First, I want to clarify: I haven't made a value judgement like "gluttonous" or "evil." We're operating within the same framework, which is constraints (and incentives).
That being said, I think it's overly reductive to chalk it up to the country's size and density. If you take any mid-sized city in the US and wind the clock back by 80 years, you'll see a very different urban structure: dense radial development built around streetcars, multi-family housing next to retail construction, inter-urban and long-distance rail to the next city, etc.
Much of the US, including the extremely sparse parts, looked a great deal like Europe. But where Europe's cities and exurbs were rebuilt to more or less the same character after each war or disaster, the US intentionally razed its cities in favor of (subsidized) personal car travel, commercial zoning, low-density housing, etc.
Cleveland had an urban population of nearly 1 million in the late 1920s, and was one of the largest cities in the country. It's about a third of that today. That didn't take hundreds of years; just a handful of decades.
In other words: we (the US) have intentionally pursued policies and incentive structures that encourage low-density (and correspondingly high-consumption) living, as a departure from our historical arc of development. We don't get to play that off on physical geography; it was a political pivot we made.
Edit: And we don't get to play it off on colonization either: New Zealand is both less dense and younger than the US (and more remote, to boot), and yet their emissions are well under half of ours.
Europe wise, probably because cars weren’t mass produced until 1910, and weren’t well developed until post WW1 - let alone comfortable, reliable, etc.
WW2 changed that. However in Europe, the industrial base was bombed out, and most of the economy was directing it’s energy towards rebuilding - and even then the density in Europe and existing buildings and housing stock (even with things bombed to smithereens) didn’t support the type of wide open projects and free space the US enjoyed then and often now.
The population in Western Europe in 1950 was 142 million. The population today is approx. 191 million, or about 35% growth, even after that terrible war.
Europe couldn’t do what the US did because it was already too dense, and at the time, too poor.
The United States population in 1950 was 151 million. The population is now 332 million.
In 1950, not only did the US have a fully intact industrial base and economy, it had essentially the only one left in the world. So it could and did pursue aggressive expansion and growth, and adopt new technologies which supported it and worked well at the time. Even with more than a doubling in population in that time, it still mostly works - if we ignore wider environmental impacts, of course.
And still outside of the few areas with dense inner cities, it really makes no sense to try to use public transit - there is no public!
As far as NZ goes, I don’t know enough about them to comment one way or another.
"Cleveland had an urban population of nearly 1 million in the late 1920s, and was one of the largest cities in the country. It's about a third of that today. That didn't take hundreds of years; just a handful of decades.
In other words: we (the US) have intentionally pursued policies and incentive structures that encourage low-density (and correspondingly high-consumption) living, as a departure from our historical arc of development."
What you are discounting is the personal preferences of most Americans. Suburban living is chosen by many people as the right balance between urban amenities and preferences for space, nature, less pollution, etc.
Also people follow jobs and the urban cores of the early 20th century were no longer as attractive once people, again exercise choice, chose to work and live where they did not need to rely upon public transportation.
People fled Cleveland because they could, when it sucked there because there were options they could use which sucked less.
Automobiles and lots of open space made it possible to do so economically in the US.
In Europe, there isn’t much of a ‘somewhere else’ to go without fleeing the entire region, and, well coming to the US. not even counting the language and legal barriers.
It’s why Germany kept pushing for ‘libensraum’, it’s tight. And why it was so terrible, because there is nowhere to go without invading a bunch of unhappy neighbors.
In the US, if Cleveland sucks, there are plenty of options. And if you can afford a car, they are cheap and easy to get to as well.
No passport required either to move between states, and the US is waaay larger than Europe.
And it’s that way because there wasn’t anyone there beforehand that could make it any other way, and there is a ton of empty space. Unlike Europe.
That being said, I think it's overly reductive to chalk it up to the country's size and density. If you take any mid-sized city in the US and wind the clock back by 80 years, you'll see a very different urban structure: dense radial development built around streetcars, multi-family housing next to retail construction, inter-urban and long-distance rail to the next city, etc.
Much of the US, including the extremely sparse parts, looked a great deal like Europe. But where Europe's cities and exurbs were rebuilt to more or less the same character after each war or disaster, the US intentionally razed its cities in favor of (subsidized) personal car travel, commercial zoning, low-density housing, etc.
Cleveland had an urban population of nearly 1 million in the late 1920s, and was one of the largest cities in the country. It's about a third of that today. That didn't take hundreds of years; just a handful of decades.
In other words: we (the US) have intentionally pursued policies and incentive structures that encourage low-density (and correspondingly high-consumption) living, as a departure from our historical arc of development. We don't get to play that off on physical geography; it was a political pivot we made.
Edit: And we don't get to play it off on colonization either: New Zealand is both less dense and younger than the US (and more remote, to boot), and yet their emissions are well under half of ours.