Home-Front Ecology: What Our Grandparents Can Teach Us About Saving the World

[marmar]

from AlterNet:


Home-Front Ecology: What Our Grandparents Can Teach Us About Saving the World

By Mike Davis, Sierra Magazine. Posted July 10, 2007.



The World War II home front was the most important and broadly participatory green experiment in U.S. history. Is it a model we should use today?

Does this generation of Americans have the "right stuff" to meet the epic challenges of sustaining life on a rapidly warming planet? Sure, the mainstream media are full of talk about carbon credits, hybrid cars, and smart urbanism -- but even so, our environmental footprints are actually growing larger, not smaller.

The typical new U.S. home, for instance, is 40 percent larger than that of 25 years ago, even though the average household has fewer people. In that same period, dinosaur-like SUVs (now 50 percent of all private vehicles) have taken over the freeways, while the amount of retail space per capita (an indirect but reliable measure of consumption) has quadrupled.

Too many of us, in other words, talk green but lead supersized lifestyles -- giving fodder to the conservative cynics who write columns about Al Gore's electricity bills. Our culture appears hopelessly addicted to fossil fuels, shopping sprees, suburban sprawl, and beef-centered diets. Would Americans ever voluntarily give up their SUVs, McMansions, McDonald's, and lawns?

The surprisingly hopeful answer lies in living memory. In the 1940s, Americans simultaneously battled fascism overseas and waste at home. My parents, their neighbors, and millions of others left cars at home to ride bikes to work, tore up their front yards to plant cabbage, recycled toothpaste tubes and cooking grease, volunteered at daycare centers and USOs, shared their houses and dinners with strangers, and conscientiously attempted to reduce unnecessary consumption and waste.

The World War II home front was the most important and broadly participatory green experiment in U.S. history. Lessing Rosenwald, the chief of the Bureau of Industrial Conservation, called on Americans "to change from an economy of waste -- and this country has been notorious for waste -- to an economy of conservation." A majority of civilians, some reluctantly but many others enthusiastically, answered the call.

The most famous symbol of this wartime conservation ethos was the victory garden. Originally promoted by the Wilson administration to combat the food shortages of World War I, household and communal kitchen gardens had been revived by the early New Deal as a subsistence strategy for the unemployed. After Pearl Harbor, a groundswell of popular enthusiasm swept aside the skepticism of some Department of Agriculture officials and made the victory garden the centerpiece of the national "Food Fights for Freedom" campaign. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/environment/55925/

[The_Commonist]

1. I have some great old photographs...

...of my grandparent's Victory Garden.
My mother tells stories of being 4 or 5 and collecting the eggs from the chickens.
Ironically, stories I remember being told from those days made it sound like happy times for all of them. The extended family all lived nearby, and spent lots of time together. After the war, they all sort of drifted apart...

[insanad]

2. The Grandma Dahl School of Conservation

Your article caught my eye and I look forward to reading more on this subject. While 50% of Americans live in suburban or urban settings where gardening seems to be less viable, it's surprising how many people would rather grow ornamental shrubs than a tomato plant. I understand some of that since I've failed numerous times at gardening, especially here in Vegas where it's almost impossible to grow anything but gravel, but so few people have a clue where their food comes from or how it is grown.

My mother (Grandma Dahl) raised eight of us on what seemed like nothing but air and water. In some ways we were fortunate to have the soil and land to grow huge gardens for our sustenance but Mom always approached the gardening as a matter of survival, like we presently would protect our savings or 401k's. If weeds or bugs took over the garden it was the same as something taking our winter savings and we had to diligently weed, water, and nurture every plant. She canned what seemed like zillions of bottles of everything you could imagine and we ate bottled fruit, veges, and even meat all winter till then following summer when we could eat fresh from the garden.

As I was dumping yet another tin can in the trash last night I was thinking about how mom's bottled tomato's left virtually no footprint on the environment. We reused the bottles, the jar rings, and only replaced the tin lids for proper seals, but she used the old ones for plenty of other things, nailing them over holes in the wood to keep mice out or other innovative ways to use the disc's. In just this, we seldom had more trash for a household of 10 than a pickup load twice a year of what could not be burned in the wood stove or recycled in the compost. This was in the 60's and 70's, so not even really post war unless you count the Viet Nam war as a conservative period. I look at what just my husband and I throw out now, even though we are very conservative and careful and we "excrete" about 8 times what my family did when I was a kid.

The packaging of even a container of breath mints is ridiculous. It comes with a cellophane wrapper around a hard plastic container, and sometimes is attached to a cardboard backing that can hook on a display for easier sales presentation. Inside are about 20 breath mints that could fill a toothpaste lid. This packaging ends up in the trash and landfills and if we're lucky, the cardboard rots but the plastic seems to just rumble around for decades. All for a breath mint.

When I was a kid it was very uncommon for trash removal service to be available to rural areas. We were responsible to haul our own garbage to the dump (a very exciting time and rummaging trip). Now, it seems that with the dump trucks coming twice a week I don't even think about the volume of trash I contribute to the landfills. It goes out and I seldom have to face any of it for more than a half week. As I leave town I'm in awe of the plastic bags sticking to every shrub and all over the sides of the road that fly out of these trucks on their convoy to the landfill north of town.

For a city of over 2 million the trash removal is 24/7 every day of the year and the landfill is in a place far enough from town that few of us are even aware of it's presence. In the cities across the nation this is the norm and I suspect the landfills will overspill into the suburbs, until we're swarming in our own filth. I just read that landfills produce over 60 million tons of methane gas that is a major contributor to greenhouse gasses. I contribute to that every time I buy something with three layers of pkg..

Today, I'm going to drive my 11 yr old car to my 140 yr. old cabin, nurture my fledgling garden in my recycled concrete forms with soil amended by lawn clippings and compost, fix the used swing set I salvaged from someones "Throw away", and try to make some sense of the leftovers in the refrigerator. I can't change the whole world but I can change my own little acre. I'll wear my ugly sandals and tye dyed skirt and eat yogurt and smile smugly at the consumers in their SUV's, drinking $5.00 a cup coffee from Starbucks, feeding their kids artificial food from a box with Spongebob flavored cheese like crackers, and feel righteous and justified in my "goodness", especially compared to their "badness".

[eppur_se_muova]

6. Welcome to DU!

Your Grandma sounds like mine, only a decade or so (I'm guessing) later. My mom's side of the family is one of the happiest and most together families I've ever seen. Growing up on a small farm with little "discretionary income" doesn't seem to have harmed anyone's psyche too much.

[insanad]

7. Actually she's my mom

My mother raised eight of us but she's called Grandma because of the prolific offspring she spawned. I think she could teach the nation a lot about conservation. Some of the quirky traits are hilarious, like saving whipped cream bowls and margarine tubs for leftovers which she writes on the top with a marker what the new leftover is inside, but then when it's empty, forgets to remove the label.

Thanksgiving is a riot because if you go to get actual whipped cream from the refigerator, you have to check 30 or so bowls, all marked "green beans" or other oddities, but which actually contain leftover casserole and sometimes a tablespoon of ambrosia salad (marshmallows conspicuously mined out allready). The clincher to this is that there isn't any actual whipped cream because she thought she allready had plenty so she decided not to buy more. Then when you're laughing your guts out at this, you turn the bowl over and find that she's written her name on the bottom of the bowl so it can be returned to her after the church potluck (like fine china).

For some reason my mother saves bread bags. She uses these for frozen leftovers which invariably get freezerburn but more disgusting is that she doesn't shake the crumbs out so if you're looking for frozen strawberries, they'll probably have some nasty mushy stale bread bits on them.

She's lived on a school teachers pension for the last 15 years, paid off two houses by herself, helped put several grandchildren through college, and still seems to have money for her own needs. Gifts are often homemade or homegrown. One time when picking her up from the airport I grabbed her luggage, which weighed at least 1oo lbs. "What's in here MOM?" I gasped. "Potatos from my garden". That was a nice gift till they went bad. Sometimes I think she goes too far but then I remember that she's not in debt and I am.

Mom will never need government support, will never be penniless, will never be a financial burden on anyone and she has so much to be proud of for her self sufficiency and independence. When I see so many Americans living way beyond their means and then filing for bankruptcy, getting new cars and clothes because they're "Bored" with the old, I can see that it would do them all good to spend a year in her little chubby shoes. She was the ultimate conservationist before it was ever "Cool" to be so.

[kestrel91316]

9. I wish I could recommend your post!

[insanad]

3. Help finding article on McMansions vs. 50s homes

Hi, I responded to an article written by someone with the last name of Rockstroh (possibly a poet from New York City)a couple of weeks ago. I can't seem to find the discussion and would like to track it and see how others respond to the conversation. If anyone seems to know how to find it on this site I'd be happy to get the link.

I design homes and have been in awe of what many of my clients consider "Standard" in homes now. Most modern homes are about 1,700 to 7,000 sq. ft., with such minimal amenities as Home Theaters, sitting rooms off the gargantuan Master Suites, Swimming Pool and Spa, and much more. I don't remember the last time I designed anything less than 1,500 sf. Often only two people live in these monstrosities. I see them as a sign of our nations gross consumption and the greatest contributors to debt, divorce, and eventually even the unity of the family. Many people seem to build them this large to get away from each other rather than for actual family togetherness. Each kid has their own room their own play space, etc. but they're lonelier and more unhappy than ever.

I have much to discuss on this topic but most of it is preaching to the choir. Anyway, if anyone knows how to find it let me know.

[bananas]

4. Is this it?

"Mcmansions, SUVs, Mega-Churches and the Baghdad Embassy: Life Among Dim and Brutal Giants"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=291101&mesg_id=291101

I found it using google: http://www.google.com/search?q=Rockstroh+insanad

Welcome to DU!

[insanad]

5. Thankyou!! You found it!

That's probably an obvious path that I didn't think to use. Anyway, thankyou for your help. I'm still a virgin at this blogging stuff and using the various abundance of information and links.

[ramapo]

8. My experience

Our home was a 1953 ranch on a slab. No attic, garage, or basement. Four small bedrooms, one bath, eat-in kitchen, living room. About 900 sq ft. It was ok when the kids were small. Cheap to heat (radiant heat in slab) and easy to maintain. Somehow neighbors raised four kids in their almost identical house.

Two additions later and we're probably closer to 3000 sq. ft. The second addition was a prime example of project creep. Life was more comfortable but now the house is much more than we need with the kids gone. We've essentially mothballed parts of it by keeping the heat/ac very low or off. And it is a nuisance to maintain but I very much like our location so we're there for the time being.

Yes we were more comfortable in the larger home but I have to say that the little house definitely helped family unity (maybe too much) as compared to now where everybody has (had) their own space. This is the same problem as suburbia in general where the larger lots and private homes have caused a pervasive isolation amongst residents.

Our present house is still small compared to the gargantuan homes now being built. I have a hard time figuring how anybody affords these things (how about the taxes) but I guess mortgage requirements have really loosened up and nothing is more American than a huge debt load.

[insanad]

10. Big and Little

The houses of the post war era were a response to the young families starting after WWII and the projected population of 2.5 children per family. What's amazing is that even with just two kids, families managed to have every kind of wonderful experience in their homes and communities that we all wish for our kids today, yet we are doing the very thing that seems to negate all that unity.

I have an 1868 pioneer cabin in the mountains in S. Utah where I spend much of my weekend as well as any day I can escape Las Vegas. It's only about 850 sq. ft. and just right for three or four for a weekend but I have lived in it fulltime in the past with five people and it was like too many mice in a box. The winters were worst with all of us and the junk spilling out the tiny bedrooms, one bath, and a livingroom/kitchen/dining all rolled into one small room. I think there seems to be a fairly comfortable size that two people can live in, but when you add a third and fourth, you nearly need to double that space. Perhaps our accumulation of junk tends to make the space less usable and comfortable as well so we start making rooms dedicated just to our piles of stuff.

I can understand how you have outgrown your 3,000 sf home. There are days when I'd be happy with the little cabin if I had a place for company when they came. The homes I have designed in the last three or four years have gotten so enormous that they're cavernous monuments to peoples egos, collections, and other junk. One of the most obscene was a 9,000 sf home with rooms for every kind of collection from catalouges that this woman could order. One 11 ft. wall had dozens of ornate cookie jars, all behind a bevelled glass door, but not ONE cookie to be had in the whole house. Pretty silly. I believe that the obesity of our homes, cars, bodies and overspending of our budgets will be the downfall of the American way of life, if not the whole system.

With foreclosures set to hit record highs in October, I suspect that smaller more practical homes will become fashionable again. I sure hope so. Either way, I'm not the one with the massive mortgage but my work depends on those willing to spend themselves into the grave, so I'm hoping the industry recovers soon. Good luck in your downsizing. It makes sense on so many levels and I think simplifies ones life so there's time to do genuinely worthwhile things.

[XemaSab]

11. word

n/t