What's Our Problem?

I remember World War II quite distinctly and especially the sense of urgency about doing things that were in the service of the war. The ration books that told you how much stuff you could obtain, the saving of things that the war somehow needed: tin cans, toothpaste tubes (which I think you had to take back to the drug store when empty in order to get a new one), jars of meat fat from cooking (like bacon fat), tin foil, tin anything (I guess). The saving of small amounts of money so that you could buy War Bonds. (If you could get together $18.75, the government would pay you back $25 in, as I recall, ten years). Even little kids saved their money for War Bonds. The practice air raids in which the black curtains had to be put on the windows and the local air raid warden walked around to make sure no lights were visible. There was such an every-day presence of the idea that we all were in a big problem and only if we all worked on the big problem would the big problem find its ultimate solution.

It is such memories, I think, that made the 9/11 advice from George W. to go out shopping so profoundly irritating. One the one hand, I was being told that life as I had known it was now gone (as in, after 9/11, everything changed); on the other, I was being told that nothing was any different, just get a nice, expensive meal at a nice expensive restaurant and you’ll feel fine. Cognitive dissonance, I believe that’s called, and an invitation to a schizophrenic response. So maybe we are just in the schizophrenic response phase.

It certainly appears that we are in a really big problem, at least as big as World War II. Perhaps we are just waiting for the equivalent of Pearl Harbor to join up. What would that be? Record floods? Record large hurricanes? Record heat waves? Melting glaciers and ice shelves? Apparently not. Whatever it’s going to be, I guess it will have to be more astounding than 9/11 for everything to change.

I saw Al Gore’s film; I thought it wonderfully impressive and, given all the positive response, I thought that the film itself might be somehow the equivalent of Pearl Harbor (at least in the sense of convincing people that something astoundingly dangerous had happened). Al Gore now has a website where you can sign up to be part of the solution: it’s called ‘We Can Solve It.’ I signed up, you can too, but so far I doubt if any of us signing up will be as helpful as my saving tinfoil was in WWII, and believe me I don't think that had much effect. But it’s something. Maybe it’s a start. The site itself urges you to tell other people to sign up and to nag your elected officials. I have to say that the site disappointed me because I want to be saving tinfoil or being told what my ration card allows (even if I don’t particularly long for a ration card itself). [ JUST IN: Having sent out a puzzled cry for help to my offspring, I am told that Al Gore’s site does have advice for individual action. It’s well hidden here. And it’s good advice.] /

Switzerland has something called the ‘2,000 Watts Society,’ which urges people to try to think about the energy they use. If everybody used 2,000 watts/year, that would be sustainable. In Europe, the average per-capita use is 6,000 watts; in developing countries like India, closer to 1,000. And, in stunning first place, we find Canada and the U.S., with 12,000 watts per person. So my next job is to try to figure out how many watts I am using per year and at least to think about how I can reduce it. I already have the swirly low-watt lights in all the places they can be; I keep the thermostat in the house at 65 degrees during the time we need heat, and we don’t have or need air conditioning, luckily; full washer loads, only, with cool water; clothes drying outdoors during the non-raining months; no driving without multiple reasons to go out. Stuff like that.

A small community like Point Roberts is, conceptually, a wonderful place to try to create community programs to showcase what people themselves can do, either singly or as a group. But somehow, I have the feeling that the libertarian nature of Point Roberts doesn’t exactly lend itself to this. But in time, real necessity will overcome even that, I suppose. I have been saving flattened tin cans for several years: it was for an art project, but maybe it will come in handy to defeat global warming. I mean, didn’t it work to overcome the Axis Powers?