Environment and Climate Response Paper by Dan Guico

The most interesting section to me so far has been the Land Use section with James Kunsler and David Brooks selections. The reason for my heightened interest in this section was because it forced me to look at my personal life history and see how it has been affected by the consumption-centric culture of America and forcing me to explore how I really feel about the way I live and how I am going to proceed in the future. I had to examine my values and identity and how they relate to the economy and the environment. In many ways, I am very grateful for the circumstances that brought me here, being able to afford an education and have enough resources to pursue a meaningful career. The foundation of happiness has been provided and more. I almost feel guilty in complaining about anything else, but it does bring me to my main thesis, elements of suburban lifestyle leads to a lack of environmental sustainability and happiness.

It is very difficult to try to isolate specific abstract processes and relate them without taking into consideration the context and complex relationships that exist inside and outside of those systems. Kunsler made a great argument for suburbs creating a culture more focused on economic prosperity. They also became the proving grounds for concepts expanded on by Brooks, specifically the evolution of individual rights over community responsibilities. This specific idea makes me recall a reading I did for my Environment and Society class from the book Lawn People, by Paul Robbins, which explored the complex relationships between citizens, the lawn, and the lawn care industry. With the expansion of the suburb as the dominant post WWII landscape, the lawn became the ultimate symbol the suburban regimes. Some people would sacrifice the health of their pets and themselves to maintain a perfect, weed-free, bright green lawn. The endless cycle of lawn care was perpetuated by a silent, unmentioned expectation to the community, to uphold a certain standard. It was also controlled by the advertisement industrys insistence that trimmed turfgrass was the desired suburban landscape. This came at the expense of the water quality and supply from fertilizer and herbicide runoff and increased water demand. The lawn became the responsibility of the individual and something that reaffirmed a persons validity and socioeconomic status.

Constant competition and an emphasis on achievements wreak havoc on the mental state of families. In a longitudinal study, kids who grew up in a culture of affluence (e.g. high-earning suburban families) smoke more, drink more, and do more hard drugs than age-matched inner-city counterparts [1]. The happiest people, according to a Gallup Poll, live in Latin America with Panama and Paraguay topping the happiness index. This is in contrast to the low placement of Panama on Human Development Index, which measures life expectancy, education, and income [2]. Happiness and sustainability intersect on several planes. The countries that are happiest also have much smaller carbon footprints than the United States. Affluent citizens have a disproportionate effect on the environment and energy consumption mostly due to the low-density stand-alone homes and the necessity for automobile use [3]. The impression I have gotten from Kunsler and many of the extraneous reading I have done, is that Americans have shifted to unsustainable methods to try and supplement happiness, whether that be through self-medication as mentioned above, or the indulging in escapism to Capitals of Unreality such as Disney World (thoroughly destroyed by Kunsler) or in my opinion, the worst offender, Las Vegas. Latin American positivity has been theorized to be sustained by a focus on close, open familial relations, and a greater appreciation for the smaller things in life [4].

I love my parents for giving me the opportunities they did. I definitely couldnt have made it anywhere without them, but they fell wary to the consumption trap that is the American culture. Closets and rooms filled to the doors with stuff. These material comforts make up for the excruciating 12 hour shifts that drained them of energy. This brings me to my last point, the necessity for a Plentitude Economy. This is an idea proposed by economist, Juliet Schor that rejects the necessity for growth that stresses people and the planet, and emphasizes low-impact living and DIY culture. This is achieved through ideas like reducing peoples workloads to 80% and hiring additional staff. This allows people to have more time with their families as well as allowing more people to be employed and income to be distributed more fairly, a model which the Netherlands and the Dutch Financial Sector adopted [5]. This same kind of thinking can be seen in the Thomas Daly reading: Beyond Growth. Sustainable development measures must be adopted so that we do not exceed the capacities of the planet. The idea of constant economic growth is detrimental to the environment, communities, and people.

One of my favorite short stories is The Veldt, by Ray Bradbury. It is a science fiction short story and social critique against the increasingly ubiquitous presence of television in households. In it, two children live in a fully automated house and have access to a nursery which projects whatever they want. They form an addiction, and the parents become concerned and threaten to take the nursery away. In the climax of the story, lure their parents into the nursery where the childrens imagination becomes reality and summon lions on an African veldt to kill their parents. We can continue to live in the delusion that technology, materialism, and escapism are the paths to happiness, or we can choose to be happier with less and fully accept and appreciate the world we live in. Mindless consumption can be represented by the children and leads to an artificial sense of purpose and happiness which can be dangerous (although probably not as dangerous as in the story). To me, it seems that happiness becomes less and less connected to income once you hit a certain amount and since happiness is not positively correlated with carbon footprint. I argue that a shift in cultural priorities can lead to a reduction in carbon footprint as well as an increase in happiness.

[1] http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200503/teens-suburban-blues [2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/20/happiest-people-on-planet-latinamerica_n_2336772.html#slide=1903664 [3] http://greenliving.nationalgeographic.com/urban-sprawl-energy-consumption-2283.html [4] http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/Latin-America-Monitor/2012/1227/Why-LatinAmericans-top-the-happiness-rankings [5] http://www.treehugger.com/corporate-responsibility/plenitude-economics-work-less-play-moreand-stop-screwing-the-planet-video.html