A decade ago, I lived in a cute town in northern California which enjoyed – or depending on your perspective, suffered under – the semi-desert conditions typical of the area. It had an average of 330 days of sunshine every year and in the worst ravages of winter, the temperature would plummet to 16 degrees Celsius. I stepped outside on my first morning, felt the warm air on my skin, looked up at the sky of unblemished cerulean, and had a single thought: “great drying.”
Alas, not in Saratoga. The town had a strictly-enforced local ordinance against drying your clothes outside. In this genteel place, the sight of knickers fluttering on the line was an insult to the landscape, a blight on real estate values and a possible red flag for a criminal disposition. (For context, Saratoga’s main street was home to 15 wineries, a Starbucks and a shop that sold only gilt mirrors, but nowhere to buy milk without getting in your Dodge minivan and driving for 15 minutes. This was not, you understand, a community overly preoccupied with real world concerns like washing clothes or buying milk.)
Instead of a clothes line, every household was equipped with a cavernous garage featuring a washer and dryer, as well as enough pallets of Costco tinned vegetables and loo roll to see them through the climate apocalypse they seemed to be doing everything in their power to facilitate.
By the time we arrived there in 2015, a California Assembly bill, nicknamed the “right to dry” Bill, had made it illegal for landlords and homeowners associations to prohibit drying your laundry outside. But unless you wanted to be the subject of anonymous tirades from your neighbours on NextDoor.com, you wouldn’t risk it. In the LA Times, Meghan Daum mockingly foreshadowed the culture wars that would soon arrive to lock their jaws on to everything from gas hobs to face masks: “Now that those real estate devaluing eyesores called clotheslines are protected, ratty porch sofas can’t be far off. Then what? Large flocks of plastic flamingos staked into the ground? Every garden gnome and Bigfoot statue in the SkyMall catalogue?”
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Ireland, I have often thought smugly since my return, wouldn’t tolerate such pretentious, self-destructive nonsense as a ban on clothes lines.
And then this week I read about the row over electric vehicle (EV) charging arms brewing between Dublin City Council and some householders in the capital.
An EV-owning householder in Ranelagh has been ordered to remove an “unauthorised” charging arm he had installed in his front garden when he bought their car two years ago. Although there are “loads” of similar charging arms nearby, which swing out over the footpath and drop a cable down to the car, “we’re the only ones being targeted,” the householder told Irish Times reporter Jack White. He believes an example is being made of him by the council as a warning to others.
Dublin City Council has said that the charging arms require planning permission. “There was one complaint, I think the person complained twice, and they have to act. I’m just guessing someone didn’t like the look of it,” he said. He has since applied for permission for retention.
That this is coinciding with warnings by the Climate Change Advisory Council (CCAC) and the Environmental Protection Agency that we are way off track to hit our national target of a 51 per cent reduction in carbon emissions by 2030 is a symptom of our wilful disconnect on climate issues.
On the one hand: most people want the Government to take action on climate. On the other: not if it means having to look out their window at cycle lanes or offshore wind farms or EV charging arms. And not if it means having to pay more for anything, ever.
The CCAC suggested grants of up to €10,000 be made available to help low-income households buy EVs. It also wants the charging infrastructure rapidly improved. But right now we should be doing what we can to support – or at the very least just not put ridiculous roadblocks in the way of – householders who are coming up with their own inventive solutions to the non-trivial obstacle of having nowhere to charge their EV. An overhead charging arm seems less of a hazard than an alternative solution I have come across: a cable rolled across the footpath, protected by a rubber ramp. But until the infrastructure gets to the point where everyone who needs a socket can easily access one, people will do what they have to. Or – more realistically – they’ll keep burning the fossil fuels.
Six months ago, I switched to an EV from a diesel gulping ten-year-old BMW. There was a learning curve, as I wrote in these pages. But since we got the hang of it (really, since we got an at-home charger installed), the experience has been entirely positive. Previously, my typical spend on diesel was about €100 a month. In the month of June, the total cost of charging the car once a week at overnight rates of 0.13 cent was €16 – or €4 a charge. We’re lucky to have off-street parking. I don’t think I’d be quite so enthusiastic an EV owner if I had to rely on the public charging network.
It’s time we stopped behaving like wealthy Californians who find clothes lines offensive and started getting offended by the “new norm” of European temperatures of 40+ degrees. If we’re bothered by the aesthetics of charging arms or cycle lanes, how do we feel about neighbourhoods beset by falling trees, flying slates and flooding?
This is no longer a looming catastrophe or a horrifying future vista; the climate crisis is here. Objecting to the aesthetics of EV charging arms is like complaining about the upholstery on the deckchairs on the Titanic.
