The natural house book [antikvár]

Introduction This book has been written at a time when global environmental concerns have become urgent. No longer are they minority interests discussed only by academics, campaigned for by environmentalist groups, or merely the subject of occasional wildlife documentaries. It is also written in the context of growing public anxiety about polluted water supplies, contaminated food, and the level of chemical exposure we are all subjected to in our ordinary lives. The tendency is to see these areas as separate and as being too large for us to cope with, and almost always as being for others to deal with. But the truth is that these problems are interlinked and often have the same roots in our daily lives. And they are too big for individuals or separate governments to solve alone. The only way is for all of us to tackle them together. "Well body, well earth" was a phrase coined in the US not long ago. It communicates the vital message that our health and that of the planet are inextricably linked. For, just as we need good health to stay ahve, so, too, does the planet in order to be able to support us and all the other life forms. At present we are making the planetary systems ill and, as a result, becoming ill ourselves. What we must do is reverse this trend - heal ourselves and, in the process, heal the planet. Unless we find ways to make ourselves better, we may never be in a situation to remedy the wider damage we are doing. It is unfortunately true that the environmental sickness has already spread to our homes, creating the modern phenomenon ofthe "sick building syndrome". Our homes are so much a part ofthe planetary sickness and we should really be saying: "well body, well home, well earth." We all care about our homes and spend time, effort, and money trying to make them more comfortable. For most of us, our homes represent the biggest investment we ever make; they are, lifelong, a centre of our concern and our wellbeing. So it probably comes as something of a shock when you realize that the home today can be a very uncaring place - uncaring of us, and uncaring ofthe environment. Our homes can damage our health, the air we breathe, and the water we drink without our even being aware of it. But "home" doesn't stop at the front door: it affects, and is affected by, its surroundings. If we were as conscious ofthe needs ofthe environment as we are of the needs of our homes, it would indeed be the first step in changing the world. The global crisis Everyday, it seems, we hear of new and worrying developments in the approaching ecological disaster - virgin Brazilian rainforest the size of Belgium devastated in a single year; global warming from greenhouse gases, with the real danger of worldwide flooding as the polar caps melt; the disappearing ozone layer and the increasing risks of skin cancer; pollution causing acid rain that is killing forests, rivers, and lakes; polluted air, water, and food. The list is growing, and what seemed like isolated events in distant places a few years ago, are now reaching across our very doorsteps. Nobody knows just how much punishment the planet will take before it reacts - or how strong the reaction might be. What is certain, though, is that the reaction has already started, and it started some years ago, with increasing desertification, crop failures, and starvation. And the combined effect of individual disasters may set in train a complex series of unpredictable events - global warming, currently thought to be the key danger, could bring dramatic climate changes everywhere, and threaten life in all its forms. A continuing increase in global temperatures would lead to more deserts, both in the developed and developing worlds, and cause dramatic changes in plant life, from tree cover to agriculture; it would bring increasing food shortages and, worse, massive flooding of lowlands, devastating many countries, and reducing global land area. But well before these changes could take full effect, the pressures they would bring would cause worldwide instability and, perhaps, a new type of conflict as the main powers defended and extended their command over increasingly scarce resources. It may seem a bigjump to be talking of global conflicts in the same breath as how we design our homes - the central subject of this book. But the two are intimately linked through our consumption patterns - and it is only by changing our own lives