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TODAY Monday 8 September 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site.

 

TODAY IN THE WORLD: More or Less Voluntary Simplicity

An American of 1945 used less than 25% of the energy than an American of today. This is not because energy was burned more efficiently back then. Heating systems, refrigerators, and automobiles were all less fuel-efficient than their contemporary counterparts. What happened was that the physical infrastructures of the upper-upper-middle-class of 1945 became the norm for the majority of the population.

Dwellings got bigger, with fewer people in them. An average new house in post-war America contained 1500 square feet. Today it's about 2900 square feet. There used to be more than five persons per dwelling; now there are fewer than three.

Inside the buildings, electrical systems have proliferated. Most important -- by far -- is air conditioning, uncommon in 1945. Also rarely found within a typical home of that time: washing machines; dryers; dishwashers; freezers; televisions; hair dryers. And appliances aside, there's simply more stuff inside a biggish contemporary house than there was inside a smallish postwar house. Embedded within that stuff is the fossil fuel energy that collected, transported, and transformed its raw materials.

Automobiles matter even more than air conditioning. Most households did not own a car in 1945. Today there are more cars than licensed drivers. With more two-income families, and with new dispersed housing and employment patterns, more people drive more miles with fewer companions in the car. Often overlooked is the other big gas-guzzler of postwar suburban life: the power lawn mower. They were novel in 1945.

So. If you want America to burn less carbon, there are four possible strategies: 1) reduce the number of Americans; 2) reduce the frequency and intensity of energy-burning behaviors; 3) increase the energy-efficiency of those behaviors; 4) replace carbon-burning energy fuels with alternative sources of power.

Number 1 is tough, though less because of births than because of immigration. All American income classes and ethnic groups are reducing their reproduction rates; Latinos are alone among the major census denominations in staying well above replacement levels. Immigration numbers are about 600,000 a year. Whether that's good or bad can argued by environmentalists on both sides ("Huddled Masses"), but it certainly makes for more greenhouse gases, at least in the short run.

Number 2 is achieved by either doing without or by re-configuring your life. Examples of re-configuring your life are to live closer to your work or grow food or run a car-pool. How much of this is volitional is the key question. People who actually plan lower energy consumption rates are said to be engaged in Voluntary Simplicity. Whatever their cultural influence, their effect on consumption statistics is negligible.

Number 3 is the realm of what we normally think of as energy conservation. Cars which travel farther on a gallon of gas; light bulbs which burn longer on a kilowatt of electricity. Significant gains were made on this front after the Energy Crisis of the mid 1970s, and many household appliances are becoming more efficient each year. But average car fuel-economy has actually gotten a little worse in the last few years.

Number 4 is the fun part for gearheads. Included are all varieties of solar energy: south-facing windows, photovoltaics, biomass fuels, windmills. Southern windows in a well-insulated house are almost always economically advisable, but the other, more technical strategies are grievously hindered by the current prices for oil and gas, so much lower than was prophesied 20-odd years ago. Photovoltaics are tantalizingly close to economic competitiveness these days, but usually only in places where wire hasn't yet been strung.

In the aggregate, then, we Americans are not doing much in the way of leveling off, much less decreasing, the burning of carbon fuels. When high-level members of the Clinton Administration think about "practical" goals for greenhouse gas reductions, they're not really sure how to reach them. But they certainly don't set much store by strategies Number 1 (reduce population) or Number 2 (change your life).

I am more or less pleased to update you on my own modest contributions, which confute the conventional wisdom. My Number 4 program of alternative energy is confined to five dozen sketchpad designs for a solar house I will build any decade now. My Number 3 program of energy efficiency translates into four fluorescent lightbulbs at home and ceiling fans instead of air conditioning at the office.

It's in Numbers 1 and 2 that I've really done pretty well. No procreation since 1981 (though I worry like a peasant that I won't have enough guilt-lashed children to care for me in my old age). No sponsorship of feckless immigrants.

And definite energy savings by doing without and reconfiguring my life, through the involuntary expedient of having less money to spend. During the past half year I moved from a 2400 square foot loft to a 700 square foot apartment, traveled nowhere except to be with the kids on weekends, and fed myself on chicken take-out. No TV! No laundry! We're talking suffering here. Biggest change was on the transportation front. To travel the 170 miles to be with the kids, I used to drive whenever I could. That changed to the train going the first 144 miles, then driving the remainder in the family car kept in a cheap garage at the rail terminus. Now that's changed because the honest guy at Route 9 Mobil says the car needs a couple of thousand dollars of work, and he's not sure it's worth it. Don't drive it outside the town lines, he said. So it's a walk to the bus, a bus to the train, a walk from the train to the 700 square foot fourth floor walk-up above an Italian restaurant with a bedroom overlooking a courtyard of trees and trellised vines and the back porches of brownstones, all crisscrossed by doves and squirrels. The west breeze blows through the windows.

 

TODAY ON THE SITE:

Harvey Black, our man on the scene in Madison, Wisconsin, reports that the World Wildlife Fund has come up with an interesting program to help local potato growers use less pesticides and herbicides. The Panda People slap a special sticker on bags of spuds grown by Wisconsin farmers pledged to meet explicit reductions in agrochemical use, and then help with sales and promotion. Check out our Works in Progress feature.

 

Recent "Today" columns:

9/05: Man Bites Cougar
9/04: Logging
9/03: Fishing
9/02: Our Biodiversity Problems
8/29: Babies
8/28: MegaSheep and SuperCow
8/27: East Asia / Southeast Asia
8/26: No Drama on the Rhine
8/25: The End of Nature Again
8/22: Our Friend Escerichia 0157:H7

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