The Sustainable Village works with many people living in remote areas and small-scale community developers in Third World countries: missionaries, relief organizations, and Peace Corp type groups for whom energy efficiency is a major consideration. When you produce your own power by means of solar electric, wind, micro-hydro, or gas generators, it becomes important to use that power efficiently or the results can be a negative impact on your lifestyle.

During the last few years, this same concern for efficiency has spread to many more people - people in the U.S. We have questions about the safety of nuclear power, greater awareness of environmental problems, rising costs of energy supplies, and concerns over long-term availability of resources - how we use our water, our electricity, our fuels, what kinds of products we buy and use. Answers to these questions point toward a kind of role-reversal: the industrial world can learn from the efforts and experience of developing countries.

Besides practical applications of appropriate technology, we might also learn from the psychological attitudes of people in developing countries. A person living in the US below the "poverty line" might be very miserable and depressed about their situation. A person in a developing country with the same income and material goods might be elated and very proud of their situation. Happiness may have less to do with our material circumstances than we normally believe. In fact belief in happiness from material possessions might be nourishing the growth of our environmental abuse.

We could question and redefine the meaning of "developing country" (cf. Arnie Ness). If "developing" means becoming like the US and Europe, we should think twice about helping people do that. The U.S. with less than 5% of the world's population consumes 25% of the world's energy each year, generates 15% of the the acid rain-causing sulfur dioxide emissions and 25% of the green house gases. The average U.S. family has 40 times the environmental impact as the average Indian family and 100 times that of the average Kenyan family.

We could redefine "developing" to mean becoming an ecologically wise culture that sustains and enhances the richness and diversity of life. Perhaps the U.S. could even become a "developing country" in this sense. Shared communication, openness, and respect can help people everywhere.

We could do less. We could learn to live a rich life in a simple and non-materialistic way. We could teach our children they don't need things to find happiness, that money has little to do with personal fulfillment. We could teach them the lessons of nature and point out the self-existing happiness in being and expressing who they are.

Where does pollution really start anyway? As with most things, it's easier to find fault in external organizations and other people than to see causes within ourselves. Perhaps pollution starts as a state of mind, an attitude toward the world and other people, an alienation and lack of respect for our experience. When we don't feel the value and intrinsic goodness in ourselves, in others, and in the natural world, even well-meaning actions can translate into eco-chauvinism and create a psychological pollution that grows into environmental pollution. Work for environmental causes, buying all the "right" products, and doing all the "ecologically correct" actions can become a kind of green materialism. When we find harmony and appreciation within ourselves, our actions spontaneously communicate respect and benefit the world.

Steve Troy