Strategies for a shrinking planet

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, environmentalism, memoirs

When I was born, world population was about 2.5 billion. It has since grown by a factor of about 2.6 to 6.6 billion. During those early years of "the good life", people in the West began to live as though planetary resources were unlimited, even though their parents, who'd lived through the Depressions of 1920-23 and 1929-39 tried to raise them to live frugally.

Conspicuous consumption became the rule, and along with it, planned obsolescence. Henry Ford is said to have sponsored a study in the 1920s, to discern how long each part of a Model T lasted. It was found that the "key" that held the front wheel to the axle never broke. "Make 'em smaller," Ford demanded. That kind of thinking eventually led to the Super 8 movie camera of the 1960s and '70s. They were designed to last twenty minutes of continuous use, and given a one-year guarantee. Kodak sales figures showed that more than 90% of movie camera owners purchase three or fewer rolls of movie film per year, and each roll takes five minutes of action. By making cameras that lasted four rolls before breaking, they nearly never had to make good on that guarantee.

Now, however, we are faced with a dilemma. Our stuff doesn't make us happy, so we work harder to get even more stuff, hoping maybe that will do the trick. But does it, ever? Once Colin Beavan thought this through, he decided, "No, probably not." And those mountains of worn-out movie cameras and other doodads we thought would make us happy? Just making them, using them, and discarding them used up mountains of natural resources, including water. Every industrial process consumes lots of water.

This four-year-old map (from a BBC article called State of the Planet) shows then-current water shortages. Water use is one issue Colin Beavan tackled in a one-year experiment in No Impact living, as he records in No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet and the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process. I love the way the title takes up the whole front cover of the book, which was produced entirely from recycled paper and cardboard at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, a Macmillan imprint.

Let's be clear on one count. The one-year experiment that the author and his wife and toddler undertook was not a full year of full-blown deprivation, but a step-by-step process through making No Impact in one area after another. They started with trash.

What do you need to do to produce no trash? Carry a jar and ask the Starbucks clerk to put your coffee in it; carry cloth bags to the produce market…and use only a market that lets you pick your stuff out of trays and bins, not just pick up pre-packaged goods (this is hard to find, even at the local Farmers' Market in Boothwyn). I guess he re-used egg cartons until they fell apart. And he mentions scrounging for plastic bags for picking up his dog's droppings.

The second stage was no-carbon travel. Bicycles and pedal-powered scooter, in New York City? Surprisingly, it worked. But what do you do when your Mom trumps your stance with a demand to see you for Christmas? She did have a point in saying, "The train will run whether you are on it or not." So Colin's family made fewer "fueled" trips, but could not eliminate them.

Step by step, the author found more and more understanding from his wife, who began all unwilling, almost a prisoner of the process. Amazingly, her first bargaining chip was the TV. Not to keep it, but to get rid of it! She didn't like how much time it consumed. With that gone, they could live almost without electricity (but you do need heat in a New York winter).

Couple the no-trash dictum with a local-food one (you can't know where the Deli's cuts come from), and Colin had to learn to cook. Theirs had been a no-cook lifestyle previously. This one thing is the biggest habit changer of all. The focus of the home shifts from the TV room to the kitchen/dining nook. The Beavans found that friends tended to visit more often and stay longer. Not because he was a good cook, but because the talk and the atmosphere were so congenial. They were learning that happiness comes not from stuff but from Community.

Then there's water. There is only so much you can do. All bathed in the same tubful. Launder less frequently (and learn that baking soda is a superior deodorant). Fill one cup before brushing teeth, and rinse with that; leave the tap off. And so forth. So in this area he began to volunteer with cleanup organizations, in an effort to offset his water use with positive actions such as removing garbage from the banks of the Hudson River. Just as learning to cook, this brought them more Community.

The author wrote a blog during the year, and continues to do so. He got enough attention that by late 2007, when the No Impact year ended, a NY Times reporter was following him around.

The key thing he learned? Individual actions are the only kind there are. The question of whether one person can make a difference is the wrong question. The right question is, "Are you the kind of person who wants to try?" No matter what your viewpoint, we can learn by paraphrasing something Ronald Reagan said in his 1980 campaign: If your car has gone into a ditch off one side of the road, the tow truck has to be on the other side of the road to pull it to the middle. Doing something worthwhile to the extreme is no sin, and it is instructive, primarily to the doer.