ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a discussion of the meaning of environmental sustainability and its basis in resource depletion and climate change. It focuses onto housing with a discussion of the main reasons for government intervention on this issue. The attitudes of households and the discourses that influence them have important impacts on the achievement of environmental aims. Therefore, the elements of housing that impact on energy use are wide-ranging. The chapter also shows examples where measures to achieve environmental objectives were contradictory to strongly held social practices and values that are at the heart of the neoliberal society and housing regime. One of the major reasons that achieving sustainability objectives in housing is difficult relates to the contradictions with other objectives.
