A friend of mine on Facebook asked the question, what was better about the “good old days?” It started me thinking. How much of the “green” and sustainability movement is really just a return to the old ways of doing things.
We bought a Victorian era building. Much of it was coolled with passive air circulation from the basement, and now architects are trying to build on that design and improve it. Unfortunately in the hundred years in between, we got caught up in the great idea of indoor cooling and central air. This building has a natural high insulation value due to its triple brick construction. Today, Americans are moving back to thick wall construction to make buildings more efficient.
When it comes to food, we are all thrilled with the idea of locally grown food. We pay extra for organics, and go out of our way to find meats and eggs that are free of hormones and antibiotics. We act as though the ideas of eating seasonally, cutting back on meat, and growing our own food is a brand new concept. Truth is, at one time most food was organic. While there has been use of some forms of natural pesticides as far back as the Sumarians, artificial pesticides were not heavily used until the 1940s and 50s. Before the refrigerated rail car, all fresh produce was seasonal. Home canning insured that vegetables were preserved naturally. In Victorian era days, some fruits and vegetable were so exotic that they developed special utensils just for the purpose of serving them. Celery had a special dish, as it was rare to see it at the table. Dairy products, meats, and poultry were farm raised and free range. It wasn’t until we started packing animals in cages so small that they couldn’t move and stacked so tightly together that infections ran so rampant that we began to pump them full of antibiotics. Thus also began the introduction of hormones to increase yields. I won’t even start in on all the genetically modified produce that we unknowingly consume every day. To make fruits look riper we blast them with nitrogen. We even stripped the nutrition away from flour and rice to make it whiter. Then because it had no vitamins, we had to “enrich” it.
Before the rise of the automobile and the suburb, this country was built on cities with walkable neighborhoods. People used streetcars to get into the city centers. Outlying areas were farmlands that sustained themselves. The idea of commutes and driving one person to a car for miles back and forth every day was an idea that couldn’t even be comprehended.
So I am over simplifying things. Things in many ways are much improved. Cities were sooty and foul smelling places where people lived ten to an apartment. But that didn’t even begin to improve until the last few decades-remember our river caught on fire only a few decades ago. It just makes one ponder how much better some things were. People wasted less. We used and reused most everything. Clothes were repaired, not tossed into a landfill. When one ate out, a proper restaurant was the destination. Today, many Americans go through the fast food drive through and eat in their car in the parking lot-generating a ton of wasted paper and garbage. Paper was used to light fires and not tossed. I bought a rotary reel mower, which has been used for years, but paid nearly as much as a gas powered machine, that is likely to last only a single season.
How much have we sacrificed in the name of progress? Isn’t it funny how today progress often means going backward?
Tags: environment, Go Green
Living in a rural farm community I’ve never had to buy produce from a grocery store, I get it from the produce stand just outside of town, where I watched it grow all season.
We freeze and can here still so we have fresh vegetables all year round, our beef, pork and chicken are all raised on farms, fed real corn and not injected with hormones.
I never really appreciated it until I moved to Detroit, after a year I started bringing food from home back with me to eat. I think you’re right though, we’re stepping into the future thinking it’s new, but it’s really just the past dressed up to look better.