Claudia Ciobanu doesn't live in a mud hut. I mean, I do not know that for a fact, as aside from the fact that she writes for Inter Press Service (IPS), a mouthpiece for various environmental groups and their supporters, I know nothing about Miss Ciobanu. I would imagine, however, that like most Romanians she does not live in a mud hut, despite her latest article which puts forward the case for mud huts as a solution to Romania's housing crisis and to climate change. I would also guess that she doesn't want to ever actually live in a mud hut either.
So quite why she feels able to suggest that Romanian peasants start building mud huts en bloc is beyond me. I mean, if a mud hut is not good enough for her, why should it be good enough for anyone else?
I visit the Romanian countryside a lot. And yet in all my travels I have yet to come across a single peasant who actually wants to give up his or her wooden/brick house and exchange it for a mud hut. In fact, even those who do are pretty keen on moving into something a bit more modern, with heating, air conditioning, running water and reliable electricity.
As Rob Harris put it so well late last year on Spiked, let's ditch this nostalgia for mud.
