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By Maria Farcas

Oh yes, there were idyllic times in the long relationship between the Romanian people and the environment. Schoolbooks would glorify it: from ancient times, we were told, nature had been our ever trustworthy ally, friend and protector of my people against hardships, poverty, vicious invaders. Forests were the best hiding place from bloodthirsty Turks, rivers the most efficient barrier, mountain springs had the purest water. Romanian ancestors lived in perfect harmony with nature, ploughing the bountiful land and consuming only what they needed. Everything was biodegradable, from leather laced moccasins to ceramic jugs. Fertilizer was manure-based and some kind of hard pumpkin was the closest thing to plastic.Nevertheless, reality was far from what was written in the schoolbooks. Somewhere along the thorny road to industrialization this pastoral liaison deteriorated significantly. It was time to create the new man: the urban worker – ideally a welder, a miner or a metalworker; diligently sweating to build the golden era of socialism. Romanians’ brotherhood with nature became passé in the rush of erecting power plants and industrial mastodons. It was left aside, in school books and dusty hand-painted billboards on the forests’ verge, only to be revived for nationalistic purposes. There we were, in the middle of the socialist hysteria, obsessed with the “record production” of steel to tractors to wheat and the pipes of the blast furnaces would spit out wave upon wave of poison; waste would be thrown away with abandon. The authorities didn’t care to notice how the environment, our old ally, simply and literally blacked out here and there. In Copsa Mica you couldn’t hang laundry outside. In no time, it would turn black with sulfur dioxide and lead. In this infamous most-polluted-city-in-Europe, pollution still walks arm-in-arms with death.

Everything belonged to everybody; vaguely and generally, therefore to nobody in particular. This was the essence of communism. At a macro level this translated into hugely inefficient industrial centers, in which the waste of energy and materials was notorious. Ironically, this went hand in hand with a senseless rationing system – of essentials such as water, gas and food – that had nothing to do with environmental protection. Sadly, it traumatized the collective conscience, so that notions such as moderation, energy saving and recycling remained for ever associated with scarcity, shortages and lack. Even though there were only two hours per day of hot water, everywhere were broken pipes which would endlessly blast out water. There were no plastic bottles or bags but garbage was thrown in with the sewage and cars were washed in rivers. Ecology and its values were blissfully ignored, as strange to Romanians as some far-off UFOs, mere whims of the developed and “stuffed” capitalist countries.

Communism fell and we rushed avidly through the open gates of the capitalist heaven with nature, full of hope for reconciliation, treading softly behind us. Ah, the mirage of the appealing, colorful packages, of sleek aerodynamic cars, of the illusion of wealth granted by a plastic bag with every purchase. We were desperately eager to enter the era of consumption. Unfortunately, consumerism wasn’t delivered with a Green Instruction Manual. Once again, ecology didn’t make it into the schoolbooks, in which nature remained solely as decorum.

Under European Union pressure, rules and regulations were dutifully adopted on paper, without first seeding the essential awareness of environmental issues. Some years ago, expensive new waste bins adorned Bucharest’s railway station, in an admirable but futile attempt to teach Romanians how to separate garbage into categories. The three differently colored compartments have remained unobserved until this very day. Global warming is a distant threat that western countries, which are, after all, the big consumers, seem to be frightened of. Its tenebrous cloud couldn’t possibly wrap us up too.

There is this incredible obtuseness in understanding that every single private gesture does effect nature: in seeing the invisible links between superfluous dissipation of paper in our modern lives and trees being cut, and floods sweeping away everything in their way; more and more green spaces being sacrificed to more and more buildings; the proud accumulation of cars and the quality of air in our cities. Simple connections are not made.

There is this enduring assumption that the environment has been created to serve us. Always there, always helpful. This is what my generation and my parents’ generation had been told throughout school years. It never crossed anybody’s mind that the relationship was supposed to be mutual. Our old eternal friend, our legendary brother is unquestionably able to regenerate itself, lick its wounds, swallow some more car emissions and plastic trash and dutifully continue to feed, oxygenate and protect us. A totally erroneous attitude that only aggravates the present lack of collective conscience about environment as a public asset, belonging to everybody. This is the noxious cocktail of a defective mentality that has to understand, ironically, a green “communist” principle: “We are all part of the environment and what we do to the environment, we do to ourselves.” Greenpeace.org.

By Maria Farcas