In his book,
How Much Is Enough?
author Alan Durning describes his grandmother and her lifelong conservation practices. “Despite the proliferation of wastefulness on all sides, her quiet ethic of conserving has never left her. Through the years she has persisted in taking care of things and giving away much of her modest income… she… still identifies flowers for those of us who have lived too hurriedly to learn their names.” He could have been describing my paternal grandparents.
Born into Russian Mennonite families, Grandpa Dave and Grandma Kate practiced lifelong frugality. Grandpa, his legs paralyzed by polio as a boy, owned a specially equipped car by seldom drove. He preferred the use of an electric cart which he used to go to work in a sheet metal shop a few blocks from his home. He worked until he was 75 years old.
After his death our family discovered that over his lifetime he gave thousands of haircuts for a quarter a piece. He had saved all the money in a jar “just in case.” The buying of stuff was never a priority for him. Grandpa always knew where happiness could be found. His greatest joys were his religion, family, good conversation, literature, and the appreciation of nature. His lifestyle did not jeopardize “the prospects for future generations to meet their own needs” (Durning, p.136).
Grandma Kate, who turned 99 years old this year, also lives this life of conservation filled with happiness and satisfaction and lacking in material goods and excess waste. Our meals at her home were always made with wholesome items, mostly home-grown and home-canned, instead of heavily packaged prepared food items. She sewed her own clothes until last year, as well as, using her dressmaking skills to earn money well into her 90s.
Most of her possessions are items she has had for many years. Bought with thought and care, her possessions are indeed durable. Like my grandfather, Grandma's joys in life come from religion, family, conversation, literature, and an especially unique and developed appreciation of nature. Visits with her always include visions of a world most of us are too busy to see or understand. Grandma did not have to learn that greater consumption does not equal greater fulfillment. She was lucky enough to always know that important fact.
Durning's book calls for the present world to move towards a culture of permanence. This culture would include a society that lives within its means, draws interest on provided by the earth's resources not it's principal, and seeks fulfillment in friendship, family, and meaningful work. This means moving away from the trend of the last 50 years of buying more goods and acquiring more things that has been the overriding goals of people in western industrial countries. In this culture we would be freed from the downward spiral of more work, more consumed goods, and more destruction of the earth.
To sustain the environment that sustains humanity, we need to change our values. Consumption permeates our social values and people increasingly measure success by the good they accumulate and consume. “Since 1940, Americans alone have used up as large a share of the earth's mineral resources as did everyone before them combined” (Durning, p.38). This is truly an alarming fact - it epitomizes the disregard the present consumers have for our planet and for future generations.
Durning stresses that we need to find a combination of technical changes and value changes that can make a comfortable, non-consumer lifestyle possible for everyone without endangering the biosphere. He outlines three aspects of daily life in what we eat and drink, how we get around, and the things we buy and use. Possible goals in these areas are also offered by Durning that move us toward a kinder, gentler approach to the earth.
The first aspect he outlines is what we eat and drink. Feeding the meat-eating peoples of the world takes nearly 40% of the world's grain. This grain is grown on close to ¼ of the world's cropland. This can not continue if all people in the world are to be properly fed. The resources used to process, package, store, and ship the food and drink of the consumer class must be reduced.
Durning's goal to reform the food and beverage systems worldwide would bring about a convergence of poor, middle-class, and consumer groups. For healthier people and a healthier planet, he recommends a combination of the middle-class basic menu of an abundance of locally grown produce and clean drinking water with consumer class refrigeration and cooking technologies available for all.
The second aspect Durning writes about is how the world's people get around. The walking poor have too little mobility, the middle-class utilizes bicycles, trains, and buses, and the consumer class does most of the environmental damage with their automobiles and jets. Finding environmentally sound transportation for all would mean bicycles, updated buses and trains complemented with the occasional use of cars and planes. The greatest obstacle to this goal is the present urban sprawl.
