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TODAY Friday 2 January 1998 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site. |
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TODAY Friday 2 January 1998 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site. |
TODAY IN THE WORLD: The Greatest Environmental Cause of the Year
Yes, the year is young, but this is perfect.
Thanks to an article by Rick Bragg in this morning's New York Times, we learn that notable citizens in Wilson, North Carolina propose to ban the outdoor placement of indoor furniture. The Wilson Appearance Committee has suggested the ordinance, and the Planning Director and key elected officials have supported it.
They are reacting against the tendency of poor Southerners (and most of the households in which I lived during the 1970s) to place past-their-peak sofas and easy chairs on the front porch. Exposure to the elements, especially through leaky porch roofs, tends to accelerate the already-underway disintegration process. "Weather-beaten" is the term employed by the Wilson Appearance Committee.
Bragg does an excellent job of marshaling quotes from scholars and jes' folks who regard the proposed ordinance as a big mistake. It constitutes an uncalled-for intrusion into private life, it denies a venerable Southern tradition, and it represents an astonishingly smug assertion of the aesthetic superiority of the upper-middle class. What, they think patio furniture is attractive?
But the proposal is also fundamentally anti-environmental, and enviros should be among the first to attack it.
1. RECYCLING. The couch and the La-Z-Boy on the front porch are better there than in some landfill. Extending the useful life of any non-mechanical material object is always good policy.
2. ENERGY CONSERVATION. Small houses are better than big houses, environmentally speaking, and porches help make small houses more attractive and livable. Public policies should be designed to encourage as many people as possible to enjoy small-house life, which means that poor people should not be discouraged from using their porches in the most economically-attractive means at their disposal.
3. TRANSPORTATION. Porches with people on them cause drivers to slow down and promote pedestrian traffic. "I watch the cars go by, and I say 'Hey'," explains a Wilson resident. This social interchange is excellent, of course, for community building, but it's good for air quality. too.
4. ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE. Though Bragg says that there are some African-Americans on the Wilson Appearance Committee, and though a significant number of African-American middle-classers no doubt support the ordinance, its effect would be to curtail a practice employed mostly by poor black people.
"For generations, some Southerners, unwilling to throw away a perfectly usable piece of furniture just because of a few rips or stains, have made room for new couches and chairs by dragging the old ones outside," writes Bragg. "Like some old dog that can no longer hunt, the yellow plaid loveseats and sagging Barcaloungers live out a few, last years on the porch."
Save that tradition.
TODAY ON THE SITE
Fred Hapgood, author of tomes on engineering and evolution, frequent contributor to Wired, major domo of the Earth Mirror feature on this site, has produced a provocative little pearl of an op ed on the capacity of the Internet to induce emotions of The Sublime. You stand on old Sunset Rock, you gaze over the hills and valleys, you follow the great white migratory clouds, you glimpse at the horizon an azure sliver of ocean -- well, you feel something. Can that something be synthesized on your little screen?
Recent "Today" columns:
12/31: The Top Twelve Environment Stories of 1997
12/30: Bad Eating and Not Eating
12/29: Owning the Public Health Issue
12/23: Good Year for Vintage Climate
12/22: Save the Reefs
12/19: Mousemobile
12/18: Year of Fire
12/17: Ramblin' Man (Ramblin' Woman)
12/16: Big News on the Margins
12/15: The Hybrid As Savior
12/12: Good Week for the Dragon
12/11: Help Wanted: Unreasonable Extremists
12/10: Oh Boy! A Fight!
12/9: Running Away From It All
12/8: "What I Wouldn't Give for This War to End."
12/5: Feisty Euros at Kyoto
12/4: Beauty in the Bronx
12/3: God from Machine
12/2: Gentlemen's Bet
12/1: Public Opinion
11/26: Sperm
11/25: Sound Sound-Bite Science
11/24: Home Sweet Storage Locker
11/21: Tim Wirth's Inscrutable Adventure
11/20: Better to Receive than to Give
11/19: Wes Jackson's Problem with Agriculture
11/18: "Stay Home and Be Decent"
To access more "Today" columns, click "Archives" below.