Radical
Statistics
Techno-anthropology in the home
Peter Harper
Imagine a society in which the richer half is on average three times richer than the poorer half, represented by Figure 1A. Imagine also that the level of income considered adequate for a satisfactory existence is twice that of the poor half's average, represented by line X-X1. It would be socially rational to redistribute one third of the income of the richer half, giving everybody an adequate income. In practice this rarely happens. Instead the richer half, which invariably runs the show, prefers to solve the problem by doubling the size of the economy, represented by Figure 1B. Arriving at the level of X-X1 in this new dispensation, the poorer half tend to feel that the goalposts have been moved, are dissatisfied, and new cycles of the growth process begin. This is the heart of the traditional political debate, with the Left arguing for redistribution and the Right arguing for growth. There is no obvious end to the process, but in recent years the Left has been in relative retreat, and the question of distribution has dropped steadily down the agenda.
But now we have a new factor that puts the cat back among the pigeons and raises the question of distribution once more: environmentalists asserting physical limits to the growth of economies. This is illustrated by Figure 1C, where Y-Y1 represents a notional limit to what some theorists call 'environmental space'. On many assessments the rich come out as 'over the limit'. How are they going to get out of this one?
Just as, in the traditional case, those with something to lose try to reframe the debate and the problem, taking advantage of the difficulty of defining any clear limit, so in this new debate the rich try to extend the limits (largely by technology) so there is no need for fundamental restructuring or redistribution. This generates respectable, 'light green' environmentalism or what some theorists have called 'eco-modernisation' which attempts to reconcile growth with sustainability, and allows continued escape from the nagging question of distribution. Against this we have radical, 'deep green' environmentalists who do not believe this particular circle can be squared, and that sooner or later the bullet of 'limits to growth' must be bitten, and the equity issues faced.
Radical environmentalists in fact have a harder task than traditional redistributionist radicals: they not only question the prerogatives of the rich, but the aspirations of the poor to be rich too, and without limit. They question the fundamental consumerist project which is the raison d'etre of modern societies.
I have found this debate hard to escape, either professionally or personally. Does 'sustainability' entail lower standards of living for some people? Who? What does this actually mean on the ground? What are its political implications? In respectable academic and policy circles these are not really admissible questions, yet they stir the blood, and personally I have felt compelled to seek answers.
An exercise I often give to groups of students is to assume they have just won the National Lottery, and without further instructions, to collectively design an 'ideal home' in which cost is no object. The results from different groups are remarkably uniform, including students from developing countries. They invariably go for a large house in the country, set in several acres of grounds. There are lots of bedrooms, en suite bathrooms, outbuildings, garage, every mod con. There are at least two cars, one a 4WD. There is usually an Aga in the kitchen, a swimming pool, often horses. They aim to take long holidays in exotic places. There are of course minor variations, one group will have a jacuzzi, another a billiard hall, but I'm sure you get the picture.
What we are seeing here is a world-wide consensus of aspiration to the affluent bourgeois lifestyle that symbolises material success in modern life. Most students are vaguely aware that in practice it might be physically difficult for everybody on earth to live like this, yet they are quite frank in confessing that they will continue to strive for it, and would take it if it were offered. Challenged about equity and 'environmental space' they resort to the promise of technology to mitigate environmental harm. What sort of technology? They are then presented with a long list of measures which might reduce environmental impacts, and they are asked to put these into four categories according to how acceptable they are to modern consumer taste. Figure 2 shows a typical result.
Basically on the left there are 'technical fixes' which go with the grain of modern consumer culture, while to the right we have 'life-style' changes which do not. Those to the right would probably be more powerful in reducing environmental impacts if widely adopted, but are far less likely to be adopted in an unconstrained, market-driven context.
Figure 2: The psychology of being green - CLICK HERE
In the manner of an anthropologist I have been studying model families occupying different parts of this chart. Consider Figure 3A. This thumbnails the material life of a real family of two adults and two children. Not perhaps quite the hacienda my students wanted, but almost risibly bourgeois. Could 4 billion households live like this? If not, what could/should they do to green up their act? Or if this is not possible, how do we decide who gets to live like this and who does not?
Contrast Figure 3B, this time of a family (of identical size to 3A) which you would presume to be self-conscious gung-ho greenies. They have a fair sample of technical fixes, but the cultural/life-style component shakes some of the basic pillars of bourgeois life: the car, the holiday abroad, summer temperatures all year round, standard toilet, TV and video, meat with every meal. Have they become so extreme that they have left the rest of the world behind? Is this kind of initiative laudable but futile?
Figure 3: Two representative families, 2 adults, 2 children - CLICK HERE
Let me now reveal something surprising: that Families A and B are actually the same family; and all the described features are true simultaneously. Look back over the lists and you will see how the various categories are not actually incompatible. The family is apparently very green and utterly bourgeois at the same time, and has carefully designed its lifestyle to minimise the ratio between environmental impact and quality of life. I apologise for this sleight of hand, which incidentally illustrates a common style of legerdemain in the presentation of qualitative data.
By now you will not be surprised to hear me confess that this is in fact my own family and its activities and daily life are the object of a long-term research programme investigating the delicate relationship between Standard of Living and Quality of Life. It would perhaps be helpful for interpretation if I could situate my theoretical approach in terms of a particular school or standpoint but not being a social scientist I simply make it up as I go along. Nevertheless, it pleases me to dignify it under the rubric of Techno-Anthropology on the grounds that I am a participant observer with full 'interiority' trying to generate quantitative and qualitative data that will make sense in the outside world.
My partner and I have two small houses next door to each other. One is the conventional 'control' and the other is used to try planned changes which can be monitored (although this does not correspond to the two 'model families'). Before buying the experimental house we established a set of ground rules for its conversion to a laboratory of sustainable living. These are given in a rather cryptic form in Figure 4, and constitute what Christopher Alexander famously called a 'pattern language'. They require pages to explain and justify but the list should convey a sense of constantly revised tensions and balances. Some of these rules relate to the project as a whole, some specifically to the initial conversion process. I shall now present a selection of our results.
Figure 4: Ground rules - CLICK HERE
The first project was about construction and demolition waste. The 'No skips, no bonfires' rule sounds fairly draconian but does not mean that nothing can be given to the dustman. We felt free to 'export' items like asbestos or rotting lino to landfill or send metal scrap for recycling but the vast bulk of building waste had to be used immediately or stored for future use. This required that the garden be designed at the same time so that materials from the house could be routed accurately into the garden and vice-versa. The professional builders involved found this fairly challenging at first but soon got into the swing of it. Wastes were measured as they arose by weighing samples and measuring volumes. Broadly speaking the results were as follows:
- Less than 2% by weight was exported to landfill
- The rest was either recycled (0.2%) or used on site for structures (10%) and garden profiling
- The extra costs in time and organisational complexity were offset by savings in new materials
- The resulting appearance of the garden was adequately, if quirkily, bourgeois
- There was little strain on family life; the children particularly appreciated having three tree-houses made from scrap lumber.
Although there are obvious limitations to the generalisability of this approach I was able to do the 'sustainable thing' with little strain on my standard of living or quality of life. The neighbours did not sneer. My family did not rebel. I even had some media coverage. It was fun.
Once the initial conversion was complete I turned my attention to recurrent solid waste. I wanted to know how much there was, of what kinds, and how far 'waste reduction' could be achieved in the framework of ordinary bourgeois life. I measured all recurrent solid waste for two years, sorting it into the usual recyclable categories of flat paper, glass, aluminium and plastic bottles; wood for fuel; putrescible wastes; non-recyclable paper and cardboard; soft garden wastes, woody garden wastes and 'absolute rubbish'. It might be felt that this level of pre-sorting is ridiculous, but our household experience was that once the 'system' was set up it was very little trouble. The measuring was much more trouble - but that is of course not normally required. The result is shown in Figure 5, which suggests a 80% or more reduction in solid waste is easily achievable with standard systems of recycling and composting. Incidentally we have also established a promising new principle in home composting, which is to include all non-recyclable paper and cardboard. This not only gets rid of another few percent of solid waste but also improves the efficiency of the composting process substantially. But this is another story. Don't get me started on compost!
Figure 5: All recurrent wastes (proportions by weight) - CLICK HERE
On energy consumption households and private transport account for about one half of the total. The big ones are : the car, house heating, the annual holiday abroad and (surprisingly perhaps) food. This is sensitive: these are among the main Pillars of Bourgeois Life. With some trepidation we started some trials. What is it like for a car-owning family to basically not have a car but belong to a car-share scheme and use bikes and public transport? I have to report that in all honesty we have all experienced it as a liberation. There is no sacrifice at all, on the contrary a whole series of benefits, in health, in the mind and in the pocket. Now we would never dream of having one again. I won't labour this because it sounds too far-fetched and Bohemian, but the upshot is a reduction of transport energy by about 70%.
Heating is an interesting one. The modified house has gas central heating and is well-insulated. Heat loss is proportional to the difference between the inside and outside temperatures. A reasonable rule of thumb is that lowering the internal temperature by 1 degree C reduces the rate of loss by 5-10%. Therefore lowering internal temperatures reduces the rate of loss. But how low can you get? We gradually lowered thermostat settings over several weeks and found that we soon became accustomed to 15-16 degrees C, giving gas savings of about 50% from the 'office standard' of 21 degrees. This is not a sacrifice of living standards: we actually feel a bit uncomfortable at higher levels. What one gets used to is fairly arbitrary, so why pick arbitrarily high? Daft. But of course when Grannie comes everything has to go up again and we have to sweat a bit. Be reasonable.
The Holiday Abroad In The Sun is another non-negotiable for most families. Depending on where you go it can amount to 10% or more of total energy consumption. My trip to Australia to give a lecture on environmental rectitude doubled my annual consumption for that year. So in the spirit of the experiment we took to camping in South Wales with like-minded people. A crippling blow to our standard of living? Did we feel severely deprived by not being in Egypt or Florida? Not really, we all had a good time and it was a lot less hassle, and the environmental impact was reduced by at least 90%. The weather was usually awful but...
The environmental impact of food is hard to calculate because it depends how you do the sums. According to my understanding there is a presumption on local produce, little-processed, organic and not a lot of meat. OK so we buy loads of organic veg from the local grower, have a lot of rice and pasta and bread, cheese, yoghurt, fish, no meat at all - all very worthy but we still have frozen pizzas and wine and ice cream and chocolate biscuits so probably we're the same as everyone else here. But according to my 'guesstimates' our dietary footprint is probably 50% less than the typical diet, without any sense of deprivation or loss.
While I'm on food I should mention growing stuff in the garden (I am, incidentally, a professional horticulturist). Naturally I wanted to find out what contribution this would make to our diet, so for two seasons I weighed everything that came out of the garden. The results for one sample season are in Figure 6. In proportional and economic terms the contribution is small: changing diet makes a far greater contribution to sustainability. Still, I would encourage people to grow fruit and vegetables: it is a sacrament that does not offend reason, and it takes such a lot of time it keeps you enthralled in the garden and prevents gratuitous car trips: this I believe is the main environmental benefit of gardens.
What about renewable sources of energy? We did not install the 'obvious' solar water-heater because its cost-effectiveness in the climate of west Wales (the worst solar climate in Europe - Official) is rather low. Instead we installed a wood-burning stove to make use of low-grade scrap wood from the house conversion and wood from the garden, and because it's nice to have Real Flames on special occasions. Did this make much impact on gas consumption? A series of test measurements of the response of the house to intermittent woodfuel heating (Figure 7) showed that 5-10kg of wood could keep the ground floor temperature at sitting height within the thermal comfort zone for an evening, depending on outside temperatures. This soon exhausted the stock of around 120kg of scrap wood. What about fuel from trees in the garden? A series of sample measures showed quite quickly that even if the entire garden (250m2) were filled with trees, this could supply only about 3% of my annual heating demand on a sustainable basis, saving the princely sum of £3 a year. Growing vegetables - although itself not much to write home about in cash terms - is about 100 times more productive per unit area.
Figure 7: Temperature response to intermittent woodfuel heating
These calculations about wood and food from the garden illustrate a general point: that contrary to 70's dreams of self-sufficiency, there is often a severe mismatch between the resources available from a typical house-and-garden site and the resources required for modern living, and this is particularly true of food and energy, which paradoxically were the sectors most often chosen by seekers after The Good Life. Water supply and waste-treatment are a better match, and the next project is a study of organic wastes and nutrient-cycling, urine being another of my little obsessions. Fortunately that will have to wait for another occasion....
Drawing some of these threads together, we have begun to explore some of the implications of a cultural rather than technological approach to 'more sustainable living'. It must be strongly emphasised that this is not a neo-Luddite or anti-industrial enterprise: I strongly believe that a sophisticated global technological civilisation is a necessary condition for long-term sustainability. But it is not a sufficient condition: there must be strong cultural and political processes of appropriate kinds. Following a cultural programme, we have found that substantial reductions in environmental impact are possible - often approaching the broadly-agreed sustainable and globally-equitable levels - and it's not as terrifying or alienating as it's supposed to be. In fact often enough it seems to lead to an improvement in overall well-being and quality of life. This is unexpected and deserves more rigorous study.
I like to think of myself as having dual nationality in two illustrious but mutually suspicious nations: Bohemia and Academia. We look to Academia for rigour, yet its citizens feel uncomfortable with radical greenery and 'life-style' stuff: they risk losing their most cherished possession, peer-cred. Bohemians in contrast are happy to wallow in conspicuous thrift, but often enough (God bless them) can hardly count up to five much less design a convincing experiment. There is an empty cell in this matrix where rigour and numeracy combine with subjectivity, risk taking and real life. Well of course the cell is not completely empty but it gets a bit lonely in there sometimes so if anybody feels like coming for a visit I'd be jolly pleased to see you.
Peter Harper
Centre for Alternative Technology
cat@catinfo.demon.co.uk
