Our Current System is a Waste of Energy (Suburbia might be the worst)

Also, our system is optimized for the way it is currently constructed. Putting together a different system that uses a smaller amount of energy would itself take a huge amount of energy, plus a large amount of non-renewables resources, plus time. Doing this at the same time that we are operating the current system just wouldn’t work. So I don’t think that we should complain that it hasn’t happened. - Gail Tverberg

One of the huge energy consumers of our current system is suburbia:

Our suburbs will prove to be a huge liability.

They represent the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world.

The project of suburbia represent a set of tragic choices because it is a living arrangement with no future. And that future is now here in the form of the peak oil predicament. - James Howard Kunstler