Clothesline ban no longer hanging in the wind

The clothesline ban in Ontario won’t be hanging around anymore. That province’s Energy Minister, Gerry Phillips, has announced the province will be banning the ban, a move that will, no doubt, delight environmentalists and birds all across the province.

One does have to wonder, however, with today’s increased environmental consciousness, why it would have taken this long to peg this particular law as problematic. The clothesline ban was initially implemented for aesthetic reasons. The presence of clotheslines in one backyard, according to this 2007 article, drew complaints from a number of residents, saying it reminded them of urban slums.

It begs the question, though, that if aesthetics were reason alone to implement the law to begin with, what of the other optical undesirables in our society, like microwave towers, ad-plastered bus stops, and billboards. What of garishly coloured newspaper boxes that line street corners in jagged-angled rows – or even worse, how their contents litter city streets and parks at the end of the day?

The point is that a law which was originally rooted in aesthetics, but that hampered efforts to conserve energy has been hung out to dry. And that means something, even if it is a little late in the game. It means that as a society we know that beauty is subjective and the need to conserve energy is widely regarded as truth. Maybe only some of us know that beauty is negotiable, transient and sometimes superficial but at least most of us know that climate change isn’t.

More information on the ban removal.