Return to a Harsh, Unforgiving Life

That is the wish of those pushing an eco-friendly existence, although they'd never admit it in mixed company. Warner Todd Huston, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at BlogCon, attended the UN Climate Summit in Cancún, Mexico last week and had the opportunity to tour the Summit's eco-friendly house.

Of course, it was suitably small as the enviro-Nazis most certainly don’t want anyone enjoying a bit of elbowroom in their homes though it did have space for a few modern niceties. It had a tiny computer area, an actual flush toilet, and a four-foot-tall refrigerator that looks like it might be able to store enough food for two or three days.

But it was the laundry-room that took the cake.

You see, the enviro-nuts have decided that you should not be allowed to have a washing machine and a dryer, nor much of a water heater (the house featured a tiny five-gallon water heater). Instead of the modern convenience of a washer and dryer they’ve graciously allowed you to have a concrete tub with a washboard built into it. To dry your clothes they want you to use that original solar device: a clothesline.

Additionally, the gray water from washing your clothes is supposed to be diverted to your back yard so that it can water your little subsistence garden — because, you know, you shouldn’t be allowed to buy food. You’ll have to grow it yourself. Grocery stores are déclassé, after all.

Note later in WTH's video that the attendees to the conference don't seem to be subjecting themselves to the same deprivations they would foist upon the residents of their ideal home. I had the opportunity to speak with another conference attendee who also mentioned this exhibit along with noting the number of corporate jets and the long convoys of buses that would sit idling and belching diesel smoke at each tour stop.

As one who is descended from farmers on both sides of my family, I will say that my grandmothers, who both used washboards and clotheslines for most of their lives, would roll over in their graves at the thought of returning to those days. I also am astonished by the enviros' infatuation with subsistence farming. Throughout human history, the lives of subsistence farmers have been universally brutal, harsh and short. They are also dominated by men, as the physical labor required rewards those who are stronger and more physically-capable and, necessarily, male children are more valued than females because they are better able to perform the duties needed for survival.

These people advocate for this life because they won't have to live it. While they push the rest of us into our sardine cans with washboards and clotheslines, they will continue to flit about the globe on their private jets and fleets of SUV's feasting on all the finest the world has to offer.

We could make a real dent in the world's CO₂ output if all those lecturing me on the need to reduce my carbon footprint would simply reduce theirs to the size of mine. Somehow I don't think that idea will fly.

Why must the environmentalists' vision of a more eco-friendly existence include repudiation of more than a century's worth of technological progress? Perhaps it is not the environmental consequences but that progress that is what they really despise. Or that the fruit of that progress is available to the masses.