The US government has a new plan for slashing greenhouse emissions from buildings

[Endymio]

States are free to adopt, or not, whatever recommended federal codes they wish.

In some cases. In others, they are legally or practically required to adopt them. And whether or not a state (or the local county/city ordinance department) requires things like low-flow toilets or non-410a AC system, you're out of luck, thanks to the federal government. Furthermore, as the federal government, through HUD, underwrites a large number of mortgages, and in this case, it specifies building requirements above and beyond local code.

Why does the usual right-trash textual diarrhoea [sic] not surprise me? Strawmen and never-ending fallacies, never anything resembling reason or logic; just kneejerk emotional responses, feelings of being "oppressed" by their own government, the poor little snowflakes

An excellent self-referential description of your post. If you actually have a specific fact or argument to rebut, why not do so, rather than engaging in no more than, as you say, a bit of "textual diarrhea"?

 

[Kam7r]

Probably because the average US home is 2.5x the size of a UK home ... and situated more than 9 inches away from your nearest neighbor.

Maybe, I'm not sure of how is the housing in the whole of the UK since I really only went to london several times, but here you can have those 2.5x ( and more ) size of "uk home" too, in stones ( everything is in stones or concrete anyway ) cheap as hell, you just have to avoid big cities... kinda funny coz that's what a lot of retired UK citizens do in the south of the country (France ) ^^'