‘Think Less………Act Locally’
The Rise of Localization
By Russell Precious
VPO note: the author refers to “localization” vs. “relocalization” because he doesn’t believe we’re returning to something that existed in the past, but rather moving towards something entirely new.
“The most personal reaction to landscape, to people, to ways of living, is that which is rooted in the local.” Wallace Stegner
In recent years it has been increasingly presumed that civilization was firmly entrenched on the path to some sort of nirvanic global village, a vision held equally by those representing both the ‘left’ and the ‘right’—albeit based on different principles and expected outcomes. The right viewed it more as an economic paradise of ever expanding markets and greater prosperity while the left saw it as a truly democratic world wide web of shared information and a diminishing gap between wealth and poverty.
Few have been willing to address the herd of elephants in the room that are poised to derail these presupposed outcomes. What are these elephants, and how did they (and we) get here?
The Dumpster of History: Back to the future
In 1995, Francis Fukuyama, an American political analyst and leading neo-conservative thinker published ‘The End of History’ in which he declared that democratic, free market Western philosophy had prevailed in human evolution to the point that there would be no further major historical changes–hence the ‘end of history’. Fukuyama’s limited and sweeping conclusions are representative of the propensity to be blinded by history. Seeing clearly in the midst of ones own cultural and historical conditioning is a rigorous skill that is not easily acquired.
We shortchange ourselves if we forget that things are in a perpetual state of change—we discover that to ignore the past is to ignore the future. Our history has been the laboratory of our evolution—a long procession of experiments—some successful, many not –as we humans have sought survival and stability in an often ominous universe. Given that most meaningful understanding comes from ‘wholeness’ it is important to recognize that wholeness is a temporal dimension as much as a spatial one. Expanding the present moment to include ever larger sweeps of history and to make decisions that reference their future impact (acting in accordance with the next seven generations for instance, as was the way of the Iroquois confederacy) is to access the intelligence that can inform appropriate decision making. If we have no understanding of the choices that have created this present moment, we will be ill equipped to grapple with the current crisis in human affairs.
The Gospel of More: ‘It’s the stupid economy stupid’
The long era of human expansion which has dominated our planet for nearly 500 years has been predicated on the assumption that there are no ‘limits to growth’. This premise is the fundamental underpinning of the pseudo science of economics and gradually became the defining attribute of western culture. We say ‘pseudo’ science because it is obvious to any whole systems thinker or biologist that this prevailing economic paradigm is really nothing more than an elaborate pyramid scheme. While one might more easily appreciate its validity at the time of Adam Smith, when the scale of human life was so much smaller, today it is a seductive and deceptive abstraction.
In the early centuries of European expansion, the need to secure ever increasing quantities of resources to maintain growth was the domain of nation states that battled one another to claim third world riches. The Western nations combined this imported wealth with their own resources to create extensive infrastructures in their own countries. The discovery of coal and oil that were applied in the 19th and 20th centuries respectively catapulted the whole process into a period of hyper growth. But something had been added to the mix that removed some measure of checks and balances: the CORPORATION.
Corporations, which in themselves were created as a structure to pool capital for large scale business ventures (and were regulated) over time morphed into trans-national entities that no longer had allegiance to anyone save their legal obligation to generate wealth for their shareholders.
With no national or moral responsibility to impede their appetite, local economies were now dismantled in the name of the ‘law of comparative advantage’ (i.e. free trade) leaving them vulnerable to a host of variables over which they had little or no input or control.
As the multi nationals scoured the world for an ever diminishing supply of natural resources, they concurrently found that the ‘developing’ world offered a growing marketplace for the goods and services they were producing, not to mention a marketplace that could be conveniently used for cigarettes, drugs, pesticides and other products that had been banned or restricted in their own home markets. Increasingly, local economies found themselves reduced to cogs in the global marketplace. Free market fundamentalism had prevailed!
Exponential Growth…
In 1973 the Club of Rome (a global think tank and catalyst for change) completed its ground breaking study that simulated the likely future outcomes of the world economy. They looked at the consumption rate of non renewable resources using early computer modelling based on a technique called ‘Systems Dynamics’ that identified operative feedback loops. Their document was titled ‘The Limits to Growth’ and identified ‘exponential growth’ as the operative principle that was driving accelerating rates of consumption. The image they presented was one of a species of lily pads that were known to double the surface area they covered every 24 hours. The picture revealed that if it takes 30 days for the lily pads to cover a particular pond, on the 29th day the pond is only ½ covered– as much change happened in the final 24 hours as in the previous 29 days. Population is another very good example of exponential growth It took until 1800 for the world population to reach 1 billion—today we add a billion people every 14 years. The conclusion is that change can happen very quickly and unexpectedly when exponential growth factors are operative.
The ‘Limits to Growth reached three conclusions: 1) Within 100 years the world would run out of non-renewables that make up the industrial base. 2) If the available resources were to be doubled, then pollution would become the constraining factor…and if somehow these two issues were addressed, then the additional population that this would support would in itself become the constraining factor. 3) Immediate limits on population and pollution and a cessation of economic growth were imperative. In a recent examination of the conclusions drawn by ‘The Limits to Growth’ which were vehemently challenged at the time as being exaggerated and fear-mongering, Mathew Simmons, the leading investment banker for the oil industry and leading authority on fossil fuel depletion, concluded in a careful review that he couldn’t find a single thing that they had predicted that wasn’t accurate.
Overshoot: The population bubble
In a nutshell, our exponential growth has catapulted us into a state that biologists refer to as ‘overshoot’. Overshoot is a situation in which a short term energy input allows for a particular species to multiply rapidly with no reference to the limitations of that input. The exponential growth of our human species was a direct outcome of fossil fuel inputs (coal, oil, and natural gas) that presented an extraordinarily form of concentrated and useable energy—millions of years of stored solar energy that could be consumed in a few short centuries.
Fossil fuels created the platform on which technology could evolve at an ever quickening pace, but although technology is often mistaken as being a form of energy, it is merely the means by which energy is deployed. Interestingly, our advances in technology and the resulting efficiency have only contributed to the rapid exploitation and consumption of resources. More than any other contributing factor to ‘overshoot’ was the application of oil and natural gas (and the technology they spawned) to agriculture and the production of food—culminating in the so called ‘green revolution’ of the post WW II era.
Our pollution, mega cities, suburban sprawl, shopping centres, interstate highways, transportation, military might, and globalization are but a few of the outcomes of our overshoot—all predicated on an endless supply of cheap energy inputs and not realizing that fossil fuels were a one time ‘gift’ with no comparable alternative.
Tipping points
“To everything there is a season” as the book says and it seems that we are about to change season. There is an ever increasing torrent of very competent analyses and writings that chronicle the rapid changes that are now upon us………appearing at a time when it was assumed that the perfect marriage of democracy and free market fundamentalism would lead to global prosperity. While there are those who have been tracking these emerging trends for years, it is the exponential factor and negative feedback loops that have catapulted so many of them into public view. All of these factors underpin the necessity for an urgent and radical shift in our understanding and activity. It is they that are setting the stage for the resurgence of a much more local focus. Below is a quick review of the core ‘tipping points’ that will move us out of necessity to a much greater degree of localization.
*Energy depletion: The application of fossil fuels to human civilization underpins nearly every ‘tipping point’ discussed below. As stated above, the application of oil and natural gas to agriculture was the catalyst for amazing growth in food production and hence population growth and in due time the trigger for global warming and climate change. Leading experts now agree that we have already reached (or will in a few short years) ‘peak oil’–the point at which half of the world’s oil reserves (the best quality and easiest to extract) have been consumed. While the demand for fossil fuels continues to grow– economists still forecast an increase of nearly 50% by 2030– it is already unlikely that there
is any surplus capacity. Lester Brown concludes “the peaking of world oil production raises questions more difficult than any since civilization began.”
*Population growth: We currently add 200,000 people (net increase) to the planet every day– that’s 70 million a year and the equivalent of a not so small city……..every day! And we are no ordinary primates. John Livingston (Canada’s pre-eminent biologist and producer of David Suzuki’s ‘The Nature of Things”) calls us the ‘rogue primate’—our capacity to store information and produce tools has given us a super human capacity to inflict damage on our environment—what we call ‘progress’. While population growth is still significantly greater in the developing countries, the per capita rate of consumption is much higher in the ‘developed’ world. One can easily conclude that the propensity of Third World nations to model their emerging cultures on ours really puts the onus on us to reinvent ourselves rapidly. It really does come down to some notion of “living simply so others may simply live”.
*Food: As of the middle of March 2008, the world’s supply of wheat—about five week’s worth—is the lowest in about 50 years. We now have gas stations competing with supermarkets for the same basic food commodities, and the increased cost of basic foodstuffs – driven by oil prices significantly higher than in the past — is rippling through the marketplace, particularly in the poorer nations where the margins were slim to begin with. In the US, ethanol refineries that are scheduled to be up and running this year could consume upwards of 1/3 of the American corn harvest driving prices to all time highs, and this continues to be encouraged by subsidies from the US government. One estimate has it that a tank of ethanol for a standard SUV will feed a person in the developing world for a year. In addition, the emerging middle classes in much of Asia are migrating up the food chain and demanding more grain intensive meat and dairy products. MacDonalds goes global—but it’s not exactly the kind ‘of break today’ that will benefit the developing world.
*Water: Water is disappearing at an alarming rate as aquifers are depleted, lakes and rivers run dry and glaciers recede at an alarming speed. While 70% of water is used for agriculture, intense urbanization and industrial growth are competing fiercely for the same resources. From the suburbs of Denver to the cities of northern China, water is being steadily diverted from agriculture, placing growing strains on the world’s food supply. Critical water shortages are being felt worldwide, some of the hardest hit areas being southern India, Pakistan, Australia, northern China, south-western and south-eastern United States, northern Africa, Mexico and most of the Middle East. Climate change is the emerging variable in our water supply as predictable weather patterns are no longer the norm.
*Climate Change: one elephant that could no longer be concealed. Even the Republican presidential candidates this Fall were all claiming to drive Priuses and using compact fluorescent lights bulbs. Multinational efforts to discredit global warming were suddenly overcome by an inconvenient truth. Automobiles and China’s voracious appetite for coal generated electricity are still among the biggest culprits driving CO2 emissions, not to mention Alberta’s tar sand operations, which make meeting Canada’s Kyoto targets challenging. The most shocking news has been the rapid melting of both the Arctic and Antarctic Ice fields, defying the most aggressive computer projections. And now in British Columbia, the pine beetle infestation, which has destroyed 130 square hectares of forest, is releasing massive amounts of CO2. At an EU meeting in Brussels in March 2008 to discuss climate change, much of the focus was on the likely wave of environmental immigrants that would descend upon Europe. As the German representative, Dirk Messner, shared, “Climate change has been addressed until very recently as an environmental problem……………but dangerous climate change will result in a destabilization process around the world.”
*The 6th Great Extinction: Ecosystems under stress (oceans, lakes, rivers, forests, grasslands, and the atmosphere) has resulted in an alarming rate of species extinction– the largest loss of life in 50 million years. Harvard biologist, Edward Wilson, summarizes our current situation: “Science and technology, combined with a lack of self understanding and a Paleolithic obstinacy, brought us where we are today. The constraints of the biosphere are fixed. The bottleneck through which we are passing is real. It should be obvious to anyone who is not in a euphoric delirium that whatever humanity does or
does not do, Earth’s capacity to support our species is approaching the limit. From 1970 to 1995, the World Living Index fell 30% and has since accelerated to 3% per year. When we destroy ecosystems and extinguish species, we degrade the greatest heritage this planet has to offer and thereby threaten our own existence.” Similarly, Chief Seattle’s oft quoted words: “Man did not invent the web of life—he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.”
*Global economics—call it by any other name, but an economic system which ignores the biosphere and assumes there are no limits to growth is pathological. The emergence of ever more abstract ‘financial instruments’ as a way to maintain the illusion of prosperity has stripped inordinate ‘real’ wealth from the hands of the many and put it into the pockets of the few. The current desperate manoeuvring of the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department to avert a serious financial melt-down only serve to confirm the seriousness of the situation. With the core infrastructure of North America rated on average in the ‘D’ range (as rated by the American Core of Engineers), with the manufacturing infrastructure dismantled and outsourced to China, and with the lack of cheap and
abundant fossil fuels to rebuild it, many are calling for the most serious recession in a quarter of a century, with no quick fix in view.
*Geo-politics and failed states: The environmental and economic challenges referenced above have two distinct impacts on the world’s nation states. For the well established’ wealthy states, it places them in an increasingly hostile competition for diminishing resources. For weaker states, it threatens them with disintegration as those in charge lose the ability to provide basic services and stability for their people. Robert Kaplan describes the roots of this evolution in his book ‘The Coming Anarchy’. From a different perspective, Samuel Huntington in his ‘The Clash of Civilizations’ suggests that the
challenges of the future will be fought between the world’s distinct civilizations as has been increasingly exemplified by Western conflicts with Muslim countries. A great source of obvious tension is the American need for fossil fuels and the bulk of those reserves being situated in the Middle East where there is a growing degree of hostility.
*China: a very big canary in the coal mine. China is trying to accomplish in several decades what took the Western world several centuries to achieve–regretfully based on the same economic and earth destroying principles. China is the straw that is breaking the camel’s back–now consuming more of the planet’s basic resources (except for oil) than the United States. China’s double digit economic growth would have her economy double in the next 7 years—an inconceivable impact on the worlds resources. And yet China is hailed as the economic wonder of the world. Having outsourced much of the West’s
manufacturing capacity (not to mention pollution) the world is pretty much dependent on China for most consumer goods, and yet China is plagued by water shortages, energy issues, diminishing agricultural output , political instability and pollution beyond belief. China’s wholesale adoption of westernization highlights the serious flaws in the economic model we have taken to be synonymous with progress.
*Pandemics: Nothing confirms the reality of the ‘web of life’ more than the power of the tiniest living organisms to impact an entire ecosystem. After all, we eventually discovered how powerful the smallest building blocks of creation are when we split the atom. Jared Diamond skilfully explains the role of micro-organisms in the evolution of our species in his best-selling ‘Guns, Germs and Steel’. The exposure to different germs (originating mostly from domesticated animals) wrought havoc and suffering on humanity at many times in the past, while at the same time building our immune systems. The First Nations peoples of North America were the victims of exotic viruses brought from the old world to which they were not adapted. The last global pandemic—the global flu virus of 1918 — killed more people than the world war it followed. Recently we have benefited from the wonder drugs of Western medicine, but many of these drugs are comparable to the use of pesticides in agriculture which have a short term benefit and a longer term weakening of immunity. Medical experts assert that we are due for another pandemic—there has been an on-going struggle these past several years to contain continuous outbreaks of the bird flu virus, H5N1. This is not to minimize the current travesty of AIDS, the resurgence of tuberculosis or the western epidemics of cancer and diabetes.
The solution: Localization
The unwillingness of otherwise intelligent people to look at the obvious is always hard to comprehend; one might be forced to evoke Carl Jung’s observation that people can only handle so much reality. Some combination of ignorance and denial seem to be at play supported by two generations of unparalleled abundance and ‘progress’. Despite this endemic blindness however, there are a growing number of people who suggest that the road to some form of salvation—or perhaps salvage—lies in the very antithesis to globalization. Hence the rise of ‘localization’ as an alternative road map for the future. While one might assume that there will continue to be a place for some form of large scale ‘global’ undertakings, localization invites engagement at the local level where one is most intimately connected, thus laying the foundation for both a dynamic and thriving community and a more authentic sense of self.
Localization proposes an urgent, voluntary contraction rooted in that which is most local. It calls for both a collective contraction and a personal contraction— a realignment of our core values–as much psychological as material.
Localization is both an antidote and a pro-biotic. It is an ‘antidote’ because it addresses the prevailing spirit of the times (the ‘zeitgeist’) which has shaped our thinking for several hundred years……….the ethos of endless growth and expansion. It is a ‘pro-biotic’ because it presents a new focus, a new model and the tools that lead us to a place of basic sanity in which human beings can find a more appropriate place in creation.
Localization asks us to re-examine the core attributes that constitute a vital human culture in the context of the larger biosphere. The evolution to ever larger forms of social organization—culminating ultimately in ‘globalization’–saw a steady growth in the assumption that citizenship guaranteed a plethora of rights—rights that have led to an ever greater degree of dependency.
Localization turns this around and would have us engage our lives with a primary focus on responsibilities-you might say ‘unconditioned responsibility’ played out on a scale that one can wrap ones mind (and ones arms) around. It shifts our perception from a world increasingly abstract and virtual to one that is actual. It reminds us that we are but one biological species in a biosphere which is both extraordinarily complex and totally interdependent. It asks us to address the human ignorance that has generated the challenges that are now upon us and to address the equally all-pervasive fear that underlies much of our behaviour.
