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
6,175 words, including titles, headers, and subheaders.
Top Related