Alright, lets take a quick poll. How many here consider themselves devoted on some level to improving the status of the environment?
Let hit a few of the traditions. How many of you have taken some meaningful and intentional step to recycling? How about reducing carbon emissions? What about through diet, like eating local or reducing meat consumption?
Right. How many of you have ever considered homelessness? Didn't think so. But why not? Housing, built up land, constitutes a major aspect of our footprint on this earth. Combine loss of green space, tampering with run off, the resources used in construction, and the energy used to heat and cool the residence. A significant part of our environmental impact is bound up in our housing, and yet, this is not the hot issue that recycling, fossil fuels, and diet continue to be.
The blind spot in our advocacy is likely a product of our American cultural perspectives about property and homeownership. Central to the American dream is the idea of personal home ownership. Our own home, our own land. This desire sprung forth from, at least in earlier years of our country, the vast avaliability of such land. But it is more than just lots of land. We also value personal freedom, an independance form the rule of others, and being the master of ones own domain is an excellent outward sign as well as practical step in establishing ones liberty.
Not only are there cultural inclinations, there are some serious practical concerns that restrict environmentalists from walking away from their houses.
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5 comments:
Before abandoning a house, I would abandon a car.
I think houses are better because we can always take on boarders and that would be more beneficial to the environment because it easier to share houses than cars. There would be less people fighting for space that is public domain. Probably less "chaos."
let's keep arguing about this though.
Great point. I think the environmental impact of motor vehicles is about comparable to that of housing.
Yours, however, is a societal point, and it is well made.
Then again, wouldn't it all be public domain if we reconcived housing?
I would hazard that housepooling would be more benficial to the environment than carpooling.
Comparing two neighbors that only make a trip somewhere when the other needs to go also, and assuming they both have to go somewhere at least once a day, even if such a schedule could be worked out, I think it would save more to the environment to share a house rather than use two houses for the two people.
So would you say that if everyone in the world gave up their house it would be it would be more environmentally friendly than everyone in the world giving up their car?
Luckily, perhaps we can try to do both. Who knows if a collective system would be better than a personal ownership one...
I will say, generally speaking, that it is really as simple as conserving. Ultimately I think that environmental science will continue to show the best path, but it is gratitude and a sense of service that will be what motivates people to stop sucking the earth dry.
I don't thing gratitude or sense of service will do it. Gratitude and service would have done it by now if they were capable.
How will it be cultivated in a society that seems to be becoming more corrupt, not less; more materialistic, not less?
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