Part Six:  Environmental Wealth

Where we live and our physical surroundings shape us and contribute to our safety and comfort. As the dominant and most invasive species on this planet, we can shape and do shape much of our environment to our needs and desires of the moment. We inherit the labors of our forefathers, sometimes to our benefit, and sometimes as adversity. As a life form we require air, water, food, and safety to exist and to continue to exist. There is an adequate supply of these for all at present although their distribution is unequal. Their quality varies greatly, with effects on our health and other aspects of our well-being.

Location is a dominant determinant of environment. We evolved from the forests to farms, and over the ages our instincts responded to a rural environment. In our small towns all the residents were often all akin. And so we tend to be clannish. Strangers would be welcome. Transients brought news and then moved on. New residents grew into the community and conformed to its customs. This comfortable arrangement gave environmental wealth to the rural population.

Our populations are increasingly located in urban areas and in suburban areas. These areas vary greatly in size and their nature varies with location. All their residents depend on social services which are not needed in rural areas. Drinking water must be piped in, sewage piped out. Garbage must be collected, groceries offered for sale, and public forms of transportation are vital. New people come in clusters, bringing new customs and theologies with them and adhering to them.

Living among a diverse population and constantly adjusting to cooperate with strangers, the urbanite fails to understand the clannish and independent folk of the countryside. In the urban setting much independence is lost to interdependence. Government becomes the source of water, transportation, safety, education, recreation, and to a large extent employment. Government shapes the urban environment.

I have dwelled in suburban settings most of my life, and I like that non-comital existence between the two cultures. [Much of this belongs in Social Wealth]

Through my life I have had increasing control over my living environment.  Starting as a kid in a Public Housing Project on the lower East Side of New York City, I had lots of room to improve. The noise was endless in the day, and the odors unbearable.  There were the noises and odors of the 1930’s, and probably they are worse today.  The nights were not too bad; Horns and bells from the ships and tugs mostly. The dawn brought the shod hoofs of horses beating the pavement and the grinding sounds of steel wheel rims. An occasional whinny. Men shouting in the street below, vendors with horse carts and pushcarts vying for space by the curb.  The occasional roar of an airplane struggling to gain altitude from near-by LaGuardia Field. Tugboats blasting top and bottom blows from their boilers. Pots rattling in our kitchen as Mammy made my Pablum and boiled my father’s oatmeal.

Every wind brought a foul smell. The Fish Market was a few blocks away, where fish guts, scales and gurry ripened in the sun. A power station for the subway was on the other side, and burned brown coal to make steam. Across the street the inhabitants of the old tenements boiled cabbage and fried garlic to go with whatever affordable flesh they could find. Mostly from the fish market. And horse manure abounded.

When my older brother died we no longer qualified for public assistance, and moved to the suburbs.  I was delighted. Aside from the trains rolling through our back yard, it was quiet.  The only smells were cook smells, although in the spring we could smell the honeysuckle under our windows, and in fall, leaves burning. I could walk to school and knew a wondrous route through an apartment building where my friends and I could take the elevator from the first floor, front to the basement, back. (As a city kid, I knew elevators.)

It was environmentally a fine town. Only the right people were allowed to live there, and the industrial intrusions were confined to a limited space by the railway. The streets were tree shaded, there were ponds to skate on in winter, and a patch of forest between us and the next town, where the working class could live.