Future Part Three

In some ways there are reasons to think now is the worst of times. We have access to more bad news than ever before, and it can seem overwhelming. There is some genuine bad news, such as resistant strains of diseases or the troubling instances of extreme weather. But by and large, conditions are better for more people today than they ever have been.

Lets compare the essentials of water, food, and shelter now and in 1900. Water in 1900 generally came from a well or a rudimentary water supply system. Wells could be contaminated easily, and the water system hadn't improved much on Roman engineering. There were no standards for water treatment. While some people still rely on wells or bottled water, most people get their water from a municipal system. Disasters like Walkerton aside, municipal water is carefully treated and tested, with the distribution system undergoing regular maintenance. Potable water is essentially free, with each person able to use as much water as their taps supply. This is shockingly wasteful, and must change, but that's another column.

Food in 1900 was seasonally limited, and what wasn't grown locally could be expensive. One might argue that the produce was much better quality because the artificial fertilizers and preservatives weren't used much or hadn't been invented in their current forms. If you look at turn of the century photographs, you don't see many fat people. My own grandmother can remember when people didn't get as much food as they would have liked. If it was available at all it was expensive. Now, in any reasonably sized city you can buy fresh food from anywhere in the world at what are historically cheap prices. A market only a few kilometers from my house has fruit I had never heard of, let alone tasted. We have access to more food, and food choices in markets and restaurants than most of us know what to do with. Our bodies are genetically programmed to eat now, since it might not be there later. As a result, obesity and the attendant health problems are one of the leading causes of premature death. Problems with packaged food are rare. Most of us pick what we want off the market shelves and assume it will be fine. My mother sifted flour in case of weevils, and cracked eggs one at a time into a bowl so she could check them before cooking.

At first glance, and in terms of sheltering people from the elements, homes haven't changed much in 100 years. Shingles, siding, and glass keep the outside out, and the inside in. But lets look closer. Heat was supplied by burning coal and relied on convection to move the warm air around. Lets not even think about how messy coal is. Modern homes are usually heated with some sort of forced air furnace using natural gas, propane, or oil as a fuel. The furnace turns itself on and off to keep the house within a few degrees of a set temperature. Apartment buildings usually use a form of hot water heating. Light would come from some form of fuel oil lamp, or maybe piped gas. Now, we flick a switch and get electric light as bright as we want, where we want, for as long was we want. Most homes weren't well insulated in 1900. Window panes and doors were drafty. Now homes are so well sealed we need to make provision for combustion air for the furnace.

While there are exceptions, most people now live more comfortably and with less thought about it than even the very wealthy did 100 years ago. Look at those old photographs again. Men weren't wearing an undershirt, shirt, wool vest, and wool suit jacket and pants just for show. People wore that just to stay warm in their own homes. Remember the stories and pictures of people wearing a night cap to bed? They did it to stay warm.

We don't really have to think about these necessities of life now, unless there is some extraordinary circumstance, like the 1998 ice storm in Eastern Canada and US. This frees us up to think about other things. next