Substantial Environmentalism

[cannuck]

Had to think about what forum this belongs in, but this seems best place

I often comment that one of the things very wrong today and with the so-called "green" movement is that we expend vast amounts of resources trying to find better ways to do more of the things we shouldn't be doing at all, instead of looking at the big picture and dealing with the underlying problems. Youngest daughter decided she has had enough of being a landlord, so we have been helping her fix up her 7 year old house for sale. It was a "starter home" she bought when she graduated and was about to enter the workforce that a developer/builder put together near the end of our real estate boom. It was a staggering contrast to what I have experienced with older homes. EVERYTHING is as cheap as possible, much of it from offshore, so pretty much everything has deteriorated significantly. One simple little thing that was an analogy for the whole lot was the electric range switch that had a broken shaft (from my Son-in-law dropping microwave during a replacement for tenants). I went to an appliance repair shop to get a switch, and they had a used one on hand...for $80. So, since I really needed it, I paid the price and noted his comment that after 6 years, the OEM no longer supports that model and parts are nearly impossible to find. We had an interesting discussion that included me remembering my Grandmother's first electric refrigerator (IIRC 1953). It became my Mother's and eventually ours and kept running and otherwise as fully functional and durable for nearly 50 years when we decided it might be best to get something that should be more efficient. If the so-called "green" movement had any sense at all, they would realize that EVERYTHING we do today is designed to be very life limited and the cost of resources to replace EVERYTHING from kitchen appliances to homes, roads and bridges because we worship "newness" and profitability over quality and durability is NOT SUSTAINABLE. It would be so easy to simply make 100 year appliances and 1,000 year buildings with designed in maximum efficiency and durability - yet nobody even has that discussion. Instead we virtue signal doing truly stupid, wasteful things that fit into the profile of wasting even more by perfecting our wasteful lifestyles.

Edited October 24, 2020 by cannuck