Inner City Farmer

While stuccoing the back of my house, I found myself marveling at the miracle that is cement. It truly is an incredible product, sticky enough to bond to a vertical surface, impervious to water, and, once dry, hard as stone. Working with it made me reconsider my whole cement-is-the-devil stance. What I’ve determined is that humans were blessed when we figured out how to make this stuff in the same way that we were blessed when we came up with a way to convert crude oil to gasoline to power our cars. Beware: my good cheer ends there.

Comparing these materials is apt because they both suffer from the same problem. The materials themselves aren’t necessarily bad; it’s our overuse of them. If we had valued gasoline properly as a nonrenewable resource from the very beginning, charging consumers, say, $10 a gallon, or used it only to power our public transportation, we wouldn’t have done irreparable damage to the natural environment and could continue to use it for hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of years. Instead, greedy, rapacious, and stupid, we’re going to blow through the whole supply in less than a couple centuries.

It’s the same with cement. If we only used it sparingly on projects where there were no other alternatives like the piers on pier-and-beam foundations and, yes, stuccoing a house, we could go on using the stuff forever with only minor damage done to the environment. While stuccoing the entire back side of my house, I’m not even going to use a whole 80-pound bag of cement. The main ingredient of stucco is sand, a plentiful natural resource—the cement merely holds the sand together. But instead of being content to use it in moderation we insist upon using it everywhere: sidewalks, parking garages, patios, garish modernist houses.

I haven’t figured out if people don’t know about the dangers involved in the excessive use of these products, or if they simply don’t care. In Michael Pollan’s article in the New York Times this past Sunday he asks the pointed question: Why Bother? As in, why bother bringing your own canvas bag to the grocery store and walking to work if your neighbors aren’t doing the same? He tried to deliver a hopeful message, saying that if enough people bother it will set off “a chain reaction of behavioral change.” He went on to say that this change would create new markets for green products and he used hybrid cars as an example. This depressed me because while it might very well be the most realistic path to environmental salvation it’s also the most short-sighted. Why? Because it’s our economic policies, our need for perpetual economic growth in a world of limited natural resources, that got us into this mess. Buying a hybrid car is not a solution. Quickly phasing out the use of gasoline-powered cars is. Yes, this sounds radical and extreme, but so are the environmental problems we’re facing.

I’m doing my best to stay positive during this election year, but throughout this interminable presidential campaign I’ve only heard any of the three remaining candidates mention the environment once, and that was in passing. I don’t blame the politicians. They’re only saying what people want to hear, and evidently all people want to hear about is the economy. People in this country all seem to believe they’re just one step away from being as rich as the lucky few they see on television. All they have to do is sell a screenplay or play in the NBA or write a bestselling book or win the World Series of Poker. Meanwhile, our economy continues to drag us into environmental hell. The American Dream is killing us all.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008 at 10:51 am and is filed under Urban Sustainability. 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.