A QUARTER-CENTURY
by Herbert
Girardet
Nuclear cooling towers, photograph by Janet Haas, taken from Wildlife Photographer of the Year, Portfolio 2.
We need to build on the many new ideas that grew out of the green movement in the last twenty-five years.
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IN THE MID-1970s the Flower Power years were still fresh in our minds. They had promised a new start in a world of rampant materialism and the ever-present fear of nuclear annihilation. The black shadows of the Cold War and the daily horrors of the Vietnam War left us gasping for breath.
How to respond to an ideology of mutually assured destruction? In London, angry demonstrations had alternated with love-ins in Hyde Park. Many of us believed, rather immodestly, that somehow we could reinvent the world and that Peace and Love was the prescription for solving all its problems. A serene rainbow-coloured world seemed only just beyond our grasp.
In 1975 there were few practical indications of how that new world we’d been dreaming of was to be created. In the cities of Europe, East and West, concrete and glass tower blocks were the triumphalist manifestation of the new, post-war materialism, driven on by oil, coal and nuclear power technology. Everywhere motorways were being bulldozed through woodlands and farmland, only to become the race tracks for a myriad of gleaming cars and lorries forever rushing from city to city. Rivers across Europe were coated with detergent foam and dead fish were being washed ashore by the millions. The alarm bells about the direction of our society started ringing in the minds of millions. Which way for a viable future?
There were few signposts for implementing a sustainable future. Books such as The Limits to Growth confirmed our deepest suspicions about the dangers of unbridled economic growth. The report, for the first time ever, attempted to map the future using a specially created computer model called World 3. Extrapolating from existing trends, it predicted a bleak world running short of resources and suffocating in its own pollution.
The Blueprint for Survival seemed more practical, addressing the needs of people trying to make sense of their lives in the face of global environmental and technological threats. It suggested that we should abandon industrialism and go back to basics, to a new world of small, self-sufficient rural communities. Endorsed by eminent scientists, it had a powerful effect: it offered a strategy that covered both individual salvation and collective social change.
In a similar vein, I published an article in the very first Resurgence issue that Satish edited, called: The Radial House. The idea was to build houses that were largely self-sufficient in energy with built-in solar greenhouses, surrounded by vegetable gardens and orchards, and set in new villages where we could bring up children in peace and tranquillity. It reflected the spirit of the time: finding an escape hatch from cities whose dependence on fossil fuels and long-distance transport systems seemed increasingly ominous and unsustainable.
IN THE MID-SEVENTIES, tens of thousands of people abandoned large cities such as London and Birmingham for the countryside where cheap cottages for rent or to buy were readily available. John Seymour’s Self-Sufficiency books, translated into more than a dozen languages, were the chosen instruction manuals for a life away from it all. And on John’s farm in West Wales, young people from a great diversity of backgrounds congregated to learn to milk cows, build windmills and solar panels, and to construct makeshift houses.
And so a seemingly practical new rural utopia was born. Merchants of gardening implements, second-hand tractors and wine presses were doing brisk business. But idylls have a habit of dissolving into stark reality, and many rural resettlers found it hard to make a living on a few acres, beyond the most basic subsistence. Many were also made less than welcome by the locals in their adopted areas, who were bewildered by newcomers who had little understanding of the traditions and realities of rural living.
In the late seventies, many new rural resettlers were beginning to question whether getting away from it all was a realistic option. Even the remotest cottage had a radio and telephone, or even a tv, and the world at large invaded our minds. We read the reports about burning rainforests, oil spills killing millions of birds and sea mammals, squalid squatter settlements on the periphery of the new megacities of Africa, Latin America and Asia and the horrors of famines and wars. Sprinkled in between escapist programming of all kinds, television helped give birth to a new global consciousness: yes, there was only one Earth and we’d better learn to live at peace with it.
E. F. Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful was one of the first significant attempts to rethink a world full of uncertainties and misconceptions about the long-term viability of the post-war materialist euphoria. It aimed to redefine economics by indicating that people and nature mattered. It gave the reader practical and intellectual tools for conceptualizing a new, sustainable economy and society. Compiled mainly from material first published in Resurgence, it was one of the milestones of the newly emerging philosophy of sustainable development.
One of Schumacher’s great achievements was to challenge some of the basic concepts driving the post-war world: that a world of mega-cities, ever-bigger commercial companies, and ever-greater exploitation of the natural world is inevitable. He invented the concept of intermediate technology, aiming to turn technology into a useful tool for humanity, rather than making humanity a slave to technology gone mad. His holistic systems thinking, which went far beyond the actual title of his book, became a source of empowerment to millions of people in many countries. Schumacher’s legacy today lives on in many organizations and institutions that bear his name or his intellectual imprint.
BUT THE MEGA-TRENDS of globalization and economic growth at any cost were not easily dislodged. The economic boom unleashed by the orgy of privatization in the mid-eighties heightened the concerns of environmentalists about how the natural world could cope with the ever-greater demands of humanity, which was rapidly increasing in numbers and which was powered by ever-more-powerful technologies. The “battle” for sustainability, waged by environmental groups such as Greenpeace, and publicized by a growing number of environmental journalists, led to the dawning of a public understanding that we were on a collision course with the natural world. The success of green parties across Europe began to shape a new political awareness, particularly in countries where proportional representation gave them access to local and national parliaments. On the international arena, high-level committees began to formulate new concepts for policy action. Sustainable development was a concept whose time had come.
The Brundtland Commission’s definition — “sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” — became the basis for the negotiations between un member countries that defined the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. The determination of Third World governments and non-governmental organizations to improve living conditions for billions of people who existed at the most basic level had to be matched by the willingness of “developed” countries to reduce their environmental impact. Agenda 21 was the main outcome of the conference, defining how governments, businesses, local authorities and consumers could bring about a better relationship between people and planet.
Throughout the 1990s, millions of people all over the world have worked to implement sustainable development at local, national and global levels. There have been some real successes and these have been documented patiently by journalists and environmental campaigners, aware of the importance of good news stories in an otherwise gloomy reality. Resurgence has been at the forefront of this emphasis on the importance of positive thinking. Always trying to find examples that are locally relevant and can also be replicated elsewhere, Resurgence is both a mirror and a catalyst for honest alternatives. Emerging in its early days from its primary concern about the scale of human affairs, it has crucially fuelled the intellectual debate about how we can enter a new millennium with a spirit of hope.
During twenty-five years, many people have been on their own personal
journey of discovery. We want to lead serene, secure and interesting lives.
We want to ensure that our own demands on the natural world are compatible
with what it can afford to give us. Personal peace and serenity have to
correspond with a sense of collective responsibility. Ultimately, no-one
can hide away in a personal nirvana: we have to live in a world of shared,
responsible citizenship, and, if necessary, to challenge those who have
been elected to political office and those who control business.
THE GREEN MOVEMENT has had a lot of influence, particularly in countries
where green parties participate in government or are at least represented
in parliament. In the uk, because of an unfair voting system, this is
sadly still not an option. It is not surprising then that in many respects
Britain is still dragging its heels on environmental legislation, environmental
taxation and government incentives for implementing sustainable development.
Fortunately, ngos such as Friends of the Earth have developed very effective
methods of lobbying for change in the corridors of government and corporate
power which are beginning to bear fruit.
In the first months of the new millennium, many of the trends first discerned by environmentalists in the mid-seventies are sadly coming home to roost. I am revisiting many of the issues for an international millennial tv series called The People’s Planet. 1.2 billion people in the world who go to bed hungry are now matched by the same number suffering from obesity. Climate change is upon us with a vengeance. Ice across the planet is melting — be it glaciers or Arctic and Antarctic ice shelves. About six tonnes of soil per person are eroding every year from unsustainable farming practices, as forests are cleared and marginal lands are taken into food production: some 24 billion tonnes a year. An urbanizing and industrializing humanity is also eroding its inherited understanding of the importance of the vital functions of nature in a sustainable world. It is deeply sobering to realize that some problems that we have made for ourselves in the last few decades will be very hard to address in the years to come.
Yet, at the same time, we are also improving our tools for eco-feedback. Whilst the Internet has equipped companies with a tool for greater corporate power, it has also enhanced the capacity and speed of communication for concerned groups and individuals across the planet. The successful protest at last year’s wto conference in Seattle and the growing international concerns about the spread of gmos have been empowered by the use of the Internet. ngos in island states threatened by rising sea levels are in daily contact with citizen groups in Europe, North America and Japan, impressing upon them the urgency of tackling climate change. Publicity for the plight of the poorest of the poor has resulted in the first tentative responses on debt relief by the richer nations. The use of the Internet by campaigners around the world has played a crucial part in these developments.
The critical issue now is whether we are, at last, prepared not just to make ad-hoc donations to victims of disasters as these are flashed up on our tv screens but also to address the systemic problems of our highly unsustainable trajectory. We, the amplified human beings who have technological powers beyond our bodies, are also an agent for advancing economic globalization, with dire consequences for local communities and the global environment.
At the beginning of the new millennium, as we try to make sense of looking forward to the future rather than backwards into the multitude of horrors of the recent past, we need to build on the many new ideas that grew out of the green movement in the last twenty-five years. New energy technologies — solar, wind, bio-mass, fuel cells — have now matured into viable options to be implemented on a large scale in the immediate future. Environmental restoration of depleted forests is being undertaken in many places, as examples from all over the world prove. It is becoming apparent from my own work that cities don’t have to grow and grow at the expense of the natural world. They can develop systems of resource management and create great social benefit in the process. And others have shown that business can take on the all-important agenda of social and environmental responsibility.
In the next twenty-five years Resurgence will continue to be an inspired and articulate voice for reason and hope, always searching for new ways of solving problems in the face of gloom and despair. Resurgence has also never forgotten that we are creatures made up not just of mind and body, but also of spirit. Resurgence — yes, but of what? This magazine links the best of what we have learned in the past to the best insights and inventions of today. With hindsight, we would be fools to assume that we can reinvent the world.
Human experience accumulated over tens of thousands of years must contribute
to a sustainable future, as unprecedented numbers of people from so many
different cultures live on this planet together. It is the kind, caring,
mindful human spirit, as it has developed in intimate contact with living
nature, that needs to resurge in the face of the mindless arrogance of
power-crazed, egotistical, rootless inhumanity. I am certain that Resurgence
will continue to carry this vital message, and encourage and report its
implementation well into this new millennium.
Herbert Girardet is Chairman of the Schumacher Society and author of the Gaia Atlas of Cities. He is scriptwriter for The People’s Planet tv series which is currently in production. He is an associate editor of Resurgence.