Arianna Huffington calls for US innovation http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/the-imperative-need-for-a_b_519100.html which focuses on the areas of broadband access, green economy and immigration reform. She should have included a larger context to fit them into. For now, I will name that larger context The Global View.
THE GLOBAL VIEW
1) The planet is a seamless orb which does not respect geopolitical boundaries. Emissions generated in the developed world trap the sun's heat inside Earth's atmosphere and warms the entire planet. Dust storms at one end of the globe transmit dust clouds to the other. Ice melts at the poles and sea levels rise thousands of miles away.
2) The seamlessness of Earth's climate is now mirrored by a globalized economy and resulting global interrelationships and interdependencies.
3) Although being challenged from the East, the US is still far and away the dominant world power. It therefore has the responsibility to lead the process of governance that responds to the environmental and socioeconomic interconnectedness of the globe.
The US needs the same kind of make-over that, say, Haiti needs. For instance, we don't have a remotely adequate disaster planning in this country.
Haiti is a good metaphor for the state of the world, which is grossly overcrowded, badly planned, and ill-prepared for disaster. Nowhere is exempt, and even the countries that are better off cannot isolate themselves from disasters in others. The entire world needs an equitable makeover, with the more fortunate pitching in to help the have nots. (It works the other way too.) We need one big push to make over the world toward a minimally improved state of stability and wellbeing, and it needs to be done everywhere and all together.
LOW-END INNOVATION
Innovation doesn't only relate to technology and high-end business. Innovation can apply just as well to the poor and unskilled. Green jobs don't only refer to solar panels and windmills (important though they are). Green also means land uses that foster sustainable lifestyles.
A NETWORK OF TRAILS
One aspect of infrastructure consistent with rethinking America is a network of trails, recommended under the Reagan administration, that ties the country together and encourages pedestrian, bike and animal circulation. (It would be similar in scope to the intercontinental highway system, which was NOT green.) This would almost certainly require Mexican labor, but it would have so many ancillary aspects not strictly tied to labor as to be a bonanza for US jobs as well. The trails network could in part be paired with a network of diversionary canals to lessen the impact of flooding from major rivers throughout the nation. Trees could also be planted along these routes.
This program is consistent with a number off systemically related aspects and affects of governance: economic revitalization, recreation , tourism, animal welfare, national security, disaster planning, environmental improvements, abolishing the war on drugs, legalizing marijuana, reallocation of money from the war on drugs, increasing state coffers through taxes from legal marijuana sales, a Mexican guest-worker program, easing the illegal immigration crisis, etc.
Such a program would go a long way toward making over America, and would provide a good example of the kind of efforts needed everywhere else in the world.
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globe and place and how everything connects
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I find big things easier to comprehend than little things. Since most people (in the Western world at any rate) are just the opposite, I’m always going against the grain. I can’t find any corroboration for my view that it is very easy to correct Earth’s climate and other critical woes if we think big enough. And it’s tempting to go off in a corner and leave the world to its dealings.
Despite what astronauts say about Earth’s unity, beauty and fragility when seen from afar, policy to give meaning to that vision is absent. The awe-stricken astronauts were working at the level of sensibility and feeling, and these are never the concern of policy.
After I wrote my first blog post (“How To Do Everything,” below) I heard about the book “Endgame” by Derrick Jensen, for which the author won The Press Action Person of the Year award. Although I’m puzzled by Jensen’s radical views and by the acclaim given him, what he wrote stopped me in my tracks. Could it be that I received no corroboration for my views because there was none to be found within the broad culture?
Among the premises in Endgame :
Premise Twenty: Within this culture, economics—not community well-being, not morals, not ethics, not justice, not life itself—drives social decisions.
I reread my post, and the main fault I now find with it is the perhaps naïve assumption that it lies within the power of government to save the planet from the dire consequences wrought by industrial civilization. Ain’t gonna happen, most likely.
But I question whether direct acts of violence against civilization (as Jensen advocates) is the answer – these will most likely happen anyway -- or whether it is feasible, as an alternate strategy, to take peaceful but subversive actions to protect and restore the planet. As an example, what if it were feasible to cover dysfunctional paving everywhere (paving that does not use the sun’s energy to do anything useful) with vegetation (a simple, non-technologic solution to climate change)? It can’t be denied that looking at Earth as a seamless orb that depends on vegetation for its survival is something that civilization has proven hopeless at doing.
During the coming year I want to investigate, to my satisfaction, how or whether the broader society, driven by a revolution in the humanities and the arts, could potentially reverse this direction. (Examining the feasibility of a worldwide survey of land-use plans is one possible way to start.)
Can what is harmful in civilization be transcended through civilization itself?
Despite what astronauts say about Earth’s unity, beauty and fragility when seen from afar, policy to give meaning to that vision is absent. The awe-stricken astronauts were working at the level of sensibility and feeling, and these are never the concern of policy.
After I wrote my first blog post (“How To Do Everything,” below) I heard about the book “Endgame” by Derrick Jensen, for which the author won The Press Action Person of the Year award. Although I’m puzzled by Jensen’s radical views and by the acclaim given him, what he wrote stopped me in my tracks. Could it be that I received no corroboration for my views because there was none to be found within the broad culture?
Among the premises in Endgame :
Premise Twenty: Within this culture, economics—not community well-being, not morals, not ethics, not justice, not life itself—drives social decisions.
I reread my post, and the main fault I now find with it is the perhaps naïve assumption that it lies within the power of government to save the planet from the dire consequences wrought by industrial civilization. Ain’t gonna happen, most likely.
But I question whether direct acts of violence against civilization (as Jensen advocates) is the answer – these will most likely happen anyway -- or whether it is feasible, as an alternate strategy, to take peaceful but subversive actions to protect and restore the planet. As an example, what if it were feasible to cover dysfunctional paving everywhere (paving that does not use the sun’s energy to do anything useful) with vegetation (a simple, non-technologic solution to climate change)? It can’t be denied that looking at Earth as a seamless orb that depends on vegetation for its survival is something that civilization has proven hopeless at doing.
During the coming year I want to investigate, to my satisfaction, how or whether the broader society, driven by a revolution in the humanities and the arts, could potentially reverse this direction. (Examining the feasibility of a worldwide survey of land-use plans is one possible way to start.)
Can what is harmful in civilization be transcended through civilization itself?
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4 comments:
Please feel free to post comments, which I will consider very seriously. This is a group effort.
Trevor, I had no idea you were writing a blog. And you’ve written so much! Why were you keeping this hidden, not telling anybody?
In the environmental engineering community there is a prevalent view that things will continue until there is a big die off. In a closed environment like an island that is overrun with rabbits or mule deer, at some point along comes a virus or the food runs out and there’s a big die off. Only it’s not just a few but 30% or 40% or even worse.
That may be what we are in for. Sorry the pessimist.
So glad to see you are getting readership!
Pete,
Great to hear from you. I work on the assumption that any important change begins with a small number of people. Then there's the butterfly effect. You can't exist without changing the world, so why not have an intention to change it in a desired direction?
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