Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

livingontheland - [Livingontheland] Successful relocalization means that you stop growing...

livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Successful relocalization means that you stop growing...
  • Date: Mon, 21 Mar 2011 20:39:38 -0700


"Our first task is to create a shadow economic, social, and even
technological structure that will be ready to take over as the existing
system fails."


Successful relocalization means that you stop growing...
http://thelocalizer.blogspot.com/2009/03/successful-relocalization-means-that_15.html

As relocalization efforts blossom globally, the discussions within local
volunteer groups range from how to develop local food movements, alternative
energy and conservation measures to climate change activities and the
establishment of local currencies. Certainly such efforts reflect the need
for these groups to maintain positive energies and attitudes by proactively
engaging in project oriented activities that result in some visible outcome
and are a building block for a positive future. Less common, although an
underlying current in the foundational framework of most organizers and
initiators, is the understanding that growth as we know it in all forms must
cease. This understanding is informed by the works and words of such renown
thinkers originating with Thomas Malthus and more recently voiced by people
like Paul Ehrlich, Garrett Hardin, Barry Commoner, Edward Abbey, William
Catton, Jr., and....(drum roll please) possibly even New York Times columnist
Thomas L. Friedman. Catton, in his classic book Overshoot, refers to a
fundamental shift by humanity away "from a self-perpetuating way of life that
relied on the circularity of natural biogeochemical processes, to a way of
life that was ultimately self-terminating because it relied on linear
chemical transformations."

We had begun to power the growth model with a finite substance and developed
a society that is now dependant on ever larger amounts of it as growth
increases exponentially. Growth in population means, of course, more food
required to be grown each year, more bauxite to be mined, more energy to be
used, and more plastic happy meal toys to fill our landfills. Even if slash
and burn suburban sprawl wasn't so rampant, a larger population and smaller
households translates into more housing units needed year after year. Even in
Massachusetts where I now live, growth finds a way to seep through the cracks
and uncaulked joints of development review processes largely meant to slow it
down. A few houses here and there over a few years translates into serious
growth. Just take a look at the aerial photographs over time. It's relentless.

The end of growth is a wispy and hard to comprehend concept since everything
in our individual and collective experiences, save for events like the Great
Depression, is rooted in a growth culture. The momentum that the growth
culture possesses makes it a runaway passenger train with the shades pulled
down. We all feel the careening, out of control speed but most of us keep the
shades drawn, oblivious to our collective, and more interestingly, our
personal plight and prospects. Growth is a nested and interconnected concept
whereby we each grow, some of us in the waistline, but most of us at the
household level by having more children, buying bigger vehicles, and building
bigger houses. Our businesses need to grow or perish, at least that's what
our peers and the prognosticators and pundits say. Our local communities need
to grow as each municipality is in direct competition with the others in the
region and the state. Cities each offer a wider array of economic incentives
that ultimately do three things: dilute or diminish the actual beneficial
impact of any new businesses attracted, bring in businesses that resist
collective bargaining and other benefits, and result in a business that
within a decade is ready to move again or hold the community hostage for more
incentives. That's the traditional model of smokestack chasing economic
development.

States and regions are also in competition with each other for corporate
cash. They devise programs for municipalities that shorten the development
review timeline, encourage the extension of development enabling public
utilities, or force ill-fitting affordable housing configurations in
admittedly exclusionary towns, often in or near wetlands. Nary a state would
deny that encouraging growth is a central part of their economic development
strategy. But where is the framework for that growth, what is the ultimate
goal, the ultimate ceiling of growth? Well, of course there isn't one and
national policies and international market forces are the ultimate influences
of growth because their very existences depend on it. Multinational
corporations are driven by profit, this is not news, but clearly this
perpetual need for a profit margin on a quarterly basis feeds the global
growth engine. National governments promise growth and jobs to their citizens
and will be replaced by another regime if they fail, often within the
shortest of election cycles (the two year congressional cycle in the U.S.).

So growth is nested systemically and few communities seeking to relocalize
are immune to these strong pulls. But for relocalization strategies to be
ultimately successful, resist them they must. To develop a sustainable
community, such a community (maybe your community?) needs to stop growing.
Completely. Totally. Finete. No more building permits for Happy Hollow
Estates. No more new office buildings in Deer Lane Corporate Center.
Everything oriented toward growth must cease and reorient toward a
steady-state economic model.

So where is this discussion taking place? In the mainstream media? In the
hallowed halls of Congress or in the White House? In corporate boardrooms? In
the Elks Club, Kiwanis, or Lions Club or local Chambers of Commerce? Nope.
How about in business lunches? professional workshops and seminars? Christmas
parties? Not likely. So where might we find the conversations and speeches
calling out the growth model as our most likely cause of demise? Some small
pockets of academia might have the courage to broach this subject in the
classroom--provided they have tenure. Local activists might discuss the
concept of growth with like-minded members of their cohort but would want to
gain a level of comfort before engaging the subject. There's little question
that discussing non-normative issues with normatively embedded people is
risky. I recently conducted a survey on the Web aimed at getting a general
feel for what specific concerns people had over speaking out about about
sensitive issues like growth and population. As expected, a large percentage
of respondents were concerned over possible sanctions like social isolation
or economic backlash. Other significant reasons for not speaking out included
wishing to keep the peace or being in inappropriate settings. So there's no
question that self-preserving behavior is a good explanation for keeping
silent. But if the growth paradigm is to be successfully retired, alternative
norms and values need to be aggressively circulated in the public domain.
Concerns over sanctions or preserving the peace are legitimate but strategic
thinking could lead to creative ways to engage the subject without creating
such intense conflict.

Most essentially, discussions at the local level should consider growth as a
key issue to address. If local growth is desired, the questions to entertain
are how much and at what point should growth be terminated? What is the
community vision for the future and at what level of development should
sustainability be achieved? If you can't ask these tentative and basic
foundational questions, a steady-state economy isn't possible. Realistically,
any residual growth should be a highly strategic and planned endeavor that
seeks to fill local gaps that will enable the community to become more
resilient. This could include generating more independent local businesses
that market essential commodities like hardware, locally grown food,
housewares, or dry goods. Seeking traditional "see what sticks to the wall"
economic development in the form of office parks, subdivisions, or big box
stores selling salad shooters and plastic trinkets made overseas is
irresponsible local development and wasteful to the extreme. It moves the
community further away from a needed and desired steady-state, locally
resilient model.

What, other than fear of judgment or of inciting conflict is responsible for
local communities not engaging in the growth discussion? First, obviously
growth oriented cultural norms have been embedded into our legal system via
case law and legislation and our economic system via success measured by
profit and economic growth. These changes have been accelerated by the
momentum of culture. The end of growth would have a profound impact on the
future of corporations and the system of political patronage and finance that
is symbiotically woven together in the same cloth. This astoundingly
interdependent system of vested interests stands to lose nearly everything if
the growth discussion becomes serious. Again Catton has a great quote for
this situation: "Any change of resource use patterns therefore implies
interference with people's accustomed activity patterns." Most people do not
want their livelihoods to be tinkered with.

If collapse does not undo this structural framework, only two paths seem
logical. First, if efforts are made within the existing political economic
framework, the process may inch forward glacially as any progressive movement
has sought change. Court cases may be won as well as lost, the media may or
may not pay attention to the issue (certainly media companies have a stake in
the growth culture), and opponents will use guile and varying degrees of
treachery to push back in the other direction. Ask union advocates or
environmentalists how well this method has worked historically. The pace of
change under this method would not nearly be sufficient to adequately address
the impacts of climate change nor be able to adapt to peak oil once the
economic effects of that situation begin to arise. Alternatively, the other
method is embedded in a quote by biology professor David Ehrenfeld on this
blog's home page: "Our first task is to create a shadow economic, social, and
even technological structure that will be ready to take over as the existing
system fails." The only feasible path left beyond status quo or collapse is
rapid development of an alternative culture, economy, and local political
framework rooted in sustainability. Groups around the globe are beginning
this effort through official and unofficial relocalization and transition
programs. The astoundingly successful Transition Initiative which originated
in the UK and exported beyond offers great promise as a process. The two
concerns I have for these efforts relates to focus and speed.

Many groups and their leaders eschew organization and planning in favor of
random projects that are not linked within a strategic structural model. Many
well-meaning organizers and activists are impatiently ready to begin a
variety of projects like community gardens, energy conservation projects, and
buy local programs. Valuable as they are, without connecting them to an end
goal, they will be less effective than if they were developed within a framed
programmatic planning effort. Not every volunteer is a good project initiator
just as others are not good organizers. My suggestion is to let project
people begin to initiate their projects while a core of organizationally
oriented people begin to develop the planning process--perhaps a steering
committee. The goals, objectives, and tasks of the effort should be
formulated and put in a plan much like the energy descent plans that the
Transition Initiative espouses. The reason for this specialization will be
apparent once significant progress is made on both fronts in short order. The
program itself should have a set of underlying themes linked to local goals
and tasks that broadly justifies a relocalization effort such as building
community, achieving sustainability, curbing global climate change, building
resilience in the face of looming peak oil, or supporting local independent
farms and businesses if not all of these.

But in order for any of these programs to be ultimately successful, each will
have to acknowledge that growth will need to end and a steady-state economy
and culture will have to be created. At some point, we'll all have to admit
this....or be privy to how nature solves this problem. Most well-adjusted
people will not want that to happen. Thus, as Habermas articulates,
developing this understanding is an important enhancement of social learning
regarding our predicament, essentially consciousness raising for the purpose
of sparking reasoned action.





  • [Livingontheland] Successful relocalization means that you stop growing..., Tradingpost, 03/21/2011

Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page