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“NOT EVERYONE CAN MOVE TO THE COUNTRYSIDE” 275 efficient and sustainable.” Adequate modern technology is available to a large extent; more and more effective equipment and appliances are developed. What remains to be done is to replace the earlier, unsustainable energy sources and technologies with them. In the view of Emett and Nye, the reduction of energy consumption is primarily no longer a technical, but a cultural and political issue, and it is one of the tasks of EH to explore and understand the potential cultural motives behind this inevitable process. It is self-evident that EH rejects the thesis of the greater the energy consumption, the more advanced the culture, that it regards high energy consumption as a problem, and that it declares a smaller carbon footprint as its goal. The authors take a close look at the food issue as well. They point out that before the Industrial Revolution, cities were smaller and city-dwellers were provided with the necessary fresh food by the surrounding villages. Townhouses also generally had gardens and backyards for small livestock (poultry). Fresh food was available nearby. Industrialization changed all this radically: the fridge, deep-freezer, canned food, and long-distance transport possibilities (railways and steam ships) made it possible to transport food from faraway places and store it longer.’ All this entailed larger energy consumption. Monocultures evolved and specializations took off. This resulted in economically more efficient production. Today we know how all this affected the landscape, the species, and the natural environment, as well as human health. EH also joins the critique of contemporary consumption and offers useful approaches and interpretations. Moderate consumption, the use of locally produced food, and short supply chains are among the possible options (on this topic, see the chapter, Food Supply as a Global Challenge). Emett and Nye also emphasize that eating locally produced food is not only about the economy or energy, but also about the restoration of the sense of responsibility for one’s own place. A manifestation of this will be that inhabitants will look upon their city as an ecosystem and will frequent restaurants that rely on nearby food producers. (Emett — Nye 2017: 64). Treating a city as an ecosystem is of special importance — as Emett and Nye (among many others) are convinced — for their transformation into liveable and sustainable settlements (Emett — Nye 2017). Cities offer several possibilities, even in their current state: ecological studies and experiments are carried out there and they are the starting points of environmental activism. Some cities have entered the course of step-by-step or major, systematic changes (Ljubljana, Vienna, Frankfurt, Energy Cities), other cities are venues for grassroots initiatives (inner city ecovillages, community gardens, urban permaculture, climate-friendly settlements, Transition Towns, etc.). EH The tenet, “more energy consumption = more advanced society” has been disproven with examples such as East and West Germany: East Germany consumed more energy than West Germany, yet still the West German standard of living was higher; what is more, far more contamination was found in the Eastern part (Emett — Nye 2017: 48). Owing to forced industrialization, this was typical of the entire former socialist region (for Hungarian examples, see, among others, Borvendég — Palasik 2015; Pal 2017; Szirmai 1999). > Tt must be added that all this had a significant social impact. Thanks to the fridge and kitchenready food, women could take on jobs, which entailed a growing demand for creches and kindergartens, not to speak of the changes in social roles and dietary habits. (On this, see Schadt 2003; Zimmermann 2012)
