Re: [pf] we took the wrong track, in the '50s and '60s

by David MacClement

07 December 2000 20:11 UTC

· My notes below are on two items from these quotes.

>At 15:39 6/12/2000 -0800, David A wrote:
>> ... most of us have decided by our actions that we want these basic
>> comforts in our lives. Yes, as you and Betsy wrote, to a significant
>> extent our culture determines how we must live if we want to live in
>> "comfort" (itself a culturally dependent term). But we have a lot of
>> choices too. I'm sure that ... I could reduce ... my electricity 
>> usage drastically by not owning a computer, television, using 
>> only one electric light or candles or going to bed when it gets dark.
>> I could shower in cold water and hang all my wet clothes out to dry. 
>> But ... it's uncomfortable ... and very, very few of us do it. 
>>                                               ... most of us make
>> specific decisions to live basic middle class lives, and I think we
>> should take as much responsibility as we can for that instead of
>> attributing it to higher economic powers.
>
At 07:14 7/12/2000 -0800, Sharon Flesher wrote:
>You make an excellent point, David. While I have known a couple of 
>people in my lifetime who have walked their talk ... 
>most of those in my environmentally-aware circle of friends and 
>acquaintances take advantage of all of those middle-class creature 
>comforts you mentioned. ... I could say we have no choice ... 
>because that's how we've been culturally conditioned, but there are
>those few examples of people I've known who have proven otherwise.
>
>The best I can say for myself is that ... I'm trying to do better, 
>step by step. My current target area is trash reduction. We throw 
>out one large bag of trash every other week (a pittance compared 
>to our neighbors, but still way too much for my conscience). 
> I'm working on getting it to one bag a month, but
>my ultimate goal is one bag a year a la those folks in Portland.
>
>I remember ... calculated that the earth's carrying capacity would 
>allow everyone on the planet to have the lifestyle of the average 
>middle-class European. ... the average European's lifestyle is quite 
>comfortable and allows for a basic level of these labor-saving 
>devices we enjoy.  ... a sustainable lifestyle would still allow us 
>to have a refrigerator and a washing machine and indoor plumbing.
>

· (1) On: David A's: "not owning a computer, television, using only one
electric light or candles or going to bed when it gets dark" and Sharon's:
"average European ... is quite comfortable and .. a basic level of these
labor-saving devices we enjoy."

· David's points were quite clear, and well worth making (though Arianna's
point about "brainwashing" - alternatives not crossing your mind - is
valuable), but I get irritated when anyone uses that *reductio ad absurdam*
argument: setting up an absurd straw-man then poking fun at it. David might
have been trying to be amusing, but I didn't detect it. 
· At 07:14 6/10/2000 -0700, Diane Fitzsimmons wrote to Pos Fut, (see:
http://csf.colorado.edu/mail/pfvs/2000/msg05103.html ) a list of what she
saw as a minimum requirement for a comfortable life. That and Sharon's
comment about living like an average European, is I believe much closer to
"the alternative" to a typical middle-class American's current lifestyle.
· However, for a while now I've been "pushing my barrow" of the future
holding diversity, variety, a multiplicity of ways of living. So while
Sharon's examples of living in a cabin in the woods, and people throwing
out 1-2 bags of rubbish a year, might well exist (I'm close to these), for
every example, consumerist or not, you could say "most people are living in
a manner different from that". There will be a distribution of lifestyles
(consumption per person) around the world and within any large nation, with
the tiny fraction of the world's population which is average-Americans down
at the high-consumption end of the curve, balanced by the opposite "tail"
of the distribution: very large numbers of people living on very little
indeed. And most people in between. It's the average-of-the-distribution
multiplied by the-number-of-people-in-the-world that has to be sustainable.

· (2) For about a year, while my daughter was away in China and
Switzerland, the three of us left here threw out only 5-6 bags of rubbish.
That's 2 per person per year. It's currently about twice that, roughly one
a month, partly because my wife and son are living a more expansive life,
and partly because we plan to leave this house in a few years, so "tidying
up" and "making space" now involve throwing out quite a lot of old stuff
with the aim of transporting to the new house only about half of what's in
this one. In general, we throw out little because we buy little.
· I say "we threw out". That's the bag left at the side of the road, taken
by the garbage collector. We have three other types of rubbish: (i) the
recyclable plastics and metals, specified by our city council, put in our
Council-supplied Green Bin and left by the road about 8 times a year
(depending very much on whether we buy our milk in cardboard cartons or in
plastic bottles); (ii) the kitchen-scraps and other organic material, left
in a plastic bucket under the sink until Bera empties it on what would be a
pile in the garden, but it has rotted down to almost nothing when the next
load goes there, and (iii) the burning-rubbish: paper rubbish collected in
a very thin plastic bag hung from a stiff wire bracket I made near the
kitchen. Peter or I burn this on a burn spot in the garden, about dawn when
the dew is on everything and people's windows are still closed for the
night. (Peter tends to sleep through the day and be up at night when there
are no distractions.) 
  Clearly our family would be throwing out a bag of rubbish every three
weeks if we couldn't separate recyclables from the rest and it was all
called "garbage". So Sharon's 1 bag every 2 weeks isn't bad IMO, assuming
her family doesn't have the option of sorting out the recyclables.

· A last point. Calculations of what's sustainable _change_ as the years go
by and people in many parts of the world increase their material standard
of living, plus the fact that world population is shooting up now (though
at a slightly lesser rate-of-increase than about 1980). When you hear of
people migrating to the cities and to richer countries (like Germany and
France), their purpose is often to increase their personal (and family)
material standard of living. This is a change on a few-years time scale;
that "rising tide lifts all boats" analogy hardly applies since it's on a
time-scale of half-a-century or more, _and_ it implies that "all boats are
lifted equally" which is a lie as applied to economic "well-being"
(actually wealth and income).

David.