Concepts needed to go from the disgusting environmental situation in post-Civil War US cities:
1. Recognition that these situations were problems- flaming rivers may be hazardous, but if they are fairly normal, and if the air in cities is always toxic, then maybe they are not seen as problems.
2. Recognition of the possibility that there may be real solutions to these environmental problems. Money and effort need to be available, but also a vision of what may be possible to make things better.
3. Free time. If life is about struggling for survival, there may be little or no room for much else.
4. Sanitation as normal. If water is always impure, food is always tainted, and life is fraught with illness and early death, more illness and death won't stand out. After all, it matters little whether one died of some illness caused by the pollution in the air, pollution in the water, or some other agent floating about in the neighborhood, or malnutrition, infection, etc.
Environmental issues like burning rivers and smoke-filled city skies are a thing of the past for most Americans, and a thing perhaps of the future for the Chinese, Indian and Brazilian people who are rushing themselves towards greater Western style development now. So long as the model for high living standards is set by the United States, it is perhaps unreasonable and unlikely that any developing states will work out completely environmentally friendly solutions to development. So long as the concepts of gain and working for a living dominate modern economic life, especially gain, development may not be sustainable for long. But it is reasonable at some point to ask a crucial question, "Gain for what purpose?" In my economic theory lecture yesterday, we were looking at the development of the idea, vital to development, of working for gain, not just to sustain one's current status and lifestyle. This concept is lacking in many developing areas, where people still tend to consider a raise as an opportunity to work less for the same amount of money, not to gain more money for the same amount of work. But at some point we have to be able to ask when it is ok to stop gaining and enjoy the fruits of our labor. Instead of worrying about the quantity of our wealth, Americans may benefit from taking a step back and evaluating the quality of what we already have. This is not a call for stagnation, but for a regrouping and reassessment so that as we continue to progress we can be sure we are progressing to something better, rather than just accumulating more of what we never needed so much of in the first place.
Ideas for a better world, in the meantime:
1. Meet the neighbors. Many, possibly most people in Fort Collins, and in the US in general, do not know their neighbors very well. I am no better on this count. I think I know what all my immediate neighbors look like, and I have met the dog across the walkway from my apartment and one of the dogs in the apartment behind mine, but I don't know my neighbors' names, nor do they know mine. If we don't know the people in our immediate community, it is hard to talk of constructing healthy communities anywhere else. And, if our own communities are healthy, they can set examples on their own, and can be much more persuasive really than complicated books and papers on community building.
2. Plant trees. If we are so concerned about deforestation in Brazil and the Asian rainforest, we need to look to our own stock of forests. The Amazon won't be suddenly safe tomorrow, or next year, or in ten years. Nor do we have the right to tell the Brazilian people they can't have decent highways through the Amazon to connect their communities with each other and with the rest of South America. We have built highways practically everywhere we could in the US, and we take for granted that there are decent roads, not just clear and continuous, but usually paved, or at least graded regularly. While we are pestering Brazil about building highways and developing into the Amazon, we still have massive clearcut scars through our own relatively tiny tract of rainforest in Washington, and have no intention of stopping logging in the Olympic Forest, even if it is a carbon sink and regardless of the fact that cutting our trees also cuts into the remaining rainforest on Earth. And, much of the rest of the US was forested before Americans expanded westward. We can't just stop our own agriculture and put the forests back, but we can still plant trees wherever they can be appropriate.
3. Pay more attention to details and seek to imbue existing stuff with interesting details before just getting more stuff. One aspect of indigenous cultures in many places that I find appealing is the extent to which their few possessions are decorated. In many places, primitive dwellings traditionally have carved or painted woodwork around windows and doors, and since more of their possessions are hand-made, these all can also be embellished. There is no good reason why my plain white plastic coffee-maker can't be embellished, or any of my other plain modern appliances and furniture. These artistic details keep stuff from being so cheap and disposable, and infuse our lives with beauty and interest.
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