[A-List] From Globalization to Re-Localization

[Bill Totten]

by Megan Quinn Bachman

Ecowatch Journal (April 23 2010)


Using less, cutting back, saving resources, conserving energy,
reducing impact - such actions, though vital responses to our
planetary peril, conjure up images of a strictly proscribed and
rather austere future.

When our only goal is minimizing consumption, it's easy to imagine
the imposition of draconian government measures - ones where every
energy-consuming action is monitored, controlled and limited. For
some, this approach is tolerable as long as it forestalls dangerous
climate changes. For others, a centralized, authoritarian
"dictatorship of sustainability" is a worse fate yet.

If a singular focus on cutting carbon dioxide is mistaken, what
then, is the environmental movement to do? Thankfully we can save
the planet while strengthening autonomy of our communities by
re-localizing vital goods and services.

By meeting our most essential needs closer to home our communities
will be more resilient in the face of global economic and
ecological shocks. Being more self-sufficient means we will be less
dependent upon centralized, energy-intensive industrial
infrastructure and energy-devouring long-distance transport.

In this way, individuals and communities will also be more
sustainable and more in control of their destiny, and less at the
mercy of manipulated global commodity prices, corrupt CEOs, inept
politicians and marauding Wall Street bankers.

But how exactly do we re-localize our economies after several
decades of fast-growing economic globalization fueled by cheap
energy, easy credit and mushrooming debt? According to economist
and author Michael Shuman, it is by creating more locally owned,
import-substituting businesses in our towns.

At a workshop in my community of Yellow Springs, Ohio last year, we
designed a host of new business opportunities, including a local
delivery company, small business loan fund, venture capital fund,
energy services company, local farm and garden cooperative,
business incubator and wellness center. These local businesses
would help to keep money circulating within the community, instead
of flowing from it.

While all import-substituting businesses reduce the transportation
energy used to deliver goods and services, some more specifically
cut energy consumption, like a renewable energy cooperative. In the
Austrian town of Gussing, a council decision ordering all public
buildings to stop using fossil fuels led to the development of
fifty new renewable energy businesses, now employing more than
1,000 people while dramatically cutting its carbon dioxide
generation by ninety percent.

In the midst of a global financial crisis, calls to re-localize
finance are gaining ground. One recent example is the "Move Your
Money" campaign, which is aimed at encouraging those banking at
those too-big-to-fail Wall Street banks to move their accounts to
community banks and credit unions.

According to its website (www.moveyourmoney.info), "Community banks
are typically more conservative about how they manage their money,
they're more closely connected to the people and businesses who
live near them, and they're more inclined to make loans they know
will get paid back".

So instead of investing in the global economic growth system which
is undermining its own ability to continue by devastating the
natural environment on which we depend, we could be investing
locally in the people, businesses and technologies that directly
sustain us and will sustain generations to come through
import-substituting businesses.

Re-localization has another benefit as well. Instead of a
restricted and hapless low-consumption future, we can have a
happier healthier existence as we fill our lives with valued
relationships instead of valued possessions.

In fact, the last few decades focus on wealth accumulation has come
at the expense of close, fulfilling relationships. Today we have
less intimacy with our friends in addition to having fewer friends.
A study done in the US and published in the American Sociological
Review showed that from 1980 to 2004 the number of "close
confidants" people had had dropped from three to two and the number
of people without any close confidants has more than doubled.

Re-localization is about finding a more sustainable way to provide
for our needs as a global industrial system based upon diminishing
finite fossil fuels crumbles in the 21st Century. It's about
building community so that "when things get hard", as deep
ecologist Joanna Macy has said, "we won't, in fear, turn on each
other".

Apocalyptic scenarios of either a devastated planet or an
authoritarian world government both disintegrate in the face of
neighbors growing food for one another.

_____

Megan Quinn Bachman, a freelance environmental writer, speaker and
consultant, writes from Yellow Springs, Ohio. She can be reached at
megan at ecowatch.org

http://www.countercurrents.org/bachman230410.htm

http://www.richardccook.com/2010/04/26/from-globalization-to-re-localization/


http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com
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