Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and The Durable Future
By BillMcKibben
Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility
By Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger
Review By Roger S. Gottlieb
THE ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS' impact on humanity in general, and global climate change in particular, cannot be simply read off from the bleak statistics that define them as physical events. No matter how many species disappear, glaciers melt, or droughts drive people into desperate poverty, our collective human response will depend, in part, on factors extrinsic to ocean water levels and percent of [CO.sub.2] in the atmosphere. Political views, moral values, and spiritual aspirations, many of which preexisted or function independently from our beliefs about the environment, will lead us in one direction or another.
These uncontroversial generalities are born out in the vivid contrast between Bill McKibben's Deep Economy and Break Through by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger; and, not surprisingly, in my assessment of their comparative worth. To this extreme leftist and critic of the spiritual bankruptcy of modernity, Break Through is in many ways a pretentious and superficial attempt to maintain as much of the current social order as possible, despite the looming catastrophes that result from our current regimes of production, consumption, and self-understanding. Deep Economy, by contrast, calls for deep changes in all these areas, and therefore my response to it is much more sympathetic.
There is, however, a signal irony which looms over authors and reviewer alike. The environmental crisis is so different from anything humanity has experienced before, involving such an overwhelming combination of technological, cultural, economic, and political factors, that, at best, the solutions we propose are only reasonably informed guesses, if not desperate hopes. Yet, it is rare for writers or reviewers to recognize that the order of the day calls for rather large doses of intellectual humility.
Break Through touts itself as a deep shift in environmental understanding. The authors reassure us that they are all for the environment, but they are profoundly critical of many of the beliefs and values of hitherto existing environmentalism. For example, they argue that it is a mistake to think that environmental activism produced the legal and policy gains of the last decades--for these were really a predictable consequence of higher standards of living generated by capitalist-driven economic development. Only a rich populace, they write, can care about the "post-material" needs of clean air and protected forests. They go on to state that environmentalists have defined themselves as for "nature" and against "people," thus dooming their efforts to at best limited success and in any case ignoring the fact that people are part of, not separate from, the rest of the planet. As well, environmentalists have frightened, depressed, and bored the public with their endless gloom and doom scenarios. In fact, there is every reason to look at global warming as an exciting opportunity for exuberant innovation and increased human mastery. The unfettered human spirit has risen to great deeds before, and it can do so again--if depressing environmental forecasters, interest groups holding on to their place in the old economy, and governments more interested in regulation than innovation just get out of the way.
This is especially true of Americans, they argue. Environmentalists in particular and liberals in general have, as they write, "failed to speak to the pursuit of uncommon greatness, which is a fundamental aspect of the American character. Americans are motivated as individuals to seek their own unique purpose in life. To suggest that this drive is somehow anathema to community or social capital is to miss something fundamental about what it means to be ... an American." This celebration of the individual is a crucial point for, as we shall see, Deep Economy is staunchly opposed to the environmental and emotional effects of what it terms American "hyper-individualism."
Before exploring McKibben's work, however, it is necessary to offer a brief assessment of Break Through. On the one hand there is nothing exceptionable (if nothing particularly original) in pointing out that environmentalists need to offer hope as well as warnings, that environmental policies need to take into account human needs as well as owls and redwoods, or that environmentalists (like Republicans, Marxists, feminists and the AFL-CIO) can be mistaken, hypocritical, or self-serving. When Nordhaus and Shellenberger criticize conservationist opposition to wind farms off Martha's Vineyard, or narrow-sightedness in failing to integrate environmental policies into more comprehensive economic plans, or belief that science alone without serious political debate can determine social policies, they make solid points.
What is not at all solid, however, is their suggestion that these are new points--for virtually all of them have been made by other environmentalists. Environmentalism, like Judaism, socialism, and vegetarianism, is made up of a whole gamut of different orientations. The environmental justice movement has criticized the conservationist focus on nature over people, for example, and the websites of most of the major environmental organizations have ideas about integrating environmental changes in ways that benefit the economy as a whole.
Much more serious, however, are Break Through's two fundamental, and fundamentally mistaken, premises. The idea that environmentalism is always a consequence of modernity is simply dead wrong. There are environmental themes in indigenous religions and peasant communities, which use combinations of myth, tradition, and community involvement to manage and protect natural resources. There is environmentalism in the Third World today: sixty thousand organic farmers in Bangladesh who know that chemicalized agriculture makes people sick; the Sarvodaya movement of Sri Lanka, which has struggled for decades for economic development that serves human interests rather than the Gross National Product; local fisherman warning that mega-trawlers will destroy fish stock; villagers telling highly trained engineers not to build big dams. In many cases it is those without formal training, the "unmodern" "types, who have been correct. To ignore the ecological values and environmental activism of the "poor" and "undeveloped" is, intentional or not, crude cultural chauvinism. If the global scope of the present environmental crisis makes today's environmental concern different from that of the past, it does not make it completely different. (More than two millennia ago Isaiah was critical of people who "join house to house, until there is room for no one but themselves." Sound familiar?)
The second premise that Shellenberger and Nordhaus are working from is a rather simple-minded confidence that prosperity once achieved can never go away. The fact that the standard of living of the American working class has been (by various measures) flat or declining since the 1970s, or that a great deal of the globes post-World War II development is predicated on a soon-to-evaporate supply of cheap oil, does not figure into their calculations. Neither does the possibility that current Third World immiseration is in some ways caused by global capitalism, which destroys subsistence agriculture while propelling hundreds of millions into landless poverty.
The ideas of Break Through have achieved some notoriety. Polemics in which "all those other guys are well-intentioned but only we have the right idea" often have some appeal. Wouldn't it be great if the failures of the environmental movement are the fault of environmentalists--and not that of the power of global corporations, militaristic governments, and a population sadly addicted to consumerism?
But most important, wouldn't it be wonderful if global warming, acid rain, species depletion, and all the rest could be solved without making any real change in the way we live? We can keep capitalism, the individual freedom to do practically anything we want, and the dominant values of our culture. We'll just let ingenuity and some great big technological fixes take care of it. We put catalytic converters on cars, we took the lead out of gasoline, solar power just got a lot cheaper, we can do this. Cheer up. Think positive.
As much as I view Break Through as a thinly veiled apology for the status quo, I also wish its authors were correct. Surely we have a lot better shot at dealing with what we face if we can pretty much do the same kind of thing we've done before. It's damn unlikely, but maybe there is a technical fix for global warming that will keep our other habits in place.
What's the matter with that?
***
The matter, says Bill McKibben, is that alongside its truly catastrophic ecological effects, business as usual simply does not make people happy.
Many readers will know McKibben's first book, The End of Nature, which argued that human-made climate change spelled the end of the cultural idea of nature as a place or force separate from people. Since then his many writings have contrasted the information we get from television with what we get from nature, questioned the human value of technological advances, and argued that societies can achieve a good life on low consumption. Full disclosure requires me to share that be is an acquaintance of mine.
Deep Economy furthers many of McKibbens earlier themes, focusing them on a simple question: what is an economy for? His answer will resonate with anyone who has ever been taken with Doubters of Progress like Thoreau, Gandhi and E.R Schumacher ("Small is beautiful"). We are now at the point when "more and better," which seemed to go so naturally together, have begun to separate. And this for three reasons: first, the seemingly effortless increases in production and consumption we've seen over the last sixty years were based on cheap energy, a one-time bio-prize from fossil fuels. Oil, however, will only get more and more expensive, rendering our throwaway, long commuting, import-food-from-across-the-world economy more and more costly. Second, even if fossil fuels remain cheap, other resources-clean water and arable land, for example-- simply cannot sustain prolonged growth on the American model. Too much water is wasted, and it's becoming scarce; too much land is overused and is becoming desert. If China and India become the new United States, the life-sustaining systems of the planet will simply break down. Third, all this consumption is not making us content. Thinking only of our own needs, desires, real estate, credit cards, and lifestyles, unconnected to other people outside of our nuclear family (and even that in a rather limited way), we have become increasingly depressed, anxious, drug-dependent, and cheerlessly promiscuous. By a whole series of psychological measures, each generation has more stuff and is less content than the one before.
McKibben asks us, therefore, to use less energy, travel less, eat local food, get to know our neighbors more, and exchange labor rather than money. These changes--exemplified in local farmers' markets where food is fresh and people have ten times as many conversations as in supermarkets--will sustain the earth and our psyches both. We need to accept that industrial civilization has limits, and that human connection trumps gadgets and unlimited mobility. In community is ecology, but also intellectual creativity, and emotional meaning.
McKibben is too morally astute not to see the difference between telling a suburban American and a Chinese peasant to make do with less. He acknowledges that in some places "more" is still justified: education, running water, basic electricity, access to information, gender equality. But if Americans consume less--taking, perhaps, Europe as our model--that will leave bios-pheric room for the truly poor to improve. Even so, he argues--and in true McKibben fashion offers dozens of compelling, hopeful examples--there are many places where development can aim to sustain a decent life within existing communities rather than by creating American-style high consuming hyper-individualists.
***
Intellectually, morally, spiritually--I'm with McKibben. I've believed for years that the environmental crisis requires more than a technical quick fix and some economic innovation. It is, rather, a challenge to our entire civilization: philosophy, religion, economics, and our sense of our own identity. All these and more must shift if humanity is to be sustainable. McKibben, then, strikes me as the realist here, and not Nordhaus and Shellenberger, who want the reader to be content with some important policy shifts and confidence in the American can-do spirit.
But just because the changes McKibben advocates are so enormous-- and so opposed by dominant economic and political structures--his answer may be too far out of reach. Once down the path of individualistic consumerism it may be too much for most people to return to a sense of community. In our response to global warming we might have to settle for much more efficient cars, much cleaner coal fired power plants, tax incentives for sustainable energy, and less chemical/energy intensive agriculture. This is vastly less than McKibbens vision, but it might enable us to blunt the more extreme effects of global climate change and limp long until the next crisis.
If winters are warmer, some island nations drown and the storms are worse; if droughts get worse, ecological refugees stream across borders and tropical diseases march north and south; well, we'll just have to get used to it.
Between what we're willing and able to change and what we'd rather die than change we face the possible limits of our culture and our technology. Right now I don't know what's possible and ultimately neither do the authors of these books. As we confront the awesome scope of climate change we'd better start with this humbling admission, and with the fear it evokes. And we'd better be willing to take a long hard look at other people's ideas, even if they seem dead wrong.
Roger S. Gottlieb is professor of philosophy at WorcesterPolytechnic Institute.Two of his recent books are A Greener Faith: Religious Environ-mentalism and our Planet's Future and Joining Hands: Politics and Religion Together for Social Change.
DEEP ECONOMY: THE WEALTH OF COMMUNITIES AND THE DURABLE FUTURE
by Bill McKibben, Times Books, 2007
BREAK THROUGH: FROM THE DEATH OF ENVIRONMENTALISM TO THE POLITICS OF POSSIBILITY
by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, Houghton Mifflin, 2007
