>Doug raised the question of snobbery on this subject. While Schor's style >might be lacking, her point was correct. I know pen-l is split on the >relevance of sustainability, but there is no way that our environment >could sustain a world where everybody lived at the level of the U.S. >autoworker. Maybe that is not the appropriate cutoff point, but I suspect >that it is. Regarding the question of the "overconsumption of the North": people I work with have come to the conclusion that "overconsumption" is practically a useless term, misleading and possibly, as Doug's story suggests, politically reactionary. Workers in this country are not "too rich." Certainly, we lack sufficient time to take care of ourselves, our families (see Friday's BLS Daily Report on the costs of elder care), our communities. Our public infrastructure is pathetic, and the quality of much of what we consume is frightening (for example, food laced with petrochemicals, toxic air and water, etc.). It's necessary to come to a much finer appreciation of just how much we consume of specific goods and services. For instance: I don't think it is at all clear that there are too many televisions (though, in my opinion there is clearly too much television), VCRs, CD players, etc. Similarly, though I strongly empathize with Michael's point about how much space we "really" need, I suggest that one reason (I emphasize, one among many) communal living arrangements proved so difficult is because we tried to live them in architecture designed for nuclear families: a master bedroom, several smaller bedrooms, and a few relatively large public areas. To have any privacy, one had to lock oneself in one's own (usually very small) space. It's okay for short periods of time, Michael, but I live in a closet, hyperbolically speaking, and I know my mental state would benefit from more private space. If we look more carefully, we can see that overconsumption means something very specific, if anything at all. What do we overconsume? The FOUR C's: cattle, chlorine, cars, carbon. Think about the political, ecological, health, and economic costs of these Four C's, and then think about the space that opens up with significant reductions in just these four things. For example: half of all urban space in San Francisco is occupied by cars (parking lots and garages, repair stations and gas stations, roadways, freeway exchanges, etc.) Get rid of most cars, make the roads narrower, provide a range of buses, recumbent (enclosed) bicycles, pedicabs, etc. -- and lots of light rail -- and how much more green space could there be? How much more affordable housing? Stop burning fossil fuels, and what happens to the air and the climate? Stop using chlorine -- where substitutes are available, which is almost everywhere but water purification (see Greenpeace for details) and watch what happens to quality of air, water, food and health (the notion that food production will drop without chlorinated organic pesticides and so on is a complete fabrication). Get rid of the commercial cattle industry (I'm not talking about vegetarianism -- ecologically sustainable animal husbandry is no difficult feat -- though it does mean *reducing* meat consumption in the U.S.) and a whole host of ecological and health problems disappear. I understand that in all of this, questions of transition, and transition to what, are crucial. I don't mean to suggest that doing these things would be simple or conflict-free, and that solutions to these problems might not, themselves, generate other problems. My point is, first of all, that the solution to the political problem Doug raises is to become much more concrete. Say that workers are too rich and, when they stop laughing at you, they get angry. Talk about the specific problems of specific kinds of production and the benefits of different kinds of production (i.e., not just different processes for production of the "same goods," but also different goods to satisfy certain needs) and we'll listen. Second, "overconsumption" is quite simply a problem without a solution. It is too big to be solved, because it means everything, and therefore nothing. Finding a solution to problems requires first of all correctly identifying problems. Third, raising questions about cattle, cars, carbon and chlorine inevitably leads to questions of political economy, which, in my opinion is always to the good. I hope something I've said here strikes people as, if not correct, then at least interestingly wrong, and worthy of comment. Regards, Blair P.S. If I am simply repeating ideas I've already posted to PEN-L in some earlier life, my apologies. __________________________________________ The International Joint Commission for Great Lakes Water Quality is appointed by the federal governments of U.S. and Canada to guard over the water quality of the Great Lakes. In 1992, in its Sixth Biennial Report on Water Quality, the IJC wrote, "We conclude that persistent toxic substances are too dangerous to the biosphere and to humans to permit their release in any quantity." ____________________ Blair Sandler [EMAIL PROTECTED]
