Cutting Carbon One Clothespin and One Perception At A Time

Posted by Beth Ingalls

January 22, 2008

The summer of 1968 in Ohio was stifling hot and seemed to last forever. I was a five year old impervious to the heat and to the tremendous upheaval going on in the world around me. As I trotted through the backyards of my neighborhood on Kentwell Road in Upper Arlington, the prickly stick grass poked the soles of my bare feet. Breezes were few in the middle of the day and colorful clothes and bright white sheets hung on the line stiffly and obediently under the midday sun.  I loved to weave in and out of the long neat rows of clothesline that we shared with neighbors in our block of duplexes. The soundtrack of my summer and even my dreams was a newly released single by Mary Hopkin entitled “Those Were the Days My Friend”.  This was my place on the planet, my permanent home, or so I thought.  I had no idea that it was merely a launching pad for my upwardly mobile family. 

By the time the next summer rolled around we had moved to a four bedroom home in a much newer, strictly residential part of town. My brother and I had our own rooms for the first time, my parents’ master bedroom seemed massive, and we even had a guest room that stayed empty most of the time. There was a brick wall separating the family room and the living room with a fireplace in between that you could see through from both sides.  There was a nice dining room we hardly ever ate in and a basement with a pool table and expansive front and back yards.

There weren’t any clotheslines in that newer, upscale neighborhood.  This house came with everything we needed to do the laundry inside. Not only that, it appeared that it wasn’t fashionable or acceptable to hang your personal clothing items and bedding out in the yard anymore.  I couldn’t walk down to the corner market with coins jingling in my pocket to pick up my favorite bazooka gum anymore either.  It was miles away.  We only went to the store by car after that. Same with the pool, the park, the school, the shopping center and the sports fields. We went everywhere by car now.  My Dad, who used to hop on the bus at the corner to head to his job downtown, needed a car to drive to work now. So instead of making do with just one, we added another to the family fleet.

I adapted quickly to these changes in lifestyle…I guess I even welcomed most of them.  My parents seemed happy and after all it’s much easier to get used to convenience and abundance than to give up things up.  But now I see how dramatically these incremental changes in lifestyle affected me and how, on a massive scale, they have played an even more dramatic role in altering the climate systems of our planet. The truth is, I was born into an era and culture in the early 1960’s where conspicuous consumption was just beginning to take hold and ever since has become standard American behavior.  Now these standards must be unraveled to save the lives we tried so hard to build.

The idea that triggered this blog entry was a flurry of reporting about the fact that many communities have actually put ordinances in place that prevent residents from hanging their clothes up to dry.  There are also laws that prohibit people from putting up PV systems on their roof because of the visual impacts.  I would say that even in forward thinking towns like Truckee, that are struggling to become more “pedestrian friendly”, people are often suspicious or judgmental of other people walking down the street!

The cornerstones of the better way of life my parents were building and carefully putting together for me must be disassembled now in order for us to slow climate change and survive as a society, and as a planet. Keeping up with the Jones’ needs to be flipped upside down. We must make fundamental changes in behavior and perception.  When we as a culture begin to look more favorably on the citizen walking or taking public transportation to the store carrying their own reusable grocery bags, than we do at the solitary driver in a tricked out, gas guzzling Cadillac Escalade, we will be there.