It turns out that fossil fuel is interfering even more actively with our happiness than Bill McKibben wrote in a recent issue of Mother Jones. The daily noise created by fossil-fueled machines—traffic, and my two pet peeves, leaf blowers and jet skis—are making humans cranky and chronically stressed out. A growing body of studies has shown that noise—even noise we think we are “used to”—triggers the body’s fight-or-flight instinct, depressing the immune system and taxing the heart.
The EPA has reported that “The idea that people get used to noise is a myth.” True, people are especially bothered by noises they neither accept nor control. But while your attitude about your neighbor’s leaf blower might affect your mood, you and the live-and-let-live neighbor across the street are likely to have the same elevated levels of stress hormones.
I’ve been hypothesizing since my stint teaching college some years ago that “the youth today” have a lower attention span than youth in my day. (I’m embarrassed to admit this because wondering what’s wrong with “the youth today” officially makes one old, but hell, I’m getting closer and closer to 40.) The ever-increasing noise threshold of modern life (along with the temptations of portable video games and TV) may be to blame:
Another insidious effect of noise is its cultivation of what scientists call “learned helplessness.” Children given puzzles in moderately noisy classrooms are not only more likely to fail to solve them but are also more likely to surrender early.
What’s more, people were less willing to stop and help one another when the noise of a lawnmower was present. There’s a sweeping critique of suburbia for you!
Of course, one person’s noise is another’s music. There’s no word in these studies about how to address that difference, but it is interesting that the noises most often cited as irritating were cars, traffic, lawnmowers, leaf blowers, car alarms, and sirens. Humans weren’t designed to deal with the noise engines make any more than the planet was prepared to accept huge discharges of the gases they pour out while they make them.
