Space Evaders

Ask Umbra on ungreen roommates 5

Send your question to Umbra!

Q. Dear Umbra,

I would like to reduce the amount of energy that my household uses as much as possible.  But I have a problem with my roommate. She refuses to use CFLs. She gets upset when I turn off phantom loads, like the power supply for her laptop computer, even if it is during the overnight periods when we are all asleep ... she will insist on deliberately leaving lights on in rooms that are not being used for several hours or when no one is at home. She will turn on an electric space heater and then open a window directly above it.

When I try to discuss these issues with her she simply labels me as “fascist.” She is an otherwise rational and progressive individual who has worked and volunteered for women’s rights and against social injustices ... I work helping organizations and individuals reduce energy consumption and switch to renewables.  So it is especially embarrassing that my household has such high consumption.  And the fact that someone who is progressive is so resistant to change makes me rather negative about getting society as a whole to move to more conservation. Any advice on how I can influence my roommate to cut back?

Rob B.
B.C., Canada

A. Dearest Rob,

woman sticking tongue outOh yeah? Well here’s what I think of your conservation.Living closely with another person is hard. In previous attempts to sound Wise and Learned about human relations, the Royal We have suggested automated conservation devices (light timers etc.), negotiation, politeness, financial incentives, and probably several other optimistic methods of improving overall roommate environmentalism. Perhaps one thing We have not yet suggested is finding a new roommate, one chosen solely on household conservation grounds.

Today I have two new ideas. The first is, perhaps you are annoying. It’s something to consider. You don’t sound annoying to me—you sound reasonable, and like you’ve thought these things through—but it may be that your negotiation methods are patronizing, offensive, or somehow inconsiderate. Or bad in some other adjectival sense. Personally, I find the idea that my household maintenance requests could be rude quite laughable. Yet, oddly, I’ve had more than one roommate find fault with me, and despite my stature as a Royal We, I still find aluminum cans in the garbage from time to time. (Ahem! You know who you are!) When one’s roommate is aggravating, one tends to avoid acceding to his/her requests. Try a little self-reflection and see if it gets you anywhere new. Just a tiny example to get you started: if you turned off my laptop power source, I might feel you were messing around with my stuff and might become a wee bit violent.

The second, related idea is to just give up on your roommate and instead go straight to further self-improvement. Turning out the lights after she leaves a room is no hardship. As for the rest ... are you as good as you can be? Not just in terms of home conservation, but as a roommate? Are you a decent feminist? Do you support her struggles against social injustice? The relationship of respect for each other’s concerns needs to be equal. And in my life there is a lot of room for individual improvement before I started “ahem”-ing in the agora. Plus it just takes so much energy to be annoyed at someone.

Lastly, this whole habit of using “fascist” as a synonym for “jerk” drives me up a wall. I realize there is quite a bit of debate about what fascism actually is, in political terms, but there is not so much vagueness as to make it an accurate description of an individual requesting electricity conservation. Even progressives calling Bush a proto-fascist drove me nuts. Bush was something else, something uniquely (we hope) American, but he was not a fascist. And you, Rob, are not a fascist. I don’t even believe it’s possible to be a fascist alone. Get some friends together and pledge loyalty to your communal house, then go attack other communal houses in the name of your house, using CFLs. Then we can talk.

Proto-eco-fascistically,
Umbra

 

 

Yours is to wonder why, hers is to answer (or try). Send your green-living questions to Umbra.

Umbra Fisk is Grist Research Associate II, Hardcover and Periodicals Unit, floors 2B-4B.

Related Stories

Advertisement
Advertisement
  1. Alida Antonia Cornelius's avatar

    Alida Antonia Cornelius Posted 12:05 pm
    10 Jun 2009

    CFL's are bad. They have MERCURY in them. They have to be taken to HAZARDOUS WASTE RECYCLING CENTERS. LED's are a better choice!And you should never mess with someone else's computer...Try this...make a wager with her that if she follows your suggestions, you can lower you electric bill by so much money.I go to my electric box and turn the breaker off to all things like my dishwasher when I am not using it. I turn my hot water heater off at the electric box on weekends if I am not home. I turn the garbage disposal off at the breaker box and hardly every use it. Try looking at your breaker box and see what things you can turn off at the source. That can save money also.Get a thermostat which turns the heat or air-conditioning down when you are not home.Get a time for your hot water heater.Those are some things which might make up for the energy she is wasting.(please don't fall for the CFL marketing ploy....they can make your cat or any pet get terminally ill if you break one next to them...it happened to one of my friends.)

    Permalink

  2. inkedbuddha Posted 1:24 pm
    10 Jun 2009

    I don't see how someone could be "rational and progressive" and then label you a fascist for wanting to conserve energy (no matter how annoying, or not, you happen to be about it). I think Umbra, in this case, is too soft in her answer. While we can all stand to do some "self-reflection," I'd recommend finding a roommate with whom you have more aligned values. Who knows - not living together (and thus not seeing her waste, and getting improperly and rudely called a fascist) might do wonders for your friendship!

    Permalink

  3. kristen510's avatar

    kristen510 Posted 1:25 pm
    10 Jun 2009

    I used to get in shouting matches with my roommate because of this very thing.. lights on all day, tons of recyclables in the trash, and on and on. After having gone through roughly 12 roommates in my life I can say that the overarching problem with people like this roomate is that they have no consideration for other people or anything that does not have an adverse effect on their own immediate situation. My roommate was wealthy, for instance, and thus she figured that she didn't need to pay her share of the electric bill on time because I was the name on the account; she couldn't get in trouble. Even though I was always conspicuously absent from the house (because I was hard at work), she never managed to figure out that I might not be as well off as she (read: her parents) was. She also learned that if she waited long enough, other people would clean up her pile of dishes for her, because we needed to eat off of them.It's tough to get through to people like this, but the best way to approach it would be to hit them in the pocketbook. Explain to them that their habits are costing them money. Make them a spreadsheet if you have to. I ended up charging my roommate double her share of PGE because she let her boyfriend live at our house for free and all he did all day was watch TV. If they see the difference in cost between your habits and their spendthrift energy usage, and are forced to pay for it, they will either change their ways or get fed up and move out.

    Permalink

  4. PermieWriter's avatar

    PermieWriter Posted 12:22 pm
    14 Jun 2009

    So when the SHTF and you need to look for a new roommate, make sure you highlight your eco habits in your ad, post your ad at your local greenie hang-outs, etc. It's way easier to deal with a like-minded person to start with than trying to reform someone who clearly has affluenza. Or move into an eco-village type place.

    Permalink

Add a Comment

You are not logged in. Thus, you cannot post a comment. If you have an account, log in. If you don't have an account, well, by all means go make one! Meet you back here in five.

Hello, Visitor!    Why not register?

Viewed
More
Commented
More
Advertisement