The couple has given up coffee. Everyone had access to coffee, no matter who or where. Even the most impoverished homesteader living an existence that Beavan seems to be embracing would have coffee, basic spices like cinnamon, paprika, nutmeg, chili, dill, oregano, basil, pepper, salt, and perhaps even a few more exotic spices from India since they were all the rage. Because Indian spices were all the rage, and mentioned in all the leading magazines of the era, everyone would try using them.
How do I know? I have a copy of my grandmother’s home economics textbook that was written in 1880 (she lived in Minneapolis). There were any number of recipes calling for curry, cumin, cardamom and the like. Read Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books if you want to know how settlers and homesteaders lived. Their lives are nothing like the radical deprivation suggested by Beavan and other environmental activists.
Colin Beavan is a primary example of what is completely wrong with today’s environmental movement. He has a complete and total lack of historic perspective. His vision of a 19th century, no-impact New York City lifestyle has nothing to do with New York City or anywhere else in the United States in the 19th century unless he is considering life in a slum. His version of life in the 19th century is like some Dickensian nightmare that exemplified life in the White Chapel area of London where Jack the Ripper ran around unchecked and the only way people could clean the plumbing was by throwing a bucket of slop into the street, much to the peril of those who might be up under it.
It would much behoove today’s would-be environmental saviors if they would sit down for a moment, take a breath, and have a latte. Then they need to read some unvarnished, unrevised history, not only of the United States, but also of the world. They might discover, much to their dismay, that the temperature during the height of the Roman Empire was several degrees warmer than it is today, and the temperature of the “Dark Ages” was much lower than it is today. They would learn that history is cyclical, as is global temperature.
Article comments
1 - Scott
"Despite protestations that this lifestyle is to be modelled on the land husbandry methods of the Menominee tribe of Wisconsin ("we will, like the Menominee, figure out what our world can productively offer us rather than considering only what we want"), Mr. Bevan's initiative seems in one respect to be a little half-asscetic. If he were truly committed, should he not move his family to the woods - perhaps to the plot left vacant by Mr. Kaczynski - and resume his efforts there?
"The problem with this, of course, is that an apartment in "an elegant prewar on Lower Fifth Avenue" is as hard to come by as a Menominee in the Bronx - and there's no way they're giving up theirs! Besides, it's not really a lifestyle change per se - it's just a career move ("he needed a new book project and the No Impact year was the only one of four possibilities his agent thought would sell").
"And yet ..."
Read the rest
2 - Darren
Let's be honest: any movement, whether it be pro-life or environmentalism, is significantly about marketing. You need to make other people aware of your cause, and motivate them to join it.
In making your case, metaphors are useful. No Impact Man there is one such great, easy-to-understand metaphor. Does he get some of the details wrong? Of course. Will he make errors along the way? Definitely. Is it a great story that the media loves? Obviously, or you wouldn't be writing about it.
The same, ironically, goes for Gore--it's a blessing and curse. He's been using symbols and metaphors for years to rally people to his cause. Now his lifestyle has become a useful metaphor for his critics.
We find a similar, though reversed, phenomenon in the recent controversy surround Reverend Ted Haggard.
Nobody's perfect, regardless of their political stripes. Everybody's fallible. I think Colin, Al and Ted would all agree to that, and would never claim otherwise.
It's unwise, then, to expect any of our public heroes, whether they be pastors or Presidents, to be perfect.
3 - EV Rider
Since World War II, North Americans invested much of their newfound wealth into suburbia. Suburban development promised a sense of space, affordable living, abundant prosperity and upward mobility. As the population of suburban sprawl has exploded over the past 50 years, so too the suburban way of life became embedded in the American consciousness.
Suburbia, and all its promises of a better life, became the definitive American dream.
But as we enter the 21st century, serious questions have emerged about the sustainability of this way of life. With brutal honesty and a touch of irony, The End of Suburbia explores the American Way of Life and its future prospects as the planet approaches a critical era, and as global demand for fossil fuels begins to outstrip supply. World Oil Peak and the inevitable depletion of fossil fuels are clear signs of how the dream is over and the end is coming.
4 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
The silly stuff described in this article highlights the stupid behavior of people with half-baked ideas of how to reform the world.
But the unsustainability of the western "lifestyle" is real. It is less a matter of using fossil fuels than of misusing them to the detriment of our own health. it is my firm opinion that if we do what is best for nature, we will find that it is best for us as well.
Making changes are not easy. In fact they are very hard - and expensive. But we have the choice between the "cheap" and "convenient" hell we've created for ourselves now and the less convenient world of normality we can attempt to attain.
5 - Mohjho
Wait until these two try a 19th century dentist.