conservation as a lifestyle

My favorite blogger, Sharon Astyk, wrote yesterday about the core problem in our thinking about energy decline and transition. In a nutshell, it is this: we want big solutions, but we need small ones.

She references Al Gore's recent editorial, where in the glow of Obama's election he calls for sweeping energy reform: solar plants in the southwest, investments in hybrid cars, and a national carbon tax. Gore wants changes on a massive scale, changes in infrastructure and policy that will require huge investments up front. But what he doesn't ask for--as Sharon points out--is investments on a small scale, simple actions on a human, individual level. We don't think these things make a difference. But the truth is that they do.

And so Sharon brings the problem back to the one thing politicians and businessmen never want to mention, the one thing that everyone can and should do: conservation. America used to value conservation. Only a few generations ago, we prided ourselves on frugality and care: Waste not, want not, our grandparents said, and even my mother still washes and reuses plastic cups and baggies.

But my parents' generation began to move away from that ideal: in trying to live "better" than their parents had, they gave up some of the conservation ideals of the Depression. And my generation, the "me generation," children of the 80's boom and beneficiaries of the trickle-down economy, we were raised with a mindset so far from frugality that we have come to see waste as a virtue. We believe that the best way to help others is by helping ourselves. Buy American. Spend your stimulus check. Vote with your dollars.

But if we want to ease our transition to a lower-energy world, it's time we re-learn conservation. It's time we abstain. One commentator on Astyk's post suggests that we need better part-time jobs, so people can earn money and still have time to be at home, to care for children and to cook meals so those kinds of things don't need to be outsourced. We need to move our personal economies closer to home: drive less, eat out less, grow food more, provide for our own needs more. We need to rely less on the system and more on ourselves and our neighbors.

And, contrary to common belief, we really don't have to go back to the middle ages to do it. We might need to go back a generation or two for our best models--but there is a reason, after all, why that generation is remembered as the Greatest.