Conservation should not mean forever
Be it a gas crunch, a shortage of water or electricity, calls often beckon the masses to conserve. The callers fail to mention, conveniently often, when to stop conserving and just get on with the collective lives of society without worry or imposed guilt. That is, I believe, because policy makers in particular often hail from enclaves that feel it is intrinsically, perhaps even morally wrong not to conserve. These folks equate a lack of conscious conservation as deliberate waste.
At the heart of the problem -- what is waste? Which lifestyle choices can objectively be considered wasteful?
The answer, sadly for them, is forever undefinable. People subjectively determine "waste", not objectively; therefore what constitutes waste is a judgement call, always, a fact lost on many. For example, after how many uses of a toilet is a flush wasteful? Just one? Provided nothing of a solid nature is deposited, should one ever flush? To follow that argument, since they enable at least the male household members to reduce flushing losses exponentially compared to standard comodes, why haven't more homes been equipped with low-flow urinals?
We are all simply trying to overcome the unexplainable -- our own presense. I personally feel I was born not specifically to pillage the planet of god-given resources, but because my parents (at least three times, from the available evidence of immediate siblings) found each other's company very pleasant. I refuse to shoulder guilt for my consumption, to limit the affordable solely based on the unasked opinion of Others. Unless the flush frequency and countless other questions are codified, the accusation of what is and what is not waste in times of plenty should go unanswered.
What the Waste-Sayers fail to recognize is the distinction between Conservation and Efficiency. Let's take the OPEC oil crunch of the seventies as an example. When OPEC drove the supply of oil into an artificial low, and thus the price into a market high, most were unable to afford as much as they once consumed. Efforts at Conservation became the necessary rage. The national speed limit was brought to 55 mph. Carpooling, trip consolidation, trip cancellation, and transit use grew. These sacrifices made throughout the 70's, mostly in convenience and speed, got the country through the first part of the crisis.
The end of the crisis, however, was not brought by conservation alone. Efficiency brought permanent change. The Consumer Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) Standards were adopted by the Feds to regulate the fuel efficiencies of future automobiles. Based on these standards, new cars were introduced, ones that did not assume gas would ever be cheap again. Older gas-guzzlers were retired or sidelined as the market focuses on leaner and meaner tech.
And here's the kicker; it worked. In 1970, every dollar of Gross Domestic Product required the consumption of two gallons of fuel; by 1980, the ratio was one to one. The conservation-focused crowd would claim the country halved it's consumption in ten years; I say we doubled our efficiency.
We can apply this logic not just to fuel, but to any consumable except food and drinking water. Look at electricity. When traveling in Britain in late 1994, I saw billboards advertising the first compact fluorescent bulbs, with the catchy "Beauty is in the eye of the bill holder." Electricity prices in Britain are much greater than in the states, making these bulbs very cost-effective. I didn't buy, since getting them to the states would have been problematic at best in my soft-sided luggage. I couldn't find any in the states afterward, either, since the demand for them was limited to, you guessed it, the Environmental Guilters; and when I did find some (at an Enviro-Expo in 1999), I paid over eight bucks for one. (That bulb, by the by, still lives somewhere in this house.)
What made this simple advance in household lighting ubiquitous? The California electricity crisis, plain and simple. It took the malicious machinations of Enron to prompt people to look, I mean really look, at their power bills and what drove them. Suddenly, all over the country, the market opened to CFBs by the two-pack for a reasonable sum, and soon also quick-starting and color corrected models made their appearence.
In short, just as with the gas crunch, it took crisis, not guilt, to change our consumtion habits.
So when I drive a smaller car, I do so not out of modesty alone. It is a habit born watching gas prices double in less that a couple years. It happened in the past, and will happen in the future. Notice I said "will". China is just now developing a thirst for the good life, the money to fund it, and a weariness for those darned bicycles and cantankerous ox carts. With 121 cities with populations over a million(!), their thirst will make ours seem laughingly spare. In other areas of consumption, I am planning a solar water pre-heater and rainwater collection and re-use system that should be seamless (requiring no wasted time for tinkering). Both of these systems, still in the planning stage, pencil in payback in a number of years. I strongly feel that I should not pay personally for my own good deeds from which all of society benefits.
But back to the payback -- the return on these investments I calculate on today's price for water and hot water. Don't be fooled: Those prices will never diminish. These returns, therefore, will automatically increase every time the city raises the rates. And that will leave me with more cash in pocket after every paycheck to do with what I please.
I guess the unavoidable fact that so few people understand such a simple concept burns me the most. What if everyone saw consumable pricing for what it is, as about the least stable cost in everyone's life? Simple, constant reductions therefore become a way of saving for the future -- provided those reductions do not take more money out of the pocket or hours out of the day. Remember, the idea presented here focuses on efficiency, not sacrifice. We can permanently boost our own economies by permanently boosting our consumption efficiencies.
Essentially, fuck guilt; just doing it will pay for itself.
At the heart of the problem -- what is waste? Which lifestyle choices can objectively be considered wasteful?
The answer, sadly for them, is forever undefinable. People subjectively determine "waste", not objectively; therefore what constitutes waste is a judgement call, always, a fact lost on many. For example, after how many uses of a toilet is a flush wasteful? Just one? Provided nothing of a solid nature is deposited, should one ever flush? To follow that argument, since they enable at least the male household members to reduce flushing losses exponentially compared to standard comodes, why haven't more homes been equipped with low-flow urinals?
We are all simply trying to overcome the unexplainable -- our own presense. I personally feel I was born not specifically to pillage the planet of god-given resources, but because my parents (at least three times, from the available evidence of immediate siblings) found each other's company very pleasant. I refuse to shoulder guilt for my consumption, to limit the affordable solely based on the unasked opinion of Others. Unless the flush frequency and countless other questions are codified, the accusation of what is and what is not waste in times of plenty should go unanswered.
What the Waste-Sayers fail to recognize is the distinction between Conservation and Efficiency. Let's take the OPEC oil crunch of the seventies as an example. When OPEC drove the supply of oil into an artificial low, and thus the price into a market high, most were unable to afford as much as they once consumed. Efforts at Conservation became the necessary rage. The national speed limit was brought to 55 mph. Carpooling, trip consolidation, trip cancellation, and transit use grew. These sacrifices made throughout the 70's, mostly in convenience and speed, got the country through the first part of the crisis.
The end of the crisis, however, was not brought by conservation alone. Efficiency brought permanent change. The Consumer Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) Standards were adopted by the Feds to regulate the fuel efficiencies of future automobiles. Based on these standards, new cars were introduced, ones that did not assume gas would ever be cheap again. Older gas-guzzlers were retired or sidelined as the market focuses on leaner and meaner tech.
And here's the kicker; it worked. In 1970, every dollar of Gross Domestic Product required the consumption of two gallons of fuel; by 1980, the ratio was one to one. The conservation-focused crowd would claim the country halved it's consumption in ten years; I say we doubled our efficiency.
We can apply this logic not just to fuel, but to any consumable except food and drinking water. Look at electricity. When traveling in Britain in late 1994, I saw billboards advertising the first compact fluorescent bulbs, with the catchy "Beauty is in the eye of the bill holder." Electricity prices in Britain are much greater than in the states, making these bulbs very cost-effective. I didn't buy, since getting them to the states would have been problematic at best in my soft-sided luggage. I couldn't find any in the states afterward, either, since the demand for them was limited to, you guessed it, the Environmental Guilters; and when I did find some (at an Enviro-Expo in 1999), I paid over eight bucks for one. (That bulb, by the by, still lives somewhere in this house.)
What made this simple advance in household lighting ubiquitous? The California electricity crisis, plain and simple. It took the malicious machinations of Enron to prompt people to look, I mean really look, at their power bills and what drove them. Suddenly, all over the country, the market opened to CFBs by the two-pack for a reasonable sum, and soon also quick-starting and color corrected models made their appearence.
In short, just as with the gas crunch, it took crisis, not guilt, to change our consumtion habits.
So when I drive a smaller car, I do so not out of modesty alone. It is a habit born watching gas prices double in less that a couple years. It happened in the past, and will happen in the future. Notice I said "will". China is just now developing a thirst for the good life, the money to fund it, and a weariness for those darned bicycles and cantankerous ox carts. With 121 cities with populations over a million(!), their thirst will make ours seem laughingly spare. In other areas of consumption, I am planning a solar water pre-heater and rainwater collection and re-use system that should be seamless (requiring no wasted time for tinkering). Both of these systems, still in the planning stage, pencil in payback in a number of years. I strongly feel that I should not pay personally for my own good deeds from which all of society benefits.
But back to the payback -- the return on these investments I calculate on today's price for water and hot water. Don't be fooled: Those prices will never diminish. These returns, therefore, will automatically increase every time the city raises the rates. And that will leave me with more cash in pocket after every paycheck to do with what I please.
I guess the unavoidable fact that so few people understand such a simple concept burns me the most. What if everyone saw consumable pricing for what it is, as about the least stable cost in everyone's life? Simple, constant reductions therefore become a way of saving for the future -- provided those reductions do not take more money out of the pocket or hours out of the day. Remember, the idea presented here focuses on efficiency, not sacrifice. We can permanently boost our own economies by permanently boosting our consumption efficiencies.
Essentially, fuck guilt; just doing it will pay for itself.