What Can We Learn From Other Countries?

Bob Keller is a retired history professor who has worked on local Greenways campaigns. He currently serves on the boards of Whatcom Land Trust and the Dudley Foundation.

Americans consider themselves world leaders, perhaps the leader of the world. We produce brilliant ideas, successful industries, democratic politics and government that we expect others to adopt, as they have in many cases.

But halt. Think for a moment. Does it also work in the opposite direction? How often have Americans adopted and practiced superior ways found in different countries? How often do we concede that we too could borrow from others just as they can learn from us? In what follows, I will describe practices we might consider adopting from modern Germany in various areas such as transportation, politics, personal well-being.

After retiring, my wife and I lived eight different times near Freiburg, Germany, in a small Black Forest village called Buchenbach (which translates as “Beech Creek”). We keep returning there to share the autumns with friends, to hike the trails, to enjoy the music, and experience this lovely landscape between the Rhine to the west and headwaters of the Danube to the east. Buchenbach’s population numbers less than 1,000 persons, with Freiburg exceeding 180,000, which is approximately the population of our entire Whatcom County. What have we learned as guest observers in this special place?

Dogged Animal Ethics

In southern Germany, people welcome dogs almost everywhere: in homes, hotels, 5-star restaurants, buses, trains, bookstores, city hall. Canines are unwelcome in butcher shops, graveyards, grocery stores, churches, and places selling fine China. Typically German, these dogs accept strict training, especially true of the professional Sheperds. We once watched a single dog guide several hundred sheep down a highway. Given that level of skill and discipline, why not allow dogs a little train space? When our husky would return from Germany, he never understood why he couldn’t board an Amtrak train in Bellingham or a Greyhound bus bound for Seattle.

Elections

We hardly flinched while living through three German national elections. Campaigns there begin sometime in August with no primary buildup. Parliamentary candidates will battle vigorously, spouting intense party rhetoric for just five weeks; then the people vote (often a 90 percent turnout), winners are declared, and the attention of citizens can again turn to work, family, governing, planting, music, teaching and recreation. As far as I know, no one has died from campaign exhaustion or forever rejected politics as boring — not bad for a country that once had kaisers, dukes and lords, then suffered one of the most brutal dictatorships of modern times. Such efficiency can prevail because Germans do not have to deal with the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Transportation

Americans can learn from Germans about how to travel more intelligently. Some Germans drive as much as we do, and usually much faster. A friend once commented, “Germans would drive to the toilet if they could.” Nonetheless we have lived and traveled many months in and out of the Black Forest region without once driving a car, thanks to public transportation systems. In exploring Switzerland and France, we could take our lucky husky dog along with us via train or bus (incidentally, a great way to fool customs inspectors into thinking you are local).

Germans may drive fast, up to 150 km/hour, but their autobahns flow more smoothly than ours because freeway exits and entries occur only two or three times when cruising past large cities, whereas I-5 through Bellingham, a small city by German standards, has seven exits. I can’t count high enough to record the number of exits littering Seattle.

Another adoptable model involve transport of children. Our community in Buchenbach has no school buses, so to meet that daily demand, they dispatch extra public transit buses in the morning and afternoon, collecting school kids of all ages. This may require the rest of us to line up at bus stops ten minutes earlier, but it saves public money.

Another innovation that Seattle once attempted and failed are auto frei (no car) zones in large cities. Freiburg forbids private automobiles in the center of the city, including around the public market and the cathedral. At first local businesses protested, but if one tried to revoke that ban today, downtown merchants might take to the streets in armed revolt. On weekdays, pedestrians fill the streets; on weekends, people on foot clog the avenues and squares, safely shopping, buying, begging, talking, and listening to street musicians. Compare that to dodging cars in Fairhaven on a sunny Saturday.

As in most of Europe, bicycle travel is popular in Germany. Bike protection from autos is one reason, thanks to designated lanes and paths. Germans also enforce bicycle laws much more rigorously than we do (we hardly enforce them at all). Police write tickets in the Baden-Wurttemberg region for lack of proper equipment as well as moving violations such as running traffic lights. Student bicycles may be inspected and fined on campuses and school grounds.

Admittedly, a key factor for any transportation system is population density. An average of seven Germans lives in the same amount of space that one American would occupy. When more people have less land, more efficient transport should result.

Plastic Grocery Bags

We found few plastic bags in use when we first arrived in 1995, and you will find even fewer today. Meanwhile, bravo for Bellingham for banning them! We’ve copied that practice.

Energy

Our small German neighborhood contains 53 buildings, including homes, apartments, machine shops, cabinet makers, and a chapel. In 2012, 17 of these units (32 percent) had solar panels on their roofs. Walk your Whatcom neighborhood making a similar survey. And while thinking in numbers, ask why the United States remains one of the few nations in the world that has not adopted the metric system? Our inches, feet, yards and miles compute much more awkwardly than the centimeters and kilometers found elsewhere.

Matrimony

The legal or civil part of German marriage occurs in a courthouse or government agency. No clergy, no rabbi, no religious ceremony. Weddings for those who desire a ceremony take place in a church, synagogue or mosque with officiants of the couple’s choice. One can be joined in matrimony without a wedding or, I suppose, be religiously wed without government status or sanction. It’s called separation of church and state.

Lumber

When we first arrived 18 years ago, the maximum allowable clear-cut area in the Black Forest and on public or private land could not exceed five hectares (12 acres). Today it has been reduced to one hectare (2.4 acres). Selective, sustained-yield logging of forests is done using horses or tractors along narrow roads, yet Germans may well produce and export more wood per capita than Americans. For the environmental impact of our obsolete forest practices, simply view the nearby hillsides when driving north on I-5 from Mount Vernon.

U.S. Advantages

Not all German practices excel over ours. I could create a tally as long as the preceding list where Europeans today have learned from us, an example being their recent abandonment of monoculture tree farms, at least in the Black Forest. They still struggle with acid rain. The habit of discarding used toilet paper alongside trails could cease, thank you. More than here (based on personal observation, not careful study), the smoking habits of German teenagers, especially girls, should inspire stronger social pressure to quit. Another negative German condition involves the price of gasoline at the pump. During our 2011 stay, a gallon of regular gas cost about $7.50 U.S., down from a previous high of $9.00 U.S.. However, a good portion of this extra expense is probably siphoned off as tax to support public transportation.

Every nation can consider possible reforms by studying what others do better. That includes §s.