self destructive act. I argued that the living arrangement Americans now think of as normal suburban sprawl - is bankrupting us economically, socially, ecologically, and spiritually. I identified the physical setting itself - the cartoon landscape of car-clogged highways, strip malls, tract houses, franchise fry pits, parking lots, junked cities, and ravaged countryside - as not merely the symptom of a troubled culture but in many ways the primary cause of our troubles."

These three books form a foundation of sorts for my studies.

I'm now looking to the "Nine Nations" and their Capitol's and Second Cities for verification of trend.