[The following is an excerpt from the first chapter of Local is Our Future: Steps to an Economics of Happiness, a new book by Helena Norberg-Hodge, published by Local Futures in July 2019.]For our species to have a future, it must be local.The good news is that the path to such a future is already being forged. Away from the screens of the mainstream media, the crude ‘bigger is better’ narrative that has dominated economic thinking for centuries is being challenged by a much gentler, … [Read more...]
Economics 101 and Ecological Collapse
"The collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon." – David AttenboroughToday’s economics, especially Economics 101, is a major source of humankind’s denial of the possibility of the calamity of all calamities, which our economy is engineering. Annually, millions of students around the world are forced to study textbooks that indoctrinate them into thinking that there is no significant causal connection between our economy and the ecosphere. … [Read more...]
The Farms of the Future
Hou Xueying, a mother from Shanghai, was tired of food safety scares and of a city life disconnected from the land. So she moved her family to the country to learn about sustainable farming. Her parents disapproved; they had struggled to give her a comfortable life in the city — they could not understand why she would throw it away. When she got to the country, she found that the older generation of farmers could only tell her how to grow as they did, using chemical fertilizers, toxic … [Read more...]
Connecting the Dots: Insane Trade and Climate Chaos
Imagine a world where food routinely gets shipped thousands of miles away to be processed, then shipped back to be sold right where it started. Imagine cows from Mexico being fed corn imported from the United States, then being exported to the United States for butchering, and the resulting meat being shipped back to Mexico, one last time, to be sold. Imagine a world in which, in most years since 2005, China has somehow managed to import more goods from itself than from the USA, one of its … [Read more...]
Why the “Anthropocene” is not “Climate Change”
“Anthropocene” is a widely proposed name for the geological epoch that covers human impact on our planet. But it is not synonymous with “climate change,” nor can it covered by “environmental problems.” Bigger and more shocking, the Anthropocene encapsulates the evidence that human pressures became so profound around the middle of the 20th century that we blew a planetary gasket. Hello, new Earth System. Hello, Anthropocene.The phrase “Earth System” refers to the entirety of our planet’s … [Read more...]
Old Mother Forest
I live across a small stream from an ancient rainforest in Wayanad, Kerala. It has a constancy that’s baffling, appearing more or less the same to me for all the years I’ve been here. The forest sustains. As do you and I. Tangled beings brought together by strange and bewildering feats of alchemy. No matter what we name this tangle, it is before and beyond all words, all naming. Walk in the forest and abandon your notion of a separate self and embrace instead the communal mind, this pullulating … [Read more...]
Degrowth: A Call for Radical Abundance
When orthodox economists first encounter the idea of degrowth, they often jump to the conclusion that the objective is to reduce GDP. And because they see GDP as equivalent to social wealth, this makes them very upset.Nothing could be further from the truth.I reject the fetishization of GDP as an objective in the existing economy, so it would make little sense for me to focus on GDP as the objective of a degrowth economy. Wanting to cut GDP is as senseless as wanting to grow it.The … [Read more...]
Unlike a Globalized Food System, Local Food Won’t Destroy the Environment
If you’re seeking some good news during these troubled times, look at the ecologically sound ways of producing food that have percolated up from the grassroots in recent years. Small farmers, environmentalists, academic researchers and food and farming activists have given us agroecology, holistic resource management, permaculture, regenerative agriculture and other methods that can alleviate or perhaps even eliminate the global food system’s worst impacts: biodiversity loss, energy depletion, … [Read more...]
How Circular is the Circular Economy?
The circular economy has become, for many governments, institutions, companies, and environmental organizations, one of the main components of a plan to lower carbon emissions. In the circular economy, resources would be continually re-used, meaning that there would be no more mining activity or waste production. The stress is on recycling, made possible by designing products so that they can easily be taken apart.Attention is also paid to developing an “alternative consumer culture”. In the … [Read more...]
To Leave or Remain: Dichotomy or Distraction?
Ever since the Brexit referendum was first announced, we have been bombarded by an array of starkly contradictory pronouncements – from the Leave camp’s now infamous claim that withdrawal from the EU would release £350 million a week for the NHS to the former Chancellor George Osborne’s assertion that Brexit would leave the UK “permanently poorer”. At first glance, the two sides seem to have almost nothing in common; these are polar opposites. Dig beneath the surface, however, and a fundamental … [Read more...]