Sustainable experiment?

Speaking of efforts in sustainable living, Paul Retherford might not be willing to take the plunge off the grid, just yet, but Joel Achenbach with the Washington Post visited with a band of North Carolinians who decided the only way to live a sustainable life was to do just that:

THE KEY TO MODERN LIFE IS STRATEGIC IGNORANCE. There are so many things we don’t know about our lives and that, frankly, we don’t want to know. We don’t know much about the basic things that sustain us. We are clueless “end users” in elaborate industrial supply lines. Energy comes from distant power plants and oil refineries and pipelines and electrical grids, but we don’t think about them when we flick on a light or turn the key in the ignition. We live in a world we didn’t make, by rules and customs and laws we didn’t invent, using tools and technologies we don’t understand.

The community is called Eathaven, and it has been going on for some time. In the article, Mr. Achenbach learns the patterns of the simple lives led there while discussing the current state of those trying to do something about the energy picture in the US:

Mainstream culture can be cynical about those who are self-consciously green. To be ecologically centered is to be eccentric. To tread softly on the planet is to be “crunchy.” What Earthaven seeks to be, an “ecovillage,” at first blush may sound a bit silly, a bit theme-parkish. But the mainstream is its own vast theme park, built around the themes of consumption, convenience and more of everything. We talk a good game about nature, even as we become more and more removed from it. We’re all environmentalists these days but cannot imagine life without paper towels and a microwave.

Change is hard. We have to start somewhere.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 20th, 2006 at 2:53 pm and is filed under environment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.