WHERE OR WHEN

                        REAL ESTATE JOURNAL
                          WHERE OR WHEN
 
                  By Bill Barksdale, GRI Realtor®

The haunting Rodgers and Hart song, Where Or When, muses on the prospect that the singer may have existed here before but can’t recall where or when. How would you live if you knew you had to return to a world that was the way you left it? Even if you don’t return, people will live in the world you are creating now, your children, others. Everything you do leaves its mark, creates the future.

Would you rent a house or apartment if it looked the way you left it when you moved out? If it looked that way would you pay full-price for the rent or expect a discount? Maybe you left it in great shape and expect to rent the same. I’ve seen many houses that tenants left in terrible condition costing the owner thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars, to repair. You wonder why rents sometimes seem high? That’s a big reason. 

What about pollution? Many people are very cavalier about polluting, dumping chemicals, not tuning up their car or truck so it belches out toxic fumes, dripping oil or antifreeze (which animals lick up and die from). Careless burning of materials, including plastics, making our air a toxic brew. Cigarettes, what can I say? If you want to kill yourself that’s your business but don’t kill me too – and by the way Pick Up Your Butt!

Plastic is a huge problem. This petroleum product takes thousands of years to breakdown, yet many people think little of carelessly throwing it away instead of recycling or using something less toxic. I recently bought a pie at a local store. After I ate the pie I was left with a large “clam-shell” plastic bottom & lid plus an aluminum pie plate. I cleaned it all up and returned it to the store manager with a note that, although I enjoyed the pie I wouldn’t be purchasing another one unless the packaging became more environmentally friendly.

There are certainly plenty of substitutes for plastic packaging. There are paper and cardboard to-go containers that break down quickly. Most egg cartons are made of paper. The pie could have been packaged in a cardboard container with a thin plastic window. At least most of it would dissolve quickly or be reused/ recycled.

How about making it a habit to have your own reusable to-go container in the car or with you when you go out to eat? Then you wouldn’t waste one that you will throw away when you get home.

Hundreds of thousands of jobs could be created in rust-belt, coal areas and all over our country simply by converting facilities to recycling centers or clean, safe energy production. It only makes sense to melt plastic down and reuse it, not throw it into the ocean or bury it in a dump. How stupid can you be when you could be creating jobs instead of wasting oil/plastic that can have a new and useful life? Not big enough corporate profits for a handful of greedy people? What’s more important, short-term profits for a few or your life?

I was born in Portland Oregon. Was there recently helping family move away. When I was a kid Portland was a pretty good place to live, except all the fish died in the polluted Willamette River. The State and City of Portland cleaned it up. Now it’s getting polluted again. Portland air is filthy. What used to take 15 minutes on the freeway now takes an hour, usually more, in bumper-to-bumper, suffocating traffic. Portland has a rich cultural life. Love that about it. Would I want to live there? No. Way 
overpopulated/polluted. Watch out L.A. Other cities are catching up with your dismal living conditions.

Right now we’re seeing the burning of the Amazon rain forest, also known as the Lungs of the World because that forest cleans huge volumes of polluted air. Plants do that, or didn’t you know? Why the destruction? So a few can make short-term profits from methane-belching cattle and mining. Many of the world’s life-saving drugs come from plants found in the Amazon forest. When those plants are gone, so are solutions to many health problems.

Recently a news source revealed that a major American retailer was   selling synthetic wood look-alike flooring made in China that violated U.S. standards for toxic chemicals. These products were knowingly mislabeled so they could be sold in the U.S. These products, it was discovered, emit deadly fumes in your home.

Endless war is a lousy job creation strategy. Not the world I want to come back to. Do you?

On the bright side, I recently visited Florence Oregon. Their old town is one of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. I interviewed a woman involved with a revitalization group there who has convinced a reluctant city council that letting art lead the way to a
prosperous reinvention of the town is worthwhile. It’s working. The Florence old town is vibrant and filled with people who are enjoying it, spending their money there and creating jobs. Talk about a productive and life-affirming idea!

If you have another life to live in this world, or even thinking about generations to come, what kind of world do you want to contribute to?

As Lorenz Hart’s lyric says in Where Or When, “Things you do come back to you”.

Bill Barksdale was a 2016 inductee into the Realtor® Hall of Fame. He is an agent at Coldwell Banker Mendo Realty Inc. He can be reached at 707-489-2232, bark@pacific.net