I find it increasingly curious the amount of rules certain sectors of our society have set up to prevent people from living green. Granted, the stated rationales are not strictly to prevent green living, but that’s the result nonetheless. Some of these rules make some sense. For instance, many communities have banned water recycling systems. So people can’t set up tanks that collect their used sink water to use to water their gardens. The rationale – a child might walk by and drink from the hose or sprinkler and get sick from recycled water. I understand the impulse (even as I also wonder why those child advocates don’t also complain that the typical garden hose contains lead).
What I don’t understand are the “sight pollution” complaints. The communities than ban clotheslines or gardens or solar panels or wind turbines because they are “unsightly.” While it’s disturbing that people these days would even consider gardens or clotheslines outside of the normal pattern of day to day living, I also don’t get why it is those things that are banned. These communities allow cookie cutter houses fitted with multiple satellite dishes. Garish banners and windsocks dangle from their porches and garden gnomes and polyresin angels peep out from their gardens. Come Fall, giant inflatable Winnie-the-Pooh vampires and mass-produced scarecrows adorn their lawns. Signs advertising their roofer, pool company, security system, or electric dog fence stand alongside pronouncements of what issue or candidate they are voting for. And yet they can’t dry their laundry in the backyard taking advantage of the benefit of sunlight to sterilize because some people say it pollutes their view. It’s not like the solar array is being built to block their view of a mountain range or the sunset over the lake, it’s all just part of all the other everyday stuff in their neighborhood. It’s so silly, that I really just wonder if it is an excuse spread by the electric companies. Of course they don’t want people going green, using alternative energy sources like the wind our the sun – it will make them lose money. But since they can’t say that they are too greed to take care of the earth, they introduce the idea of sight pollution – that it is offensive and inappropriate to have to witness environmentalism in action.
I don’t know. Anyone have any better ideas? I’m just trying to wrap my mind around why tacky yard art is okay but a clotheslines isn’t.