RALEIGH - The teardown trend in Raleigh is bad for the environment -- and bad for Raleigh's residents. When global warming, water conservation needs, landfill shortages and the need for additional electric power generation fill the newspaper on a daily basis, tearing down a perfectly habitable house (even if it's "dowdy") to make way for an oversized replacement is environmentally irresponsible.

A larger home consumes more materials and energy than a small home over its entire lifecycle -- from its construction to its demolition. It takes more energy to heat, cool, light, clean, and repair an oversized house. The trend toward larger homes is going to contribute to North Carolina's electric utilities' need for additional generating capacity, costing us all.

You can heat, cool and operate a house for nearly a half-century with the energy that goes into its construction. When an existing house is torn down, the energy deficit is even greater. The older home contains millions of btu's of embedded energy -- natural resources that have already been "paid for."

The availability of landfill space is currently a political hot potato, both in the legislature and in Wake County. Construction and demolition account for approximately 30 percent of all solid waste in this country, exclusive of road and bridge debris. In Wake County it's probably even higher.

Landfills also contribute significantly to global warming. They are the largest human-related source of methane in the United States, accounting for 34 percent of all methane emissions. Methane is over 20 times more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. Why are we tolerating the creation of millions of cubic yards of unnecessary demolition debris?

Oversized houses require more water consumption. We're already facing worsening water shortages.

Contrary to building industry rhetoric, teardowns do not financially benefit the existing property owners in a neighborhood. After oversized houses are built, neighboring property values actually drop in many cases. The quality of life is diminished, living next door to a monster house (with the issues of increased runoff, and loss of sunlight, view and neighborhood tree canopy) and the streetscape loses its charm.

The remaining small houses are valued only for their land. Though their land value may marginally increase, often their total market value is reduced. According to a study at the University of Illinois at Chicago, existing properties in close proximity to teardowns in Arlington Heights have lost as much as 24 percent of their value due to the construction of larger and more expensive houses nearby.

Our older neighborhoods in Raleigh are generally places that feature a variety of sizes and housing types. Size is one of the biggest components of affordability. The diversity of our older neighborhoods will be lost when homes that could comfortably accommodate a small family are replaced with expensive behemoths. After all, the majority of American households have only one or two persons.

Not everyone needs or wants a huge house. Sarah Susanka of Raleigh has published a wonderful series of bestselling books on the "The Not So Big House." She has eloquently demonstrated that larger does not necessarily mean more livable.

Other cities (Austin, Atlanta, Salt Lake City, Dallas, to name a few) are addressing this problem. Raleigh needs to do so -- and quickly. One of Raleigh's National Register historic districts is rapidly losing its historic character, and several other neighborhoods that are now eligible for the National Register are being torn apart.

Finally, there's the human side of the story: respect for the neighbors and the neighborhood. We need to once again view our homes as homes, not as commodities to be cashed in. We need to respect our neighbors and their quality of life. Some of Raleigh's recent teardown transactions have been disgraceful. I've heard about several instances where older sellers have been promised by buyers that their homes will not be torn down, and in the middle of the night they're destroyed.

The citizens of Raleigh's downtown neighborhoods are tired of having their streets torn up, neighborhood trees cut down, and monstrosities built in their midst, just so that a few people can make a buck. We can do better in Raleigh -- and in light of environmental, neighborhood and human consequences, we should.

(Myrick Howard is president of Preservation North Carolina.)