How HGTV Can Save the Planet

It’s everywhere! It’s playing silently on the wall-mounted TV at the dentist’s office, it’s in front of the treadmill at the gym, and it’s on in your living room while you fold the laundry.

HGTV is a ubiquitous force in our culture. They’re the ones who told you that gray paint is cool, that shiplap is a thing, and that open-plan layouts are indisputably the best. Any opinions you have about backsplashes and any understanding you have of the economics of house flipping probably came either directly or indirectly from the shows on HGTV.

As Amanda Mull notes in The Atlantic, the network is responsible for the homogenization of American design preferences. It’s instilled its priorities into a whole generation of homeowners.

HGTV is usually seen as a pleasant diversion. It’s free of the darkness and violence that pervades a lot of other TV. There’s always a happy ending (at least that’s the way the shows edit things; there have been many reports of homeowners unhappy after HGTV renovated their houses). It’s free of politics and culture wars and the other things that divide us. It’s a pleasant space where viewers can dream about making their homes nicer.

But HGTV does have its flaws. It exists pretty much entirely to stoke real-estate envy in its viewers. It represents an unattainable lifestyle for many Americans. So many of the shows start with a couple that has set itself a “tight” budget of, like, $800,000 to buy a house, or can spare “only” $100,000 to fix up the kitchen and renovate a bathroom.

How many people have looked around at the “dated” décor that surrounds them after binging a couple of episodes of House Hunters and gone on to buy a new house they couldn’t afford? How many people have been inspired by Property Brothers to waste money and resources by tearing out perfectly good kitchen cabinets or bathroom hardware and replacing it with whatever’s trendy?

HGTV has a reputation as nothing more than televised “Xanax” — in fact, the network itself embraces this image. But HGTV has a chance to become something more than a pleasant consumerist diversion. It could even be a real force for good in this country. The reason for this comes from something that the network helps us forget — the world of politics.

You see, President Biden just signed the Inflation Reduction Act. This bill contains billions of dollars in incentives for homeowners who make efficiency improvements to their homes. New, efficient heat pumps, solar panels, and other ways to green your home will be cheaper than ever before. There’s even more money in the bill for the production of clean electricity, which means that people who electrify their homes (getting rid of gas furnaces, ranges, etc.) will be more likely to power them without emitting carbon.

This bill has the potential to put a massive dent in America’s carbon emissions. But it will only work if homeowners know to take advantage of the credits and if they understand how much better their homes will be once they’re more eco-friendly. Here’s where HGTV’s army of telegenic remodelers comes in.

Up until now, the vast majority of the improvements promoted on HGTV have been aesthetic. Its shows have been all about new paint colors and cool-looking kitchen sinks and nifty shower tiles.

But what if HGTV committed itself to promoting induction ranges rather than (or in addition to) subway tile? What if it worked to hype heat pumps instead of vaulted ceilings? What if it made solar panels as trendy as it once made gray paint (looks like one of the Property Brothers is already apparently a big fan of rooftop solar)?

In other words, what if the network decided to help Americans realize that they could make their homes better for the environment in addition to making them nicer to look at?

Even if it decided to stick with an aesthetics-only approach, perhaps HGTV could help to undo the cult of the manicured lawn that has turned so much of our country into a sterile monoculture.

At the very least, the network could commit itself to no longer promoting fossil-fuel-based appliances like big natural-gas-fired ranges as the obvious centerpiece of a fancy kitchen.

No force in American life drives consumer desires around our living spaces as much as HGTV. If anybody can make energy efficiency sexy to American homeowners, they can.

If they can do it for shiplap, they can do it for the climate.

—

This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

***

You may also like these posts on The Good Men Project:

White Fragility: Talking to White People About Racism

Escape the “Act Like a Man” Box

Why I Don’t Want to Talk About Race

What We Talk About When We Talk About Men

—

Photo credit: Shutterstock