Oliver Drerup, "The Historical Impact of the Baby Boomers"
Oliver Drerup, Senior Housing Consultant, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) and head of CMHC’s International Training Team, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Summary: Mr. Drerup analyzes how the “Baby Boomer” generation was shaped through historical events and how those events led to a demand for change. He shared his own boomer experiences and what led him to his life’s work in energy efficient housing. He showed how current events such as the war in Iraq, high energy prices and the depletion of resources are once again shaping the current generation and left us wondering what is it going to take to make us mad enough to change things?
Mr. Drerup’s closing presentation was a thought provoking tour through the history and status of his “tribe” – the baby boomer generation. A baby boomer himself, Mr. Drerup said that, though this may be an urban myth, three “boomers” turn sixty every second in the U.S. Boomers are the “egg in the snake,” the big population bump. He told the Forum participants that he will be speaking on political issues of particular importance to North Americans, although these issues are important to all countries represented at the Forum. He said he didn’t care what political bent you are as these are not partisan issues. Mr. Drerup quoted John Clark, “Regional power doesn’t “sit”, it flows… the region is against the regime, any regime… regions are anarchic… regions are everywhere and nowhere … we are all illegal.
Stating that everything occurs within a context, Mr. Drerup used pictures and quotes from events that shaped the boomer generation. Some events gave them hope such as John Kennedy’s Inaugural Address in 1961 – the “Ask Not…” speech. Mr. Drerup quoted from the last passage of this famous speech, “Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own.” Our “chief” Kennedy was killed on November 22, 1963. Boomers got angry. They tried taking the Freedom Riding business from the south to the Berkeley campus where they were told it wouldn’t work. What happened there made people get really mad. He didn’t understand why everyone wasn’t angrier than they were. On February 21, 1965, we lost a man born in poverty who grew up in the prison system and who forgave everyone, yet they killed him – Malcolm X. But then the Beetles came along with the Rolling Stones and distracted us. Dr. Leary and Dr. Albert had a huge influence on boomers but so did Jefferson Airplane. Then boomers went to Haight Ashbury.
Before Janis Joplin died in 1970, a lot of crazy stuff was happening in this country. On April 4, 1968 we lost Martin Luther King and two months later, Bobby Kennedy. It was a bad time. People got angrier. It didn’t matter what side you were on, we had issues that needed to be resolved and we were deeply anxious to resolve them. Everything that we have been talking about at this Forum has occurred within a context. There was another urban myth that said that the war in Vietnam would end if we stopped buying Levi’s. But we didn’t stop buying them! Woodstock was a great example of youth rebellion but then Altamont came and the Rolling Stones went out to do their thing and a Hells Angel stabbed someone and it sucked because it showed even youth screwing things up. Then Kent State happened. I think Abby Hoffman summed it up well (slide of him giving “the finger.”) By this point we had had it. Along the way we put a man on the moon that got a good look at the earth and we got a sense that we are just floating in space. We were reminded by Joni Mitchell who said, “We are stardust, we are golden, and we have got to get back in authority.” A lot of us took that very seriously.
George Grant was a very important Canadian philosopher who said, “A political philosophy that is centered on virtue must be a shadowy voice in a technological civilization. When men are committed to technology, they are also committed to continual change in institutions and customs. Freedom must be the first political principle – the freedom to change any order that stands in the way of technological advance. Such a society cannot take seriously the conception of an eternal order by which human action are measures and defined.” And that my friends, is what is going on between us and the First Nations – that is the nub of it. We “white people” are moving way closer to First Nations philosophy at this time of history than ever previously. It is slowly dawning that this might be another way of looking at the world.
What we derived from it are philosophies that are shared in this room and baby boomers in North America and other places. Pacifism is one of those philosophies. Not that we don’t fight – don’t get me wrong, military people. Think “Hoss Cartwright” – you wouldn’t want to mess with him but if you do – he can fight! But pacifists, like Hoss, don’t pick fights. They have the “I’m OK, you’re OK” philosophy (not that that has served us very well in the long term because that philosophy lets people get away with things). Pacifists respect other living things, are self reliant, and have a “return to nature” philosophy. You work as well as you can and you become a man. This is the Inupiaq value system: Humor, sharing, humility, hard work, spirituality, cooperation, family roles, avoid conflict, hunter success, domestic skills, love of children, respect for nature, respect for elders, responsibility to the tribe, knowledge of language and knowledge of your family tree. Sitting Bull said, “Let us put our minds together and see what life we can make for our children.”
Mr. Drerup said he became convinced to “return to the land, or die”. The first house he ever built turned out badly. We had all read the “Lord of the Rings” and wanted to go to Hobbiton. We wanted to do something useful, go back to the land and be Hobbits and live in Hobbit holes. He started looking for information on how to build them but there was a lack of information. Lloyd Kahn wrote a book called “Domebook #1.” This author is the only person he knows who wrote a book, decided to actually do what his book said and found out it was such a bad idea that he took his own book off the market! He found a book by Ken Kern, “The Owner Built Home,” but Kern died in his one of his owner built houses while doing an experiment. We tried the craziest stuff – domes, straw bales, post and beam, salvage, cord wood, stucco, rock, foam, thin coat, etc. He went to the Alaska State Home Building Association but there was not much information. He tried all sorts of stupid stuff, raising animals homesteading. We learned jobs like blasting, welding, bulldozing. It was an extraordinary time building skills while looking for information but finding only crap.
While working for only $2.50 an hour, the question finally became what do I want to do for a living? He kept building houses and homesteading until 1976 when he had a personal epiphany. He was cooking dinner in a solar house in Quebec his company had built with rock storage and solar collectors that cost $2.50 a square foot. He and his partners began talking about what would have happened to this house if they had taken the money invested in the solar system and used it instead on insulation. His partner did the math and did it again and again. It occurred to them that to keep a bucket full of water, you either need to find more water or plug the holes. They realized they had done their client a dastardly service and they needed to change the way they did business.
The following year, 1977, they worked on the Saskatchewan Conservation House. They made it airtight but they didn’t “know it all yet”. They couldn’t get the Phillips solar collector on the roof as the company was backlogged. The house went through its first winter and found it only cost them $34 for natural gas! The first Super Insulation Conference was held in 1982. Out of that, they distilled a list and this list is all the things that have been rattled off at this and many conferences: insulation, air tightness, ventilation, combustion air, filtration, passive solar, active solar, etc. This list has taken us older guys a lifetime to get down. We’ve argued over it for 40 years. Mr. Drerup learned that all conservation measures must be tried first. When you look at your blueprints, look for opportunities to “plug the holes in the bucket” like moving chimneys inside the envelope, getting rid of cantilevers, etc. He learned that all conservation measures must be evaluated first.
Mr. Drerup has a degree in anthropology and it horrified him to look at old civilization sites because desertification occurred (except in China). This is disconcerting. The population grid exploded from one million to ten million from 1930 through 2005 partly due to agriculture but primarily due to energy development. If you look at the energy supply in America, it is astonishing. He learned that all conservation measures certainly must be attempted before engaging in nuclear power generation with its buried waste and 22 year half lives. He showed a map of all the nuclear reactors in the U.S. The military industrial complex is only generating 4-8% of the energy used from all those reactors. We haven’t even started trying wind yet. All this buried money is appalling. Look at Chernobyl. We have come to terms with what happened there but we haven’t come to terms with the fact that people are moving back there. These are old people who can’t live a decent life elsewhere and who got tired of living in lousy accommodations so they have returned, raising cows, and drinking milk. Their children don’t visit often. It’s appalling.
We have a whole new set of drivers. We are no longer a bunch of hippies trying to figure out how to build a hobbit hole. There is the depletion of resources. This is baby boomers and greed. We can’t sustain this. Another driver is climate change. We can’t sustain this either. Wendell Berry wrote, “The moral argument points to restraint. It is the conclusion that maybe in some sense is tragic, but there is no escaping it. Much as we long for infinities of power and duration, we have not evidence that these lay within our reach much less within our responsibility. It is more likely that we will either have to live within our limits within human definition or not live at all and certainly the knowledge of these limits and how to live within them is the most comely and graceful knowledge that we have, the most feeling and the most whole.” Some may say, the American way of life is not up for negotiation, but I submit to you that it is the only thing we have left to negotiate.
Let’s talk about what’s going on in Europe. The Europeans signed up for the Kyoto agreement to reduce greenhouse gases, and taking Kyoto very seriously are making extraordinary sacrifices and strides. In 2000, the UK and Ireland had no requirements for buildings to be insulated. Today a code compliant house in Ottawa, Canada would not meet the insulation standards in London or Dublin. And we at this forum have been talking about what we’re going to do about the building code in Alaska, saying a standard would be better than a code. But the UK government said volunteerism is not working! This reflects his experience as well. Sure we’ve built a few houses, learned some stuff, and wrote some manuals, but expecting builders to voluntarily implement standards won’t work as people won’t do it. The UK is changing their building codes every two years to achieve their 2016 goal of net zero new homes and they expect industry to do it. Sure it’s been a bumpy road and they haven’t been quick enough to get the inspectors, appraisers and insurance people trained, but at least they have the courage of their convictions. It will happen. Even if it didn’t happen, the Europeans will be farther ahead than people who still are trying to figure out if they need a state building code! The fact is the U.S. and Canada is working for the Chinese. We just haven’t figured that out yet! China will forge ahead while North America prevents the retooling of our industries so we can “live free or die.” Mr. Drerup showed slides of homes in the UK called “R2000 Super E." One thing about the Brits though is they like warm towels! They have hot water radiators in their bathrooms just to warm the towels. Then the bathroom is too warm and the rest of the house too cold. Even the Brits need a paradigm shift.
Mr. Drerup quoted Jeremy Rifkin, “It is the cherished American dream itself, once the ideal and envy of the world that has led America to its current impasse. That dream emphasizes the unbridled opportunity of each individual to pursue success, which, in the American vernacular, has generally meant financial success. The American Dream is far too centered on personal material advancement and too little concerned with the broader human welfare to be relevant in a world of increasing risk, diversity, and interdependence.” He learned that all conservation measures must be exhausted before engaging in war. He said Greenspan said the war in Iraq is largely about oil. “Firesouls” (those who passionately promote sustainability) must oppose nuclear power. No more war! We have a choice. He showed a slide of a world in which people didn’t exist. Or we can choose to have a world where we remain a part of the eternal order. We have to get a grasp of our place in the universe. We must recapture this with some considerable passion.
Mr. Drerup stated this has been the finest conference he has been to – very stimulating. He loved Bernie and Mr. Cardinal. He concluded his speech saying that to move forward, we must work together as close as we can to drive this agenda. And ladies and gentlemen, will you please vote! Thank you.