A New Take On Keepin’ Up With the Jones’
I got this data off the PECO website for my electric bill. I use less than half the electricity of the most efficient 20% of my neighbors! And 5 times less than all my neighbors.
Just think if we could turn around the “Keepin’ Up With the Jones'” competitive, jealous, acquisitive neighborly force into something more benevolent!
In the Philadelphia neighborhood where I now live, something kind of like that is happening with streetscape gardening and flowering window boxes popping up everywhere! They are proliferating and are quite beautiful.
There’s a local subscription service company called “Enliven” that does a nice job and it seems that as each neighbor acquires their services, then a nearby neighbor follows along. The result is a more pleasant streetscape. The motivation is NOT coming from a “broken windows” negative crime prevention perspective, but from the joy of creating and enjoying beauty.
While I loathe “incentives” and market forces, maybe PECO could provide an incentive for energy conservation by creating a competitive program where the most efficient 3 houses on a block got their electric free or at a deep discount and the homeowner could display something attractive, like the Enliven flower boxes do.
During the New Deal, there was something similar where local shopkeepers were encouraged to display the “Blue Eagle” emblem in their windows. Maybe make it a Green Eagle!
There needs to be more focus on creating ways to encourage solidarity, mutual support, and civic engagement.
Maybe we can tap into some of the less desirable aspects of our human nature to promote the public good and collective objectives, instead of selfish individual and invidious ends.