Gas rationing, etc.

 

In WWII, both my uncle and my father were salesmen and needed to visit clients. With gas rationing, they very carefully figured who they had to see, mileage and how much gas they needed etc. They even arranged sometimes to combine locations of their visit and use one car.

My grandmother reused aluminum foil (I still do) and when it became to small or tattered rolled in a ball to give back so it could be reused for the war effort.

 Butter was almost impossible to get. We had oleo packages. It was my job to press the red dot in the center until the white glop became butter-yellow.

The war ended. My grandmother, brother, mother and I would be able to hop into the car for a Sunday drive without thinking about the gas rationing cards. We had real butter again. My grandmother was still frugal when it came to things like aluminum. She never said, "waste not, want not" but lived it.

We could use some of that frugality today. We could use gas rationing in stead of screaming for the pumping of more fossil fuels. Car pooling, doing errands with a neighbor, buying smaller, hybrid of electric cars. Walking, biking, public transportation are all alternatives depending on where one lives. 

We don't have to buy buy buy running up our debts and limiting other life choices because of it.

In WWII people pulled together against a common enemy. No one said, "I won't pull my blackout curtains down. It's my right to leave them up." They knew that a bomb on their house could take out the neighborhood. 

So with climate change and the war, we need to stop saying, I want what I want when I want it. Not only would that limit the minerals all of which are limited either by availability of trade, needed for modern life, it would put one back in control of their finances.

I still find it hard to understand why people need storage units or houses are so cluttered with things they never use.

Maybe we will never get back to gas rationing cards like the one showed above, but it would be a solution to the over consumerism that grips the world today. 

And maybe, just maybe, should we try and think about how actions don't affect just us, but everyone if not directly than indirectly.