Following up on a supposed McMansion comeback, Jordan Weissmann notes that SUV sales have also increased:

And how about those gas guzzlers? They’re on the rebound too. More than 51 percent of new autos sold today are light trucks, a category which includes SUVs. That’s right where we were in the Spring of 2007, though below the all-time peak of around 6 percent.

Now some caveats. The light truck category also includes increasingly popular crossover vehicles, which share some of the space and styling of SUVs, but are more fuel efficient. So the big cars being bought today aren’t quite the same as the big cars that were being bought yesterday. Meanwhile, mortgage credit is hard to come by, and perhaps as a result, the average new home buyer is a bit richer than before the crash, according to the NAHB’s data. That might partly explain our growing abodes, since wealthier families tend to buy larger homes. And as recession-scarred Millennials start entering the home market, there’s a chance they’ll start opting for smaller houses, as some real estate experts believe they will.

But sometimes it just feels like we never learn.

This builds on one of the most common critiques of McMansions: they are part of a package deal of excessive consumption that includes SUVs, bulk purchases at big box stores, and oversized food portions. There is little doubt that Americans consume a lot, particularly in comparison to many other nations, but it is not just about having a lot. This critique also is about being green and asking whether these levels of consumption can continue or could be extended to all that many other humans before resources run out. And, it often seems that there is a moral argument underlying this critique: should people have this size house and this size vehicle? This is why I think it would get really interesting if McMansions could be much greener (sustainable materials, low energy usage, less reliant on automobiles and built in denser areas) and SUVs could be more fuel efficient (is 40 mpg doable?).