Perspectives on Green Living

Our homes have come a long way since our cave-dwelling days, when the earth’s natural landscape provided us with shelter and protection. We lived by the dictations of each season back then, and as Nomads, we rigged hide-covered tents wherever we stopped. In our first agricultural settlements we made crude shelters from nearby materials: woven wood, straw or mud, and even ice in colder regions. We learned to slope our roofs so that the rain and snow could slide away, and in hotter climates, a flatter roof provided
an escape from the night’s heat, with a bed under the stars. We would warm ourselves and cook from the flames of a simple fire, built within a stone base at the centre of our dwelling. Smoke would escape through an opening in the roof. We worked by the daylight hours given to us, and we shared our shelters with our livestock. Life was hard and short.

With the eventual discovery that oil, gas or wax could be burned to create light, we could cut into the darkness to extend our productive lives, and as our homes became more varied and refined, we used more lasting building materials, such as stone and moved our fires into stoves with chimneys or within mantled walls, and with the very recent advent of electric power, we
have now transformed our homes and our lives to facilitate us to almost every degree. We can be productive at all times of the day or night, and live indoors at a comfortable temperature year round We have created a
wide range of manufactured materials with which to build and furnish our homes, and have developed sophisticated electronic infrastructures to facilitate and entertain us. We have evolved with the pride of progress, all the while assuming the earth’s ability to accommodate each new invention. We now know differently, but for most of us it is still difficult to grasp the degree to which we may be unwittingly threatening the health of the earth.

We are not sure where to go from here and can easily become overwhelmed by the arguments surrounding the changes to our climate. In seeking the right questions to ask, we can become quickly bogged down by any complex or even vague response. We may even discover that the
“Earth Friendly” materials that we want to use can be damaging to produce and import, or to eventually dispose of, and the impact on our health of the accumulative presence of chemical materials is hard to quantify unless we have been directly effected.

But we need to start somewhere, and there is much that we can do at a fairly basic level. A well insulated, efficiently heated home can be one of our most energy saving achievements, and water saving appliances and
plumbing fixtures are now readily available, as well as lights operated by sensors, which can reduce our use of electricity. Paint manufacturers are now responding to Environment Protection Standards, so that each new painting project will bring us closer to more chemical free interior and exterior surfaces. Many smaller as well as more major retrofits are now supported by Government Grants (Government of Ontario / Canada ecoENERGY program: oee.nrcan.gc.ca) and there are growing numbers of specialists
who can assist in producing energy efficient, aesthetically pleasing surroundings, both to new homes and to retrofits. (www.greenmarket.ca) The
interest and choice in Solar and Radiant Heating Systems, permanent
metal roofing as well as wind turbines is growing, and with each new purchase for our home, we can choose more sustainable materials, such as bamboo, cork or wool for flooring, and cotton and linens for furnishings.

While the cost of living in a more energy efficient home may involve a higher outlay, we can anticipate that the cost of many new products and technologies will begin to fall, and with the consistent rise in commodity
prices, we may need to weigh these initial costs against the eventual market value of our homes if they remain inefficient, or exorbitant even for ourselves
to maintain. At the same time, we may be lowering risks to our health.

Short of returning to our tough agrarian beginnings, if each of us makes one energy saving change, we can become a part of providing solutions, and
using the creativity that has served us so well throughout history, we can continue to live in homes as beautiful and convenient as we have now, while making a big difference to the health of our future.