Hmmm....1978....Jimmy Carter putting on a sweater. "The moral equilvalent of war." and everyone laughed at him.

It's always easy to get people interested in military style things, because "war and weapons are the only thing man is truly GOOD at." (Tom Servo)

In WWII, we substituted one activity (cars) for another (tanks.) We still had to keep busy. We have to find something else for all those automobile factories and workers to do. (Turning out turnkey Stirling plants?) We have to turn those McMansions into multiple dwellings.

Excellent topic and article. It is funny the amount of people I come across whose ride to work would be so much shorter than mine (11 miles one way). I tell them how easy it would be for them to ride a bike to work vs. public transport or driving and sometimes they look astounded - like a caveman looking at the first wheel (Sorry Geico Caveman!).
It's like they never gave it a thought at all.

All this in the article raises points about the consumerist society in which we are surrounded. I cringe when I hear someone say that something, which is perfectly fine and works well, is old, outdated, or out of style. One worry I have is that if people smarten up and our society turns from consumers to 'savers(?)' the economy may collapse because it is built today on "consumer discontent" (Jim McGurn). The temporary bump up would be that people would have more $$ in their pockets, or heaven forbid, SAVINGS instead of just AVAILABLE CREDIT.
But maybe not ... too many of our unnecesary widgets are made in China anyway. Hmmm.

This is a well done article, yet it fails to mention one important aspect of the conservation movement of the early 20th century. The war efforts of both World Wars 1 and 2 were the result of the most massive propaganda campaign ever waged by a government against its people. It is inferred throughout that the effort was largely voluntary and yet most of it was legislated and backed up by military force and economic sanctions. To say that nothing can be learned from the period is false, yet the lesson is that under immense pressure by economic, social and political forces the American people can be coaxed into remarkable austerity and conservation for the production of weapons. The way I see it, there is no greater motivator than the threat of appearing "unpatriotic". But are we in the ecological movement to resort to such morally ambiguous tactics? Shall we employ guilt and threat in the name of the greater good? Such a way leads to madness. I would rather not have to force or trick people into changing their ways, rather have a person come to it with eyes wide open and a sharp critical mind. It is in fact the perennial question in all social progress. Do the ends justify the means?

Fascinating

Eric,

Interesting point. Believe it or not, there were a lot of strikes during World War II. Moral suasion only went so far. Also, during the war, there was all kinds of bigoted anti-Asian propaganda. )Of course, the enemy we were fighting was much worse on that front! )

But there was also a spirit of cameraderie, or so I'm told There was a sense of togetherness and EGALITARIANISM. Everyone was in the same boat, Bub! Of course, it took a military attack on US Hawaii to bring that feeling about.

I think the miseries of the Depression gave everyone a sense of shared misery. They were already conditioned to hard living. This poses the question, will things have to get worse before people feel a sense of common purpose?

Oh the sweet irony .... there are consumer advertisements all over the page.

Frankly speaking, I disagree with the idea.

Matter of facts, it's because of the last couple of generations that our generation is in trouble with environment. If you look back at history of the industrial age, industrialized countries did not behave in a sustainable way. Even before the invention of carbon pollution, European people destroyed their giant forests to build houses, ships and heat their homes.

Forget about your fathers and your grandfathers. Don't look at the past. In order to build a better tomorrow, we must imagine a renewed future in a sustainable way.

I think this is a great point - it's kind of mind-blowing that there once was a time when regular people were encouraged to grown their own food!

The problem today is that the Food Industry (and the corporations that are members of it) are so powerful and spend so much lobbying in congress that a government-backed program like this would never happen again. God forbid we hurt big business to address problems like obesity, fossil-fuel dependency, and consumer debt. Our representatives have no interest in and nothing to gain from making us healthier, thriftier and more efficient. Lobbyists author the laws, congress puts them into place, and our president tells us to go out and make sure to spend lots of money. And I thought we were at war?!

Good luck getting anyone to do that today. People are way to selfish to understand that we need to conserve. I know people would would rather die then no go "cursing" in their cars every night.

www.dibussolo.com

Great post, Lloyd!

One of the more interesting aspects of this effort is that it was largely successful (though I've not seen numbers to back it up) even though the people participating in conservation saw no visible effects of their efforts. They never saw the extra rations, uniforms, boots, tanks, planes, or whatever else that their conservation provided the resources for. Yet, they did it anyway. So often people are presumed to require immediate satisfaction for their efforts, and by that argument sustained efforts at conservation cannot be widely adopted. But, apparently that's wrong.

The question is, then, can such an egalitarian spirit of mutual conservation be fostered without something like the Fascist threat? Can propaganda and government leadership recreate something like that? It seems we are so much more cynical about the role of government in society now, so maybe we'd all laugh at the propaganda and then toss it into the wastebin. Then again, given how well marketers can sell just about anything to people that don't need anything, conservation propaganda might have a chance.