Book review: The Big Picture: Reflections on Science, Humanity, and a Quickly Changing Planet, David Suzuki and David Robert TaylorThriving Beyond Sustainability: Pathways to a Resilient Society,Andres R. EdwardsUprisings for the Earth: Reconnecting Culture with NatureOsprey Orielle Lake

Six Issues

Unlike many reviews I’ve drafted in the past, this

particular set of books—that I’ll treat as something of a

triumvirate—requires fuller disclosure of my own

philosophical and political predispositions. My reasoning as

to why will become clearer as I develop my argument, but

suffice it for now that I come to this project as a feminist

environmental philosopher with deep-going commitments to

social/economic justice and nonhuman animal welfare—no easy

partnerships, as I readily acknowledge. Six themes inform my

review, and I’ll use these themes as a matrix for the

evaluation of each book:

1. Disappointment: Human communities—local, national, and

global—are currently confronted with unprecedented,

potentially catastrophic, environmental, political, and

economic change. Yet while each author acknowledges the

relevant facts, none offer a substantive, sustained

analysis of the institutions—patriarchal, economic, social,

religious, or political—responsible for this change.

While each recognizes the multiple complex

relationships among these institutions as factors

involved, for example, in climate change, none

a. evaluate in any substantive way the

interdependence/mutual reinforcement among the relevant

institutions (for example, the government-

military-corporate complex), an interdependence

which makes institutional reform toward a

sustainable future neither obviously possible nor

obviously desirable;

b. make a morally defensible case (or any case) that

institutions implicated in environmental

destruction, social injustice, and economic

exploitation ought to play a role (especially an

authoritative one) in that future. Suzuki, for

example, insists “unless we are able to put a

price on these services [“nature’s” provision of

clean water, for instance], we will continue to

squander them” (Suzuki, p. 85), effectively

treating global capitalism as a given—much like

nature itself. But institutions are not artifacts

of nature, and given that there are alternative

economies and social structures the case must be

made for their maintenance. Suzuki argument for

putting a price on “nature’s services,”

effectively commodifying nature per se, begs the

question not only against whether capitalism has a

defensible role in a sustainable future, but

whether it—or any of its fellow institutions—is

capable of the reform required to fill that role.

c. seriously consider the possibility that these

institutions, multinational capitalism, the

military-industrial complex, the heteropatriarchal

family, and religion (especially in its recent

fundamentalist incarnations), may function in

ways that are conceptually and operatively inconsistent with

any realistic vision of a sustainable future. None

consider, for example, the possibility that the

heteropatriarchal nuclear family, at least in its

current incarnation as a site of capitalist

production and consumption, may be responsible for

both social injustice and environmental

destruction. This is particularly disappointing in

Lake’s Uprising for the Earth, since while she

frequently gestures in the direction of notions

like “equality” and “economic justice for women

and girls,” she fails to make an argument for why

such ideas are important to a sustainable future

desireable to humans beings other than the

primarily white, Christian, affluent men currently

in power. And while each acknowledge, as Suzuki

puts it, that “something is terribly wrong with

our economic system when poor environmental health

and reduced quality of life are actually good for

the economy” (p. 87), none consider the

possibility that prioritizing profits over welfare

will always yield this outcome.

2. The need for a critique of capitalism: The need for a critique of

corporate, multi-national capitalism is sorely missing

(in albeit different ways), from each of these works in

a fashion unmistakable to those of us working in the

political trenches of the environmental and social

justice Left. The rhetoric of each remains squarely if

implicitly located in a Neo-Liberal/Enlightenment model

of social, economic, and political progress, arguably

the model responsible for our current environmental

dilemma. This matters not only with respect to

understanding the past excesses (or the prevention of

future ones) of capitalism, but for understanding its

central operating concepts—concepts that will determine

the trajectory of future ventures: profit-generation,

limitless “growth,” mass production, the creation of

desire, and endless consumption—concepts clearly not in

keeping with sustainability:

a. While each author gestures in the direction of

such a critique, none really explore the

possibility that a globalized capitalist economy

is inconsistent with a sustainable future, that

mass production may be conceptually incompatible

with any practicable set of environmental values,

or that “sustainable” may demand a different array

of desires and objectives.

b. Each gestures in the direction of reform—

enumerating countless “green” enterprises and

initiatives, but still fails to ask the deeper

questions: can a truly green Wal-Mart, DuPont,

Monsanto, Dow Chemical, Halliburton, Chesapeake,

GE, or Exxon function in a fashion conceptually

consistent with the size and scope of their

profit-generating objectives? (Can a multinational

corporation be green in any meaningful enduring

way?) How much of “green” advertising is desire-

creating hype” how much of this hype is

manipulation towards ever-greater consumption?

When “green” ceases to be profitable can we count

on these multinationals to maintain their stated

commitment to sustainability? Can profit-

generation co-exist with conservation?

3. The guts to talk about what conservation, environmental preservation,

and human population growth really mean with respect to transformation

of worldview: Each of these books leave the reader with

the sense that we don’t have to do anything all that

hard to prevent the potential environmental

catastrophes associated with climate change, species

extinction, deforestation, desertification, acid rain,

industrial dumping, hydraulic fracturing, and other

forms of pollution and resource depletion; we must be

willing to do the inconvenient perhaps, but we’re not

required to stomach the more difficult and

transformative task of re-thinking our relationship to

what lay beyond our institutions, our interests, our

kin, or our skin. We each should do something—and all

offer a rich and varied panoply of opportunities

(especially Edwards)—but that this “do something” will

require conservation—not merely as a practical response,

but as a re-conceiving of what we mean by “need” and

“want—and a transformation of worldview about some things we

hold dear—like the concept of what constitutes a

neighborhood, community, or a nation state, or what

counts as “agriculture,” or the level of material

consumption we take for granted at least in the

West/North, or that we can keep driving combustion

engine Hummers, or that “development” may be a root

cause of environmental deterioration, or that “family,”

“religion,” or “country” are implicated—is largely

absent from these books. The overall effect of each

author’s effort is the sense that we can have our cake

and eat it too—that a sustainable future might require

a bit of tinkering with the status quo, but it requires

no real existential or constitutive transformation of perspective

either individually or collectively.

a. But this is just false. There’s no mere reform of

our current political, environmental, or economic

status quo that offers more than a temporary

reprieve against future environmental collapse.

Or: none of these writers make that case, and it’s

not obvious that Walmart—or any multinational

corporation—can survive the transformation of

worldview required for a future that’s sustainable

and desirable (as Edwards puts it, “thriveable”). We

can paper over the obvious conflicts and

contradictions with, say, Walmart’s “commitment”

to reduce auto-emissions in truck transport, but

this will be at the cost of any future that’s

truly sustainable. Or: we can have our cake and

eat it too, but we must re-conceive and reinvent

both the cake and the “too.”

b. From a different angle: That a number of

technologies and alternatives already exist—solar

panels, wind turbines, electric cars, photovoltaic

batteries—that, in concert with conservation,

could revolutionize the way we produce energy is

certainly the stuff of a real discourse about just

what it takes to achieve sustainability. These

technologies exist; their more widely accessible

use is do-able. Could we muster the collective

will to put to widespread utility the sustainable

technologies we do have, much could be achieved.

Developing and improving upon these, creating new

technologies and methods of conservation,

developing other renewable sources of energy—this

is the easy part. The hard part—and the discussion

none of these authors take on in any substantive

way—is the philosophical one about whether “put to

widespread utility” requires a transformation of

worldview, or in just what “collective will

towards these future prospects” means. I see three

possible responses:

i. One response is “no transformation of

worldview needed,” some better education

perhaps, but not transformation: Both Suzuki

and Edwards adopt a version of this view on

pragmatic grounds, namely, that as a

practical matter, we don’t have time to wait

for some thunderous global conversion to a

more ecologically sane worldview. We can put

to manufacture electric cars, solar-paneled

houses, wind turbines, etc. now. They’re

right, of course, we are running out of time,

and we can put these and many other here-now

technologies into production. But this begs

at least three larger questions about to what

ends we make these substitutions.

1. Is what we mean by “sustainable” to be

limited to the re-creation of a world

that looks a lot like the one we have

now—but swapped out for sustainable

technologies? Are we really willing to

settle for that world—one rife with

grotesque social and economic

inequality? Often ignored moral

questions about the treatment of

nonhuman animals? The exploitation of

the poor, women, and the developing

world? If, in other words, “sustainable”

is to be restricted to the prevention of

ecological collapse, but allows for the

continuation of social and economic

injustice, we might well be able to

imagine it achievable—but for whom is it

desirable? Why should any of us settle

for this world?

2. Is it—as a practical matter—really

possible to achieve this technology-swap

sustainability without a transformation

of worldview? This seems hard to imagine

given that the institutions responsible

for environmental deterioration are

simultaneously implicated in social and

economic injustice. Isn’t the desire,

for example, to put the electric car

back on the road connected to the more-

deep-going desire to see the world

differently? As less compromised through

energy dependence and less polluted for

everyone? Why desire a sustainable world

if it’s not a fundamentally better one?

If that future world is going to be

better—but only for the same folks who

can buy their way into denial now—mostly

white, mostly Christian, mostly affluent

men—how will it be possible to generate

enough motivation to get electric cars

back on the road? My argument is that—as

a practical matter as well as a philosophical one—

even technology-swap sustainability

requires that environmentalists begin to

take far more seriously issues of social

and economic justice: solar-paneled houses in

gated neighborhoods aren’t going to save anyone

from climate change. Such is the message of

visionaries like Van Jones—but given the

entrenched heterosexism and racism of

our institutions, it’s at least not

obvious that this change of worldview—

anti-capitalist and politically

socialist—will be an easy one to make.

3. Perhaps shifting to more sustainable

technologies and resources will itself

elicit a transformation of worldview.

Each author clearly hopes for something

like this, and I’m sympathetic to it.

The trouble is that this hope ignores

the mutually interdependent

relationships among institutions whose

own survival relies not merely on, for

example, our continuing addiction to

fossil fuels, but on preserving the

worldview that underwrites the

production of fossil fuels—one rooted in

endless growth, abundant resources, and

non-stop consumption. It’s one thing to

get folks to buy an electric car; it’s

another to get them to see why they

might want one. The observation that

people don’t need a “why,” suggests only

that we’re manipulable, raising the

question again about what we want that

sustainable future—and the people who

inhabit it—to look like.

ii. Another response is that no transformation of

worldview is necessary because none is

possible. On this view—a variety of

anthropocentrism (human-centeredness) better

understood as human chauvinism—such

transformation isn’t ruled out because the

clock’s run out, but because human beings are

essentially acquisitive, egoistic creatures

driven by competition. Capitalism, including

its multinational variety, is thus best

understood simply as a reflection of human

nature. Could be, and such is implicit in the

Enlightenment liberalism assumed by

especially Suzuki and Edwards. But if this is

the case, then—depending on what we mean by

“human-centered”—we’re either doomed to

remain on our current path in which case all

bets on sustainability are off. Or, we can

argue, like the authors, for ways to harness

(presumably government imposed) with

limitations human-centeredness toward

sustainability. Or we can try to ameliorate

it through, for example, affective and/or

aesthetic experience (Lake). Amelioration is

not, however, transformation even if elements

of this experience may provide contributory

(though not necessary) elements to the shift.

iii. The last option is “yes,” the utility of

whatever the conservations, technologies, and

strategies conducive to a genuinely

sustainable future will demand a basic

transformation of worldview about who we

human beings are, what human culture entails,

what role nonhuman animals and nonhuman

nature play in our values, what

“civilization” means. This is not to say

that such a transformation necessarily

entails a shift from human-centered to, as

deep ecologists put it, the ecocentric

(ecologically centered). As I’ve argued

elsewhere, I think this erects a false

dichotomy between “anthro” and “eco.” But it

does entail a shift—and a deliberate,

collectively (morally motivated and

politically elected) undertaken one—from

human chauvinism—premised on narrow self-

interest and competition—to accountability—

premised on being willing to be held

responsible for one’s actions as both a more

or less private agent and as a citizen (not

necessarily defined by either geography,

national borders, birth, ethnicity, religion,

or naturalization). Both are human-centered,

but the latter offers a radically different

perspective more conducive to the inclusion

of considerations of social justice in

discourse concerned with sustainability

precisely because accountability is conceived

as connected to human and nonhuman others. The

transformation to something like this

worldview is, I think, a crucial philosophical

project made difficult not necessarily by

lack of education or resources, but by, for

instance, the corporatist manipulation of

value to encourage waste and consumption, and

by a political status quo that, beholden to

corporate interests, resists such change at

every turn.

c. Another reason that sustainability requires a

transformation of worldview is that there is no

nation state (particularly given the economic

interests dictating what counts as a “national” or

“vital” interest) whose borders (geographic,

economic, ideological) could withstand the change

in the ways in which we think about “borders” if

we chose a sustainable future. “Nation state” has

been rendered largely passé by multinational

corporate interests, and given the diminishing

powers of governments to regulate corporations

regardless their bases of operation, “nation

state” does some, but diminishing explanatory work

in the quest to comprehend our current

environmental crisis. That each author takes for

granted either explicitly as part of a program for

sustainability (Suzuki and Edwards) or implicitly

as if it were itself natural phenomena (Lake) that

the nation state will survive (and should survive)

testifies to the neo-liberalism of their views.

But if this is the worldview that got us into so

much trouble in the first place, it requires at

least an argument to see how—with all of its

accoutrements including the continuation of the

geographically bordered and militarized country—it

is going to get us out of it.

d. Lastly, there is no human population that at its

current rate of growth can look forward to a

sustainable, much less thriveable, future. That

this is all the more true via climate change,

deforestation, desertification, species

extinction, and pollution is certainly

acknowledged by each author—but with little more

than hand-waving in the direction of the promotion

of better educations for women and girls in the

“developing” world or improved access to birth

control for men and women. Education does reduce

birth rates, but it’s equally clear that this

strategy by itself doesn’t go far enough to

address an issue that requires taking on the

institutions—particularly religion and the

patriarchal family—responsible for lack of access

to birth control, family planning, and safe

voluntary abortion.

4. An adequate awareness of the disproportionate effects of environmental

erosion for women, girls, and indigenous peoples, especially in the

“developing” world: Lip service paid to social injustice

and economic exploitation—and the suffering it produces

—is no substitute for a sustained analysis of the

institutionalized status quo that underwrites both

(often simultaneously). A wealth of feminist analysis

of the intimate relationship between the social and

economic conditions faced by “developing” world women

and indigenous peoples and the environmental

consequences of a “development” defined in terms of the

capitalist expropriation of natural resources and labor

is available to each author—and largely ignored.

Edwards, for example, applauds a number of indigenous

methods for water-conserving agriculture, but fails to

consider that these methods defy application in the

larger context of capitalist profit-generation, or that

“conservation” is excluded by definition from a

“development” defines by growing consumption. While it

may not sanction it, the effect of ignoring, for

example, Vandana Shiva’s extensive critique of

“development” effectively offers a pass to continuing

exploitation. Lake offers some exception here in that

she’s clearly sensitive to the experiences of others

who occupy very different social and economic

situations. Several of her stories—“Crazy Horse in the

Soviet Union” for example—are truly moving. But a

recounting of experience, however moving, stills falls

short of offering an argument about what such

inspiration should lead us to do—and why. Perhaps

Lake’s response is that hers’ is not a political

treatise, but this strikes me as disingenuous. Lake

claims to offer a guide for the transformation of human

perspective through a re-awakening of a greater kinship

with nature, and no doubt her prose may be inspiring at

the level of some individual action—but it hardly

addresses the need for a re-evaluation of the

institutions that govern the lives either of those most

disposed to undertake this transformation or those

whose kinship with nature is dictated by the deafening

insecurity of inadequate access to food, clean water,

heat, or shelter. That these are primarily women and

children may not detract from the beauty of Lake’s

poesy, but it does render it far more romantic fancy

than practical solution.

5. An adequate account of suffering borne by nonhuman animals: There

are many serious conflict-generating issues pitting any

human-centered environmentalism whose central values

are “sustainability” and a “thriveable” future for us

against what it might mean to value the welfare of

nonhuman animals either at the level of individuals or

species. There exists a considerable philosophical

literature that spells out these issues and conflicts,

and much work proposing possible solutions to these

conflicts. Short of some mostly affective gesture in

the direction of concern for this welfare, however,

there’s little in any of these authors’ works to

suggest that decision-making towards a sustainable

future includes valuing nonhuman animals beyond the

instrumental or the aesthetic—or an argument why not.

Lake, again, offers some exception in that her prose

evinces great respect for nonhuman animals and

ecological systems. But she offers very little argument

about what such respect should entail at the level of,

for example, government regulation of factory farming,

the use of nonhuman animals in experimentation, or the

use of public lands for corporate enterprises like

hydraulic fracturing.

6. Any real hope for enduring change: lastly, by failing to

demand more from their readers, each author must be

read as an ultimately cynical assessment of human

resolve. Lots of talk about “big pictures,” “thriving

beyond sustainability,” and “reconnecting culture with

nature” sans any meaningful expectation that we can

undertake the transformation of worldview required to

walk this walk leaves us at “talk.” No doubt, each

would deny this, or perhaps argue for some compromise-

capitalism less environmentally corrosive, or some

version of technology-swap-sustainability, but in

failing to confront the responsible institutions as

institutions, as changeable or even replaceable, they

leave us with lots of things that are do-able, but

without a worldview that can offer a world that’s

actually sustainable and desirable. Each could certainly

respond to this criticism that I am painting with too

broad a brush, or that I have underrepresented their

commitments. I don’t doubt their commitments; what I

doubt is whether they can make good on them within the

conciliatory conceptual, political, economic, or (in

Lake’s case) affective/romanticized frameworks to which

they offer so little critical reflection.

The Big Picture: Reflections on Science, Humanity, and a Quickly Changing PlanetDavid Suzuki and David Robert Taylor

Thriving Beyond Sustainability: Pathways to a Resilient Society

Andres R. Edwards

1. Disappointment: First, let me say I like David Suzuki. He’s

an engaging writer who ranges over a rich and relevant

panoply with great feeling and conviction. Suzuki clearly

cares deeply about our current environmental trajectory, and

he’s by no means insensitive to matters of human and

nonhuman suffering. Hence, it’s that much more

disappointing not only that he’s not more courageous (he has

access to the widest audience of all three authors), but

that he fails to see the potential implications of his own

spelling out of the facts—that he doesn’t avail himself the

opportunity to interrogate his own assumptions about the

institutions relevant to these facts.

Suzuki recounts, for example, an experiment where a cat

is decerebrated, “… it had all of its brain scraped out”

(Reflections, hereafter, RSH, p. 9). He calls the experiment

“one of the most horrifying things I have ever witnessed,”

yet Suzuki fails to critically survey the institutions,

medical, educational, and industrial, which underwrite such

experiments. He argues that “[e]thically, we must ensure

that test animals are treated as humanely as possible” (RSH,

p. 12). But it’s clear that Suzuki’s primary motive is to

insure that the experimental test results relevant to human

health are not tainted by the conditions under which test

animals are bred and treated: “[p]ractically, if the animals

that we use for experiments are already impaired, then are

the conclusions we draw valid?” (RSH, p. 12). He suggests

options for more humane—less result-contaminating—treatment.

But that’s it.

Fine. The trouble is that Suzuki neither draws any

clear line between animals used in medical experimentation

and those used in testing for product safety—an important

distinction with respect to the purposes of using them in

research at all. He also offers no argument as to why

nonhuman animals should be treated humanely, and thus raises

no deeper question about whether we ought to value them or

nonhuman nature more generally beyond their instrumental

value for us. To be clear, I’m not suggesting that good

arguments can’t be made for an enlightened human-

centeredness. I am suggesting that Suzuki misses an

opportunity to make it, and in so doing effectively

reaffirms a status quo that, in addition to raising serious

issues about our treatment of nonhuman animals, reaffirms

the continuing existence of institutions like the factory

farm, involved not only in the exploitation and suffering of

nonhuman animals, but in the exploitation of the environment

and countless human beings.

Still, while I’m merely disappointed in Suzuki, I am

less sanguine about Edwards who—in the midst of making

valuable points about the preservation of language and

culture (“Going Glocal”)—promotes corporations like Walmart,

Dell, DuPont, and GE as pro-sustainability despite the fact

that their contribution to environmental destruction is

well-documented, on-going, and massive. While it’s possible

to read Suzuki as a reluctant pragmatist or reformist about

the place and aims of corporations, Edwards must be read as

an entrepreneur—literally—of a new kind of culture industry,

namely, one in which indigenous cultures are re-invented and

effectively marketed as “green,” while (and simultaneously)

corporations are re-invented and marketed as forward-looking

sustainability-heroes. What’s striking about Thriving Beyond

Sustainability (TBS) is that, like Suzuki, Edwards offers a

stunning array of facts, causes, and implications. Edwards,

however, goes further, premising his discussion around five

global trends whose consequences for environment, culture,

and economy are clearly harmful: “ecosystem decline, energy

transition, population growth, economic disparity, and

climate change” (TBS, p. 107-122). Each, moreover, point in

the direction of corporate responsibility and government

collusion—as Edwards recognizes (TBS, p. 47).

But Edwards does not draw these inferences. Instead he

promotes “partnerships,” like the US Climate Action

Partnership, which wed for-profits such as Alcoa, DuPont,

Caterpillar, and General Electric with (quasi) non-profits

like the Environmental Defense Fund (TBS, p. 121), insisting

that the solution to environmental destruction is to

reinvent “the way we design, manufacture, and deliver

products” (TBS, p. 47). Edwards also insists “CEOs are

increasingly undertaking socially responsible ventures,” and

points, for example, to Seventh Generation’s “commitment to

becoming a transparent company” (TBS, p. 60). But in

vaunting the company’s partnering with Walmart, Edwards not

only fails to consider whether a multi-national corporation

can “go green,” but whether such partnerships are more about

marketing to a public looking for occasions to assuage

environmental guilt, or even (more cynically) creating cover

for environmental and labor practices that contribute to

climate change and economic injustice. That Seventh

Generation has also partnered with Greenpeace goes little

ways to ameliorate these worries since what funds its social

and environmental programs are profits made possible through

Walmart (including, for example, the carbon-footprint of

Seventh Generation’s product distribution—regardless the

corporation’s green manufacture, disposal, or product-

contents). Moreover, despite its stated commitment to the

“cradle to cradle” (p. 48) or “whole systems business

approach” (p. 61) that ostensibly accounts for the

corporation’s eco-footprint, Seventh Generation’s CEO Jeff

Hollender only thinly conceals his real motives for the

partnership: “…we can’t take on the world’s challenges

without Walmart and its tens-of-thousands of partners and

suppliers” (p. 60). Edwards apparently holds that the time

for challenging multinational capitalism is over. My claim,

however, is that while this may be true, Edwards is in no

position to assume it since he neither queries the right to

exist of even the corporations that make up fifty-three of

the worlds 100 largest economies (p. 55), nor does he

seriously undertake the deeper question whether a raison

d’être targeted at maximizing profits can be made consistent

with any commitment to sustainability.

To the contrary, Edwards makes heroes of some of the

most environmentally troubling corporations in the world—

including Walmart who agreed to pay 27.6 million dollars to

settle a 2010 allegation that it improperly disposed of

hazardous waste in its California stores. This is not to say

that Walmart—who has since this settlement sought to eliminate 20

million metric tons of greenhouse gases from its global

supply chain—cannot do better. But it is to say that short

of the pressure exerted by consumers, we have no good reason

to think that Walmart is more concerned about the

environment or human health than it is about its image. The

moment that “green” ceases to be profitable or fashionable

is the moment that Walmart (DuPont, Ford, Alcoa, etc.)

ceases to be “green” could it ever make this claim honestly;

arguably it cannot.

2. The need for a critique of capitalism: In a chapter entitled

“Putting Mother Nature on the Payroll,” Suzuki characterizes

“Mother Nature” as a kind of service provider:

You’d think that if we valued these things [clean water

and air, for example], we’d have some way of accounting

for them. But we don’t. Mother Nature has been

incredibly generous, offering these services for free…

In fact, we predicated our entire economy around the

notion that these services have no quantifiable value

and will continue to be provided indefinitely…we don’t

have that luxury anymore…While it would be nice to be

able to simply say that nature’s services…are

priceless…our society is ruled by the almighty dollar.

The sad fact is, unless we are able to put a price on

these services, we will continue to squander them.

(RSH, p. 85)

Suzuki goes on to argue for strong government policies and

regulations “to create a level playing field where those who

pollute and damage nature’s services pay more than those who

do not” (RSH, p. 86). He acknowledges those who are

uncomfortable with “putting a price tag on nature” (RSH, p.

86), and he recognizes that “remedial products” like bottled

water and eye drops suggest that something is wrong “when

poor environmental health and reduced quality of life are

actually good for the economy” (RSH, p. 87). But neither he

nor Edwards go any further than this.

Or worse: Edwards asks whether “the whole growth model

we’ve created over the last 50 years is simply

unsustainable,” acknowledging Bill McKibben’s observation

that this model is “associated with environmental decline,

limited happiness, and social inequality” (TBS, p. 57). But

he nonetheless goes on to insist, in effect, that there is

nothing inherent in the model that prescribes decline,

limited happiness, or inequality, and he highlights the

Sierra Business Council, the Business Alliance for Local

Living Economies, and Whole Food’s FLOW which claims to be

“dedicated to ‘liberating the entrepreneurial spirit for

good and focusing it on creating sustainable peace,

prosperity, and happiness for all in our lifetime’” (TBS, p.

63). Edwards claims these are the kinds of organizations

that can green the commercial landscape “by shining a light

on the ecological, social, and economic “blind spots” of

traditional companies” (TBS, p. 63).

But the potential for conflict between the “liberated

entrepreneurial spirit” of, for example, an Aubry McClendon

(Chesapeake Energy) who made $112.5 million in 2009 for

innovation in hydraulic fracturing—a highly hazardous form

of natural gas drilling (fracking)—and the creation of

sustainable peace and prosperity for all hardly constitutes

a mere blind spot. Rather, it highlights an endemic feature

of capitalism, namely, that the primary driver of any such

enterprise is profit, that this requires the capacity to

compete with similar enterprises, and that this, in turn,

requires the willingness to utilize any and all resources to

advance this competition. If multinational energy interests—

Chesapeake, Exxon, BP, Chevron, etc—collectively opt to go

green, the production of energy for profit would have to

end. But Aubry McClendon is not invested at a 2.5% stake in

each hydro-fracking well drilled for any reason other than

monetizing his return. Such is the nature of capitalist

enterprise. Chesapeake isn’t protected by proprietary rights

laws over the carcinogenic cocktail used in hydro-fracking

as cooperative strategy with like-minded folks, and these

folks don’t hire lobbyists simply to visit with their

fellows on capital hill. Chesapeake hires lobbyists to

insure the externalizing of cost and responsibility to

agents other than themselves (like tax-payers) and to insure

that our elected representatives vote against environmental

regulation. In other words, the notion that a freed

entrepreneurial spirit will translate into anything other

than the continued exploitation of Mother Nature’s services,

or that we can continue to conceive of “Mother Nature” as a

service provider and not treat “her” merely as a service

provider is at least naïve. Indeed, in the hands of

organizations like the Marcellus Shale Coalition

(marcelluscoalition.org/), such is naught but propaganda.

Suzuki might counter with the claim that, following a

study conducted by Science in 2002, “conserving natural areas

is actually one hundred times more profitable than

exploiting them” (RSH, p. 90). This may be true, but it

misses the point well illustrated by the “gold rush” in

states like Pennsylvania to develop hydro-fracking. Suzuki

rightly claims that “the loss of natural habitat costs

humanity some $250 billion every year” (RSH, p. 90), but

Big-Energy CEOs are not interested in losses or gains to

humanity. Their interests lay in the satisfaction of their

boards of directors and their shareholders—a subset of

“humanity” to be sure, but not of the laboring, sweating

masses. If hydro-fracking can produce the kind of immediate

profit margin that CEOs like McClendon are banking on, it’s

hard to imagine an argument for their liberation to do the

good, to foster equality and generate the conditions of

happiness will find much of an audience among their peers.

“Humanity” is not McClendon’s peer; The CEOs of Exxon, BP,

Inergy, and Chevron are—and they’re his competition.

3. The guts to talk about what conservation, environmental preservation, and

human population growth really mean with respect to transformation of

worldview: Suzuki, Edwards and Osprey Orielle Lake’s Uprisings for

the Earth: Reconnecting Nature with Culture: As I’ve argued, while

each author pays lip service to the transformation of

worldview demanded to achieve sustainability, none really

confront what that might mean with respect to the

institutions—economic, cultural, religious—which underlay

our current state of affairs. However, while Suzuki and

Edwards offer ameliorative arguments that fail to

interrogate the institutions responsible for “endless”

production, waste, species extinction, and human chauvinism,

Lake takes a different tack—one less reliant on (or

interested in) facts, and more designed to solicit a kind of

empathy, spiritualized, or kindred feeling among the earth’s

inhabitants.

Utilizing a narrative, story-telling strategy, Lake

certainly recognizes that there is a connection between

environmental integrity and social/economic justice: “The

first pathway focuses on the immediate and urgent need to

stop the destruction of the planet and the imperative to

help those most in need” (p. 4), and she appeals to what she

calls “earth-honoring cultures” for relevant inspiration.

Her aim is to get us to “reconnect with the natural world”

(p. 6), and to encourage “contemplative listening and

thoughtful encounters with nature” (p. 7). Lake also insists

that the work of science is largely consistent with the

practices of indigenous cultures, and she offers biomimicry

as an example of a science “based entirely on learning from

nature as a model” (p. 11). Well and good. The trouble is

that while Lake’s stories are inspiring, her depictions of

peoples and places rich, her commitment to reconnection

clear, inspiration is not transformation, and Lake offers nothing to

bridge this abyss.

4. An adequate awareness of the disproportionate effects of

environmental erosion for women, girls, and indigenous peoples, especially in

the “developing” world: putting aside questions about Lake’s

understanding of science, her arguably romanticized

portrayal of indigenous cultures, or even her genuinely

opaque references to “the natural laws of the earth,” one

might still be tempted to read her as, say, a stalwart

advocate for women, indigenous peoples, and the global poor.

This, moreover, is not only true to some extent, she at

least pays lip service well beyond Suzuki and Edwards to

suffering. Lake does refer to “[w]omen’s equality and

leadership,” the value of indigenous people’s conservation

practices, and the fundamental importance of relieving

hunger. But she offers no argument for why we (whoever “we”

are, presumably the more affluent who have the leisure to

read Lake’s—or Suzuki’s or Edward’s work) should care about

these issues beyond a rather vaguely conceived notion that,

in addressing these, we will achieve this reconnection.

Potentially, of course, some might. That is, in reading

her prose and vignettes, some might be so moved. But there’s

no guarantee of that; can we really see a hydraulic

fracturing CEO like Aubry McClendon “reconnecting” with

nature via Uprisings for the Earth? Can we imagine him suddenly

moved by the egregious injustice that his industry

perpetuates with respect to the social and economic

conditions of those who may live near frack-pads, or those

who—lucky enough to own property—will lose control of the

mineral rights underneath their own lands? This seems

unlikely in the extreme. Hence while Lake is to be applauded

for at least raising the issue of the global status of

women, indigenous peoples, and the global poor, we have to

conclude that since her audience is the proverbial choir—not

those whose prerogative to exploit both nature and human

labor is guaranteed by the institutions that remain largely

invisible in her work—that it’s not really transformation

she’s after as much as inspiring those who are already inspired.

5. An adequate account of suffering borne by nonhuman animals: a

similar argument can be made, I think, with respect to

Lake’s treatment of nonhuman animals. While she does include

some moving and beautiful imagery throughout Uprisings of

interaction between human beings and nonhuman animals, while

her prose evinces great respect for the nonhuman world,

little actually challenges the institutionalized status quo

of, for example, factory farming, medical and/or industrial

experimentation, zoos, circuses, and so on. Some might well

feel deeply the lives of the nonhuman animals she describes;

perhaps some would even be moved to, for example, consider

becoming vegetarian or vegan. But what Lake does not supply

is any sustained argument for any particular stance we might

or ought to take toward nonhuman nature. Hers’ is something

more like a plea for personal enlightenment, valuable in its

own right, but hardly an argument for re-conceiving the

collective will towards a sustainable future. Hence, we cannot

read Uprisings as a substantive program for change, or as a

conceptual framework for a sustainable future, or even as a

serious effort to recruit folks whose notion of reconnection

is going out to play miniature golf. But without this

argument, we have no reason to believe that anything like

the transformation of worldview necessary for us to get to

that sustainable world is possible—or even that Lake thinks

it is.

Thus we arrive at (6) Any real hope for enduring change. I

think that—intentions notwithstanding—none of these books

accomplishes this admittedly difficult task, and I am thus

tempted to read each as a kind of swan song, that is, as a

kind of plaintive bequest that we do something to avoid

ecocide. “Surely that is what we want,” each seems to bleat.

But in demanding too little from human interests in that

future, in failing to interrogate critically the

institutions that have resulted in our current ecological

mess, in failing to clearly lay out the connections between

environmental integrity, social and economic justice, and

what a future that human beings would find desirable would

look like, they leave the reader who wants to do something

meaningfully connected to that future with too little—

hopefully not too late.

Wendy Lynne Lee, Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania

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