Complacency is the father of ruination

Mater artium necessitas.

“Necessity is the mother of invention” is a common proverb, seen in English translations of Plato’s Republic. The thought has endured, perhaps since ancient times, because it has merit.

We were reminded of it this week when we talked to an architect, Richard Pedranti, about passive houses he has designed. The first is being built right now outside of Altamont, by Elizabeth Scott, on a beautiful piece of land near the Bozenkill.

Passive houses, popular in Europe but rare in North America, are so well insulated that, Pedranti said, “They use 90-percent less energy than the average house and are very comfortable.”

Pedranti described the ventilation system in Scott’s house as a “magic box, a simple device invented in the 1970s in North America.” He said, “When oil prices went down, we forgot about these innovations.”

In 1973, the Arab oil embargo caused prices to jump from $3 to $12 per barrel. Americans, who had been used to a cheap and abundant supply of oil, suddenly faced fuel shortages and price hikes. This necessity led to invention — and not just the “magic box.”

Some Americans, like Elizabeth Scott’s parents, built solar homes — homes that were heated largely by the sun rather than depending on fossil fuels.

The energy crisis spawned federal legislation to encourage domestic oil production and also to reduce dependence on fossil fuels with renewable energy like that from the sun or wind. In 1977, the Department of Energy was created. By the 1980s, however, when oil prices dropped, so did domestic production. And the move toward energy efficiency and alternative sources of energy slowed.

Human progress often comes in waves. We’re mindful of this as New York State celebrates the centennial of women’s right to vote. A constitutional amendment in 1917 made New York the first eastern state to grant full suffrage to women. It was a long time coming, more than half a century after the first women’s rights convention, held in Seneca Falls.

But getting the vote was not enough for women to secure equality. It took a second wave of feminism in the 1970s to get women into roles and jobs that had traditionally been dominated by men. And it will take yet another wave to secure women equal pay for the work they do and protection from the sexual assault so many suffer, whether in the military or on college campuses.

As we write this on Earth Day, we recall the very first Earth Day in 1970. Walter Cronkite began his report on the day with a video of biologist Barry Commoner telling a crowd, “This planet is threatened with destruction and we who live in it with death. The heavens reek. The waters are foul...We are in a crisis of survival.”

Cronkite called Earth Day “a day set aside for a nationwide outpouring of mankind seeking its own survival...enlisting all the citizens of a bountiful country in a common cause of saving life from the deadly byproducts of that bounty: the fouled skies, the filthy waters, the littered Earth.”

Later that year, the federal Environmental Protection Agency was established, charged with protecting human health and the environment by writing and enforcing regulations based on laws passed by Congress. In an era when polluted rivers were catching fire, the public strongly supported change to clean up the environment.

Although progress was made, complacency and greed  — or perhaps just the inertia of acceptance for the way things are or nostalgia and longing for the way things used to be — have led to the election of our current president, a climate-change denier, who is bent on rolling back much of the progress that has been made to protect the environment.

We had such hope on Earth Day a year ago when our country joined 120 countries from around the world — rich and poor, developed and developing — in signing the Paris Agreement. That chance to save our Earth is now in jeopardy.

Each time we learn of a natural disaster caused by climate change, we must see the necessity to find and use alternatives to fossil fuels. This is a necessity more important than the one that caused energy crisis in the 1970s. We must see the current crisis as a tidal wave that could destroy our planet and we must rise to meet it.

We’ve highlighted Elizabeth Scott and her passive house in our Home & Garden section this week in hopes it will serve as a beacon to inspire others. As we’ve written in this space countless times, each of us, as individuals, can do our part — recycling waste, insulating our homes, using alternative energy to heat and cool our homes or power our vehicles.

It will take government leadership, though, to really turn the tide. We’re pleased our state has a commitment to get half of our electricity from renewable sources by 2030 and that New York is continuing to fund initiatives to advance solar and wind energy.

But federal commitment is needed, too. Ours is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. We, the people, must insist that the Paris Agreement is upheld. Or we all may perish from the Earth.

 

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