Bellwether

Because we do not have a dishwasher in our house – at least, not a mechanical one – the theory and methodology of dishwashing is a recurring topic of conversation here. Having been brought up in a household that leaned toward the germophobic side of the hygiene spectrum, I’m a pretty devout rinser of dishes.

I don’t actually worry much about ingesting a few rogue bacteria, but I have a vague feeling it’s something you should keep to a minimum. This sentiment is kind of like a religious faith carried over to the next generation in diluted form. As I cast my eyes around the kitchen, I subconsciously calculate where the little critters are propagating, and how they might be accidentally transferred to other surfaces.

My mom just about faints with disgust anytime a friend comes to visit and plops her purse on the dining room table – because purses occasionally come in contact with the floor in public washrooms, apparently. (Who knew?!) Similarly, she says parents sometimes change their baby’s diaper on those fold-down meal trays on airplanes – a surface that is not routinely cleaned between flights. From a hygiene perspective, you’d be better off eating your lunch in the privy.

Some people take their dishes out of the soapy water and dip them in a rinse basin (which becomes increasingly polluted, dish by dish), while others do not rinse at all, but just dry the soapy dishes on a tea towel (which becomes a micro-biological repository of all the critters that would otherwise end up in the rinse water). Only in the absence of electricity do I wash dishes this way. During power outages, one really appreciates that most civilized of conveniences, running water.

It’s also a reminder that our daily habits are very wasteful. Many people in the world do not have the luxury of allowing pristine, potable water to flow freely down a drain in the kitchen sink, or in the shower, or – more decadent still – as a medium for flushing our personal waste down the toilet. When natural disasters interrupt the amenities and services we take for granted, it’s a good opportunity to reflect on whether the way we are living is sustainable and equitable.

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I am continually amazed at how accurate weather forecasting has become. People complain and sneer when Environment Canada is slightly off the mark, but mostly it’s spot-on – especially for things that really matter, like hurricanes. No wonder more people used to die in storms; without satellite technology, a fishing boat might have set out to sea on a calm morning, and ended up poking Dorian right in the eye. These days we get plenty of warning to lay in supplies and hunker down.

And yet, like an idiot, I waited until the wind was blowing before setting out with a couple jerry cans in the back of the truck, thinking it might be a good idea to have some extra gas. Nearest service station was closed up tight. Next nearest, in the opposite direction, was also closed, as were a couple stores I passed. Presumably, people had already procured their essentials, as well as their storm chips, their storm cannabis, or whatever other sources of comfort were available at retail. Things were becoming eerily quiet, except for the rain on the roof, so I headed home and went into hunker-down mode.

As it turned out, we had plenty of gas. We didn’t even bother firing up the generator until the wind subsided and the sky cleared, and then we realized that we only wanted to use it for a couple hours a day – just to chill down the freezer, and to run the pump long enough to indulge in some extravagant dish rinsing and toilet flushing. After that, I was happy to silence the maddening drone of the engine. The propane range works without power, so we had some nice candlelight meals during our four-day blackout.

Many Nova Scotians had a much rougher go of it – not due to lack of preparedness, but just because of higher winds on the coast, damage caused by falling trees, and inexplicable delays in getting power restored – in some communities, longer than a week.

The losses to fruit crops – especially orchards, highbush blueberries, and vineyards – have yet to be tallied, but are expected to be considerable. This underscores the importance of making our agricultural sector more resilient, as extreme weather becomes more common. It’s not just a case of adapting production systems; the economics of the business also need to change. If weather-related financial risk becomes untenable for existing farms and aspiring new entrants, food security is going to take a double hit.

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It was an odd coincidence that hurricane Dorian – downgraded to a tropical storm by the time it reached Atlantic Canada on Sept. 7 – coincided with our preparations for this issue of Rural Delivery, with its special focus on renewable energy. There’s a double connection, of course. Renewables represent a necessary step toward reducing the greenhouse-gas emissions that contribute to an unstable climate – and for some, they also represent reduced reliance on energy infrastructure that has proved to be unreliable.

After Dorian, people sought out service stations that had power, but soon the pumps were running dry. (The Irvings out of gas? Isn’t that like the Pope being out of prayers?) There was also a lot of talk about cell phone and internet services being down – a reminder that we rely more heavily than ever on an unwholesome hodgepodge of private companies to provide critical communication links.

As the days of darkness wore on, attention turned to the incredible fragility of our electrical grid – and the fact that it is not actually ours. In the Halifax Examiner, Jennifer Henderson highlighted concerns about a private, for-profit company owning the transmission lines and holding a monopoly on electricity. “It rankles,” she wrote, “to know that in the week prior to Dorian hitting Nova Scotia, two top executives with Nova Scotia Power’s parent company Emera – Emera CEO Scott Balfour and Tampa Power CEO Nancy Tower – cashed in their stock options worth a couple of million dollars when the share price was just below its 52-week high and before it would drop $2.50 post-Dorian.”

Yep, “rankles” is one word for it. And there are a couple different ways we can respond. Many of us feel the impulse to cut the cord – tell them to shove it – and follow the lead of our off-grid acquaintances who were blissfully unaffected by this recent outage that shut down the entire province. For some, that looks like a good option, especially with photovoltaic solar panels having come down in price considerably – though installing a complete system is still a major investment.

An alternative to going off-grid is to develop a robust backup power system – a big generator, maybe a big battery bank, a heating system that operates without electricity – and maintain enough provisions for a long blackout. This may be a good idea, especially for rural dwellers – but again, it involves considerable expense.

And here’s the thing: even if we take one of these routes toward self-sufficiency, we should not give up on the grid. A great many people – due to their age, financial status, or other life circumstances – are going to have no choice but to remain dependant on power utilities, so we should all advocate strenuously to make that system more environmentally sustainable, more dependable, and more accountable. It might involve partly decentralizing the grid, with more energy independence and more economic benefits at the local level, while retaining the security of interconnectedness.

There’s a parallel with food systems. Growing and preserving your own garden produce and meat is a great idea – a laudable goal for any household. Better yet is to be part of a community of producers, among whom various foods are exchanged equitably. But still, the larger food system – provincial, national, global – is important. It ain’t pretty, but many people depend on it, so we should all care about how it is structured.

As rural dwellers, we might sometimes like to believe that we are safely insulated from society at large. We might take a dim view of city life, or feel a bit cynical about big ag, or about the state of public education, or – especially this fall – about national politics. But to write these institutions off as “broken systems” is to succumb to nihilism. The world does not need more survivalist wackos.

As John Donne wrote, nearly 400 years ago, “No man is an island.” Sure, we survived a nasty storm, but there are more and worse to come, and the more vulnerable members of the human family will be affected most. When I see reports of poor countries struck by extreme weather, with people left homeless and wading through flooded streets or huddled in filthy camps, I think of the hygiene issues, which often cause more suffering than the initial impact. These are alarm bells, tolling for us all. DL