WataugaWatch

Here's a factoid, which leads to a sign of the times: Electric clothes dryers use at least 6 percent of all household electricity consumption.

That, from an article in today's NYTimes about the national movement to overturn local ordinances and property-owner covenants to allow the air drying of laundry outside.

Who'd have thunk it would come to a national "movement"? We've already waxed poetic about the aesthetics of wind-blown laundry, but that was set off by a purely parochial case of snobbishness in our own Hendersonville. Apparently, there's a nationwide uprising, with states from Vermont to Hawaii passing laws to affirm that it's an American right to air-dry.

For some upscale property owners, however, flapping laundry appears to signal nothing more than poverty, and they don't want to be associated with poverty, nor have their eyes assaulted by such poor homework.

How 1950s of them!

Labels: environmental issues, solar energy

We'd rather see a backyard line full of laundry flapping in the breeze than a row of laundromat driers turning like cement-mixers in the flat glare of florescent lighting.

What happened in the last decades to make our soulless yuppies decide that air-dried laundry was some sort of affront to good taste and property values? Sez a real estate agent in Hendersonville, N.C., which has more than its share, apparently, of upscale developments that have banned by local law the outdoor drying of laundry, "It starts to look like a tenement."

In our eyes, flapping laundry looks like human life on a human scale, a savings, a freshness in the closet. This late 20th-century uppityness about "tenement" life is frankly unamerican, not to mention self-defeating.

A law introduced in the N.C. General Assembly this year would have overturned local bans on hanging laundry, but it died:

An effort in North Carolina spearheaded by Rep. Pricey Harrison, D-Guilford, and backed by other lawmakers including Rep. Susan Fisher, D-Buncombe, made progress this year but died before the General Assembly adjourned last month.

Harrison first tried to go after homeowner covenants, but as opposition mounted, she substituted a bill that would have limited only city and county ordinances. Her proposal passed the House but was rejected by a Senate committee.

The Asheville Citizen-Times story linked above offers hope, nevertheless, that a citizens' uprising is happening among homeowner associations and neighborhood groups to overturn stupid local rules and Victorian squeamishness. Let the laundry flap!

Hanging laundry is aesthetically pleasing (never mind the savings in electricity and all the other environmental benefits). We remember an art installation on Sanford Mall, probably back in the early '80s, when the Appalachian State University administration allowed a faculty artist to install several clotheslines and hang a wonderful assortment of clothing and linens, all carefully chosen for color, texture, and form. The installation stayed up a few days and filled our heads with memories of home and childhood and "washing day," before some high-falutin' prude complained and the whole thing was removed.

Bring back the clotheslines!

American poet Richard Wilbur captured for us the beauties of wind and damp laundry. He saw in the moving forms the presence of angels:

Outside the open window
The morning air is all awash with angels.

Some are in bed-sheets, some are in blouses,
Some are in smocks: but truly there they are.
Now they are rising together in calm swells
Of halcyon feeling, filling whatever they wear
With the deep joy of their impersonal breathing;

Now they are flying in place, conveying
The terrible speed of their omnipresence, moving
And staying like white water; and now of a sudden
They swoon down in so rapt a quiet
That nobody seems to be there.

("Love Calls Us To the Things of This World")

Sometimes there's no antidote to stupid law like poetry.

Labels: environmental issues, solar energy

Some of the biggest (richest) global-climate-change deniers also happen to be the biggest contributors to greenhouse gases -- the oil, coal, and automobile industries. We now know that these industries were being told by their own scientists that "the scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied."

The oil, coal, and automobile industries did not just ignore what their own scientists were saying. They lied about it. Through an industry-funded "front" calling itself the Global Climate Coalition, the Dirty Air People conducted a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign challenging the scientific merits of climate change, greenhouse gases, and their own culpability in exacerbating the problems. Among the hungry fish who swallowed that bait were umpteen conservative "pundits."

"By questioning the science on global warming ... groups like the Global Climate Coalition were able to sow enough doubt to blunt public concern about a consequential issue and delay government action."

The handmaidens to this policy of "confuse the issue and delay reform" were the news media, particularly TV news and especially cable news, where supposedly "neutral coverage" demands the 50-50 approach. If you have two scientists saying global warming cannot be denied, then you must put on two "scientists" saying it's all a crock.

Labels: environmental issues, global climate change

Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary is hosting a one-day environmental seminar tomorrow in Wake Forest, the first such gesture of detente toward tree-huggers in Southern Baptist history (or something).

Lest anyone gets the idea that the officials at the Southern Baptist seminary have gone all gay over environmental sensitivity, Southeastern President Danny Akin quickly said, "We're not jumping on the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, Al Gore bandwagon. We're using a more cautious, responsible approach."

"More cautious." We got that. But beware. We hear that Druid impulses are awfully hard to keep a lid on, once they get some air.

Labels: environmental issues, religion and politics, Southern Baptists

During the last seconds of the George W. Bush presidency, the Bushie Environmental Non-Protection Agency attempted to make permanent its rule that mountaintop coal mining in Appalachia could go forward unabated and that coal companies could bury adjacent streams with the "waste" removed from the mountaintops.

The Obama EPA just reversed that policy, putting on hold any new permits while impacts of mountaintop coal mining on streams and wetlands are reviewed.

We join our own J.W. Randolph of Appalachian Voices in applauding that move.

Labels: Appalachian Voices, environmental issues, J.W. Randolph, mountaintop removal coal mining

Long-range projections suggest that by the end of this century large swaths of coastal land in North Carolina will be under the Atlantic. Sea levels are predicted to rise anywhere from 16 inches to three feet.

The report, "Coastal Sensitivity to Sea Level Rise: A Focus on the Mid-Atlantic Region," was prepared by the (Bush administration's) Environmental Protection Agency.

Rising sea levels might be especially disastrous to North Carolina, as some sections of the coast are slowly sinking, magnifying the effects of rising seas.

Tide-gauge readings in the mid-Atlantic indicate that relative sea-level rise (the combination of rising waters and sinking land) was generally higher -- by about a foot -- than the global average during the 20th century.

Apparently, the truth isn't debatable that sea-level is rising:

"Whether sea level is rising is not something scientists argue about it," [one of the report's authors] said. "It is. It's different than an argument about whether humans are causing global warming. We have directly measured an acceleration ... over the last two decades."

Are local governments going to institute planning decisions to accommodate these predictions? Not bloody likely. No more than mountain counties are going to plan for avoiding catastrophic landslides on steep slopes.

Labels: coastal sea level, environmental issues

Chris Fitzsimon at NC Policy Watch makes the tart suggestion that newly elected Gov. Beverly Perdue is dithering about cabinet appointments, particularly to the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), because the "business community" doesn't approve of anyone whose name has been floated so far.

"Why does the business community have so much say about who will enforce the state's laws to protect the environment?" asks Fitzsimon. Perhaps environmentalists should begin insisting that they get to pick the secretary of Commerce or of Revenue.

The fact that Perdue is already acting indecisive in the face of potential opposition is not encouraging.

Labels: Beverly Perdue, Chris Fitzsimon, environmental issues, NC DENR

She must be scared. She just called Roy Carter "a radical environmentalist" in an "urgent" fundraising e-mail message.

Like anybody is gonna believe that kind of hysterical labeling.

Those who live in glass houses might beware of throwing these particular stones. The Madam's current ratings from some relevant environmental orgs.:

League of Conservation Voters rates her at 10%

Republicans for Environmental Protection rates her at 7%

Environment America rates her at 8%

Gosh, anyone the least bit concerned about global warming would be "a radical environmentalist" in this woman's opinion.

College students need to know about this voting record.

Labels: environmental issues, Roy Carter, Virginia Foxx