Island Civilizations in Application

Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth and founder of 350.org, shares his views on what humanity as a whole must do in order to survive, as outlined in his new book Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet. One of the key points that McKibben makes is that climate change is no longer a philosophical concept in the distant future, as it was when he wrote his first book: The End of Nature. A startling indicator of this is that, by some estimates, the tropics have shifted by two degrees; a remarkable sign of global climate change.

Of course, my purpose in writing this post is not to summarize the podcast I just listened to (you can listen for yourself via the two links at the bottom of this post). Instead, I’d like to discuss the topic of unsustainable growth. We’ve touched on this topic before through the writing of Roderick Nash, but McKibben offers notably more realistic solutions than Nash’s "island civilization." McKibben stresses the importance of local and reliable alternatives to agriculture, government, and other aspects of society. As human populations, and subsequently consumption, increase, the impracticalities of centralized large-scale production, agriculture, etc. multiply exponentially, as does their respective environmental impacts. Whether it be the fact that universal methods do not translate well over different geographies, or that the transportation of everything by means of global trade creates massive pollution, it seems that it is most beneficial for individual populations to be locally sustained; this could also have been what Nash was hinting at with his rather vague schemes.

Locally implemented and moderated agriculture especially is beneficial to everyone. Larger cities can become self-sufficient, all the while creating more jobs, while small cities and rural areas could maintain diversity in their crops, rather than focusing solely on cash crops that rob the soil of its nutrients. This would also help cut back on synthetic fertilizers, which I have a personal grudge against after having watched the documentary: The Future of Food. Nevertheless, biodiversity is the key to the long-term survival of individual species (perhaps not just of food but ourselves as well) and this is not possible through modern factory farms, centrally-planned agriculture, and purely economically-driven thinking.

Well, that was my two cents and I encourage you to visit all of the links I have posted and write your views in a comment.

Hear the Bill McKibben podcast:
(Part 1)
(Part 2)