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We are facing an environmental crisis
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an economic crisis
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and a crisis...
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of the human spirit
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We look around and what do we see? We see businesses going on as usual,
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we see governments - at best - thinking four years down the road
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when they really need to be thinking seven generations down the road.
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We need positive visions for humanity and the planet.
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THE ECONOMICS OF HAPPINESS
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Around the world I actually see more hope than hopelessness.
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The future with less oil could be preferable to the present with lots of oil.
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Ladakh, or "Little Tibet", in the Western Himalayas,
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one of the highest inhabited places on Earth.
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This is a remote land, and was for centuries isolated from the outside world.
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Until recently, the Ladakhis sustained themselves through farming and regional trade.
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It was a way of life that was finely tuned to the local environment.
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Economic analyst and author Helena Norberg-Hodge knows Ladakh from the inside.
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She believes that the Ladakhis' story can shed light
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on the root causes of the crises now facing the planet.
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I have spent much of the last 35 years in Ladakh, working with the people to find
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ways of strengthening their culture as it confronts the modern world.
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Over the years, Ladakh became a second home to me - almost like a first home.
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It was a huge source of inspiration.
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I learned about social, ecological, and personal well-being, about the roots of happiness.
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I was also forced to reconsider many of the basic assumptions
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that I had always taken for granted, and to look at my own Western culture in a different light.
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There was this sort of radiance and vitality that I had never experienced anywhere else.
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Even the material standard of living was high.
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They had large, spacious houses, plenty of leisure time.
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There was no unemployment - it had never existed.
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And no one went hungry.
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Of course they didn't have our comforts and luxuries,
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but what they did have was a way of life that was vastly more sustainable than ours,
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and that was also far more joyous and rich.
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In the mid-1970s Ladakh was suddenly thrown open to the outside world.
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Cheap subsidized food, trucked in on subsidized roads, by vehicles running on subsidized fuel
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undermined Ladakh's local economy.
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At the same time, the Ladakhis were bombarded with advertising and media images
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that romanticized western-style consumerism,
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and made their own culture seem pitiful by comparison.
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As the area was increasingly exposed to the consumer culture,
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I saw how people started to think of themselves as backward, primitive, and poor.
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In the early years I went to this beautiful village,
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and just out of curiosity I asked a young man from the village to show me the poorest house.
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He thought for a bit and then said, "We don't have any poor houses here."
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The same young man I heard ten years later saying to a tourist,
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"Oh, if you could only help us Ladakhis, we're so poor."
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Today, Ladakh faces a wide range of problems that were unknown in the traditional culture.
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The changes in Ladakh were so clear-cut, and I saw with my own eyes cause and effect.
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One minute you've got vital people and a really sustainable culture.
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The next you've got pollution, both air and water, you've got unemployment,
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a widening gap between rich and poor,
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and perhaps most shockingly of all, in a people who had been so spiritually grounded,
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divisiveness and depression.
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These changes weren't the result of innate human greed or some sort of evolutionary force;
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they happened far too suddenly for that.
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They were clearly the direct result of exposure to outside economic pressures.
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And I witnessed how these pressures created intense competition,
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breaking down community and the connection to nature that had been the cornerstone
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of Ladakhi culture for centuries.
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This was Ladakh's introduction to globalization.
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globalization, noun.
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1. the deregulation of trade and finance in order to enable business and banks to operate globally.
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2. the emergence of a single world market dominated by transnational companies.
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(Often confused with international collaboration, interdependence, global community.)
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Globalization is the most powerful force for change in the world today,
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affecting not only remote populations like Ladakhis, but societies across the planet.
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For some people, globalizing economic activity is our biggest hope for the future -
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the solution to world poverty in particular.
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For others, it's a fundamental cause of many of the problems we face today, and an ongoing threat.
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People often think of globalization as something that brings us all closer together
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through faster communication, easier travel, and so on.
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But at it's core it's an economic process. It's about deregulation,
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and that means freeing up big banks and big businesses to enter local markets worldwide.
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The focus in on profit, not people. That doesn't bring us together.
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On the contrary, it's leading to increased competition and division.
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Globalization is the rapid expansion of a process that started about 500 years ago.
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At that time Europeans conquered and colonized much of the world.
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They dismantled self-reliant economies and enslaved their populations -
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forcing them to work in mines, cotton fields and tea plantations.
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In the mid-twentieth century colonialism gave way to a more subtle form of enslavement: debt.
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Shackled by so-called 'aid' packages and crippling loans,
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nation after nation fell deeper into poverty, making it easier for corporations and financial institutions,
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the successors of the colonial merchants, to extract money, resources and cheap labor.
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Today those transnational businesses have grown so large and powerful that they effectively
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control governments, dictate economic policy, and shape people's opinions and worldviews.
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Yet the push for growth, through global trade in both goods and finance, continues.
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In order to compete, the big corporations are demanding ever more deregulation,
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still further globalization.
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It's an agenda that has major implications for both ecosystems and people around the world.
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8 INCONVENIENT TRUTHS ABOUT GLOBALIZATION
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1. GLOBALIZATION MAKES US UNHAPPY
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It's hard to get your head around globalization.
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It's tempting to ignore it, to leave it to the experts. But we simply can't afford to.
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Even though it's something that happens 'out there',
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it has a profound effect on every aspect of our lives, even our sense of self.
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What we're seeing is rising levels of depression in the West.
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Some studies show rises as doubling, other studies show rising as much as tenfold.
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The stresses on the average household have increased enormously.
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Their jobs are much more demanding. More travel, more work at home.
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More access at any time. Longer commutes for many people.
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And all the time we're exposed to images of a certain level of material success,
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a certain level of looks, a certain lifestyle that we are measuring ourselves up to
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and seeing ourselves not as good as.
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There is a constant pressure on people to have bigger, better, more.
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But, of course, in the end what does that bring us? It doesn't bring us happiness.
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Material reward has never brought us happiness.
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Every year since the end of World War II one of the big polling firms has asked Americans,
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"Are you happy with your life?"
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The number of Americans who say, "Yes, I'm very happy with my life"
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the percentage peaks in 1956, and goes slowly but steadily downhill ever since.
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That's interesting because in that same 50 years we have gotten immeasurably richer.
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We have three times as much stuff.
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Somehow it hasn't worked, because that same affluence tends to undermine community.
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I think the only people who are happy, deeply happy, and deeply secure are people who know
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they can rely on someone else in life, people who know they are not alone in this world.
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Lonely people have never been happy people. Globalization is creating a very lonely planet.
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2. GLOBALIZATION BREEDS INSECURITY
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It's corporations who are raising our children.
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Who's driving the food choices of children? Who's driving the entertainment choices of children,
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who's driving what they want to buy and what they care about?
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More and more it's a set of corporations that sell to kids.
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Human greed is very easy to exploit.
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The method of exploiting greed is also very cruel -
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Comparison and competition.
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People lose their own identity right from childhood.
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Our children don't want to speak their languages anymore,
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they no longer want to be associated with their own culture.
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It's cool to wear designer jeans. It's cool to eat at McDonald's.
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Our children learn to reject their own culture in school.
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Why? Because the teacher tells them,
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"If you don't learn multiplication, you'll go to feed the pigs."
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"If you don't learn multiplication, you'll go to farm like your father."
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as if to farm would be an offense or a crime or something bad.
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Young people are looking for acceptance; they want to belong.
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And they're now being told that if they want the respect of their peer group,
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they've got to have the latest running shoes, the latest gadgets, the latest clothing.
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And, of course, as they go down that consumer path
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it leads to separation and envy,
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not to the sense of connection - to the love -that at a deep level they're really looking for.
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In a previous era, before the modern era of consumer capitalism, people's sense of self,
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their personal identities, were shaped largely through their communities, their neighborhoods.
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Nowadays, where all those supports have fallen away,
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the gap that was left has been filled by the marketers, who came in and said:
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"Don't worry if you don't know who you are. We will provide you with a packaged identity
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which you can use - by buying our products, of course -
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to create a sense of self, which you can then project onto the world."
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The role models that are beamed across the world today
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look very different from people in Africa, South America, or Asia.
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They marginalize the majority of the global population.
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And even if you are blonde, blue-eyed and beautiful, you're never quite beautiful enough.
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Around the world sales of blue contact lenses are escalating and more and more people are
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using chemicals to lighten their skin and hair.
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If you look at what's currently motivating industrial growth, not only in the US but in the
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so-called emerging, developing nations - China, India, South Korea, and others -
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it has a great deal to do with the desire to emulate the American way of life.
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I think Americans are very interesting.
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I admire them.
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They are so different from Chinese people in every way.
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They are tasteful and fashionable.
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3. GLOBALIZATION WASTES NATURAL RESOURCES
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Encouraging consumerism threatens the ecological fabric of the entire planet.
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Natural resources are already stretched to breaking point by population pressures.
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And yet we have an economic system that encourages each and every one of us
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to consume more and more and more.
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It's a terrific onslaught of marketing, merchandising, advertising, brainwashing.
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So we are on a big consumptive splurge.
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But we have four times the population of the US
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and if we start consuming, and all the consumption levels reach like America,
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then we'll be consuming all the resources of the planet right in India.
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The consumer culture that globalization promotes is increasingly urban.
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At first glance, high density urban living might appear to reduce per capita use of resources.
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But this is only true when compared with life in the suburbs.
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Compared to more genuinely decentralized living patterns,
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urbanization is extremely resource intensive.
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This is particularly clear in the global South.
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The moment a person moves into the city,
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the energy use shoots up, the water use shoots up.
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The infrastructure to run a city per capita is much bigger than the infrastructure to
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produce a high quality of life in a village.
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When hundreds of millions of rural people are pulled into cities,
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the food they once grew themselves must now be grown for them,
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typically on giant, chemical-intensive farms.
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All this food must then be brought into the cities
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on roads purpose-built to accommodate larger and larger trucks.
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Providing water involves enormous dams and man-made reservoirs.
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Energy production means huge, centralized power plants, coal and uranium mines,
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and thousands of miles of transmission lines.
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Meanwhile, much of the waste that is produced,
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including countless tons of potentially valuable compost,
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must be trucked out of the city to be treated, buried, incinerated, or dumped at sea.
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The end result is that urban dwellers typically consume
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significantly more non-renewable resources than their land-based relatives.
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We've gotten to the end of the supply chain, and there is no more.
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If we decide in the name of fairness to try to industrialize the entire world, the result will be
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universal starvation, universal famine.
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Ecosystems will collapse and we'll ultimately see the end of our species.
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4. GLOBALIZATION ACCELERATES CLIMATE CHANGE
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The globalization of the economy is having an ever-increasing impact on the earth's climate,
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not only through the waste and excesses inherent in the consumer culture
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and the escalation in resource use that results from urbanization,
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but because the very logic of globalization
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requires that goods travel ever longer distances from producer to consumer.
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Because of hidden subsidies and skewed regulations, food from the other side of the world
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tends to cost less than food from a mile away.
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In the UK, butter from New Zealand
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costs significantly less than butter from the farm down the road.
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and in Ladakh, butter trucked in over the Himalayas for several days costs half as much as local butter.
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We often hear about efficiencies of scale, but actually the truth is
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what we've developed today is a system that could not be more wasteful.
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We have tuna fish caught on the east coast of America, flown to Japan, processed,
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flown back to America and sold to consumers.
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We have English apples flown to South Africa to be waxed,
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flown back again to be sold to consumers.
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The whole process involves incredible quantities of waste.
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A series of treaties, new ones almost every year,
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promote economic growth through international trade.
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As a consequence, countries today routinely import and export
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nearly identical quantities of identical products.
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Every day of the year, grain, meat, live animals, canned goods,
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and a whole range of manufactured products, not to mention waste - even used batteries -
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crisscross the planet.
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All of this at a time when rising CO2 emissions are threatening our very survival.
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5. GLOBALIZATION DESTROYS LIVELIHOODS
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The global economy has become a casino, and we're all potential losers. One major casualty is our jobs.
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Corporate mergers, takeovers, relocation to lower wage countries
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threaten the livelihood of virtually all of us:
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accountants, assembly line workers, even CEOs.
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And when we retire it gets no better; as we've seen recently,
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pension funds are at the mercy of uncontrolled speculation.
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It's not just in the West that livelihoods are under threat.
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In the less industrialized parts of the world,
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finding and holding onto a job is becoming increasingly difficult.
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The first victims are small farmers.
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The present development model encourages urbanization
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and intentionally works to reduce the number of farmers.
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All those displaced farmers have nowhere to go but the city
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where they become cheap labor for industry, for investment from abroad.
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All we want is our land!
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Give us some land and we'll work hard to make something, to make a life.
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Removing people from the land is the root of all unemployment.
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It is the root of the creation of slums and the rural-urban migration.
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I don't want to be a beggar!
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If I could have my land back, I'd go back to my main business, farming.
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Making people disposable in terms of working with the land
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is creating probably the biggest human crisis.
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No human rights community is noticing it, no Amnesty has noticed it,
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but 100,000 Indian farmers have been driven to suicide.
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6. GLOBALIZATION INCREASES CONFLICT
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When people are pushed off the land into crowded cities,
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members of diverse ethnic and religious groups
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are forced into intense competition for the few available jobs.
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Differences that were once accepted become a source of fear, fundamentalism, and conflict.
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Globalization, which is creating the gap between the rich and poor,
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is directly affecting the survival of certain people - a lot of people -
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and this gives them only few options.
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And people will have to take options when it is a life and death situation.
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It will create terrorism. It will create a lot of disharmony.
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You destroy language, you destroy the roots of who you are, you destroy the history,
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and you become nobody in the world.
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Globalization with its homogenous way of looking at the world
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and that we must have one worldview is extremely dangerous.
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It is dangerous for diversity. This is not healthy for harmonizing our societies.
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In Ladakh, Buddhists and Muslims had lived side by side for 500 years without any conflict.
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But with the advent of the new economy, unemployment increased exponentially,
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and so did competition for the narrow range of new commodities,
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like kerosene and coal, cement and plastic.
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The end result was friction, conflict, and ultimately violence.
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After only about a decade, Buddhists and Muslims were literally killing each other.
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7. GLOBALIZATION IS BUILT ON HAND-OUTS TO BIG BUSINESS
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It's widely believed that whatever the social and environmental costs, globalization is unstoppable.
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It's seen as an inevitable, almost natural process driven by 'free markets'
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and the so-called 'efficiencies of scale' enjoyed by bigger businesses.
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If there's one thing that political parties from the left to the right seem to agree on today,
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it's the power and value of the free market.
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But the irony is that the majority of really polluting things that are happening today
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would not exist within a genuine free market.
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Nuclear power couldn't exist, for example, without massive state support.
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There are billions and billions of dollars being poured into continuing business as usual,
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whether that's subsidizing fossil fuels, whether it's subsidizing huge monocultures,
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whether it's giving corporate welfare to some of the largest and most powerful corporations around.
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It would be impossible to maintain the current global economy as it is today without enormous
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support from governments around the world.
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We're about as far away from a free market as it is possible to be.
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Support for big business comes not only in the form of subsidies but through the increasing
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deregulation of trade and finance under the auspices of such bodies as the WTO.
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At the global level regulations are being increasingly stripped away
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with the effect that transnational corporations and banks are free to operate across the entire planet.
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Meanwhile, at the national level there's ever more red tape and bureaucracy.
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This places an unfair, disproportionate burden on small and medium sized businesses,
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and every year hundreds of thousands of them are going out of business.
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It's basically a system which criminalizes the small producer and processor
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and deregulates the giant business.
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The leverage of international financial agreements and the world trade agreements
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levers people, often against their will, into a beggar-thy-neighbor, dog-eat-dog,
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global commodity market in which speculation is king,
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and real people and local communities are an afterthought.
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8. GLOBALIZATION IS BASED ON FALSE ACCOUNTING
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If the global economy is such a destructive force, why do policymakers continue to promote it?
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More than anything, perhaps, it's because they believe that the world needs
00:30:01
what globalization is supposed to deliver: economic growth.
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Economic growth means strength and vitality.
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Not only our economies, but our societies, our political systems, the entire culture
00:30:13
is focused on making sure that our GDP grows as fast as possible.
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And I stand for programs that will mean growth and progress.
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It's as if every problem we have can be solved by increasing GDP.
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Economic growth is the key to the future of this country.
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Poverty is the problem -more economic growth is the answer.
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Unemployment is the problem -more economic growth is the answer.
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Environmental decline is the problem -more economic growth is the answer.
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A fiscal stimulus plan that will jump-start economic growth is long overdue.
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Using GDP as a measure of societal progress is little short of madness.
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If there's an oil spill, GDP goes up.
00:31:00
If the water is so polluted we have to buy it in bottles, GDP goes up.
00:31:05
War, cancer, epidemic illnesses - all of these things involve an exchange of money
00:31:14
and that means that they end up on the positive side of the balance sheet.
00:31:20
It's not only the measure of growth that is coming under scrutiny;
00:31:23
it's whole concept of growth itself.
00:31:27
You cannot have infinite growth on a finite planet.
00:31:33
No matter how you dress it up the whole thing stares you in the face.
00:31:38
There isn't enough resources for growth.
00:31:42
The evidence is clear that we as a species are now beyond the carrying capacity of the planet.
00:31:47
And this shift has happened within the last 20 years.
00:31:50
I mean, this hasn't happened in the four-and-a-half billion year history of the planet Earth.
00:31:58
Concerns over climate change, coupled with the near meltdown of the global financial system,
00:32:04
have ensured that alarm bells are finally beginning to ring.
00:32:10
The response of governments, however, has been essentially more of the same.
00:32:14
Whether it's bailouts to big banks, stimulus packages to encourage consumer spending,
00:32:19
or carbon trading schemes -
00:32:22
all these supposed solutions actually reinforce the system
00:32:27
that created the problems in the first place.
00:32:30
In the meanwhile Big Business is spending hundreds of millions of dollars
00:32:36
to convince us that they are leading the way to a green economy.
00:32:40
"Industry is ready for the green revolution."
00:32:44
Superficial solutions extend to the general public as well.
00:32:49
The emphasis is on changing individual consumer behavior.
00:32:53
We should drive less, screw in more efficient light bulbs,
00:32:57
consume more environmentally-friendly products.
00:33:01
There are things that we can do as individuals, but I worry a great deal that all of those,
00:33:07
including enlightened well-meaning environmental groups, who urge us to take individual action,
00:33:13
try to persuade us that we personally can solve the problem.
00:33:17
You can turn off the television in your house; you can say no to McDonalds and Nike.
00:33:22
You can decide not to work in a job that doesn't have meaning for you
00:33:27
or isn't making the world a better place, and live on less.
00:33:31
But there's a limit to how far we can go with those solutions as a society.
00:33:37
We have to do something about the institutions that are at the root of the problem.
00:33:42
And those are primarily the large corporations which drive our system.
00:33:47
They have enormous political power. It's a system run amok.
00:33:53
In the end, the only power that any of these institutions of empire
00:33:59
or plutocracy or whatever have are the power that we as citizens yield to them.
00:34:05
And they remain in power because we accept their legitimacy.
00:34:09
And if we withdraw that legitimacy, they lose their power over us.
00:34:13
We shall have to raise our voice and unite ourselves
00:34:18
and help those people who are telling the truth.
00:34:22
We're here to support folks who are trying to fight against the world's largest,
00:34:27
richest, and probably meanest corporation.
00:34:31
I think we need to start imagining an economy that isn't obsessed with economic growth -
00:34:39
one whose purpose is not to maximize profits, but to provide high quality, satisfying jobs,
00:34:47
producing goods and services that people really do need.
00:34:53
In 1972 the then King of Bhutan coined the term "Gross National Happiness"
00:35:00
and embedded the concept in the country's development policy.
00:35:05
Following his lead, economists across the world have begun to develop more meaningful ways
00:35:10
of measuring well-being and prosperity.
00:35:13
One such measure is the GPI, or Genuine Progress Index.
00:35:20
The purpose of the Genuine Progress Index is to count things more accurately, more comprehensively,
00:35:27
to take into account our human, social, community, natural wealth
00:35:34
in addition to our produced and material wealth
00:35:37
and actually count full social, environmental and economic benefits and costs.
00:35:44
Only with a full cost accounting system will we begin to understand that goods that are shipped
00:35:50
from 10,000 miles away are actually far more expensive than goods produced locally.
00:35:57
If you look at the current system,
00:35:59
we're seeing the distance between production and consumption continue to increase.
00:36:04
We're seeing the distance between people and power continue to increase.
00:36:07
I think economic globalization is responsible for that - it's increasing those trends.
00:36:11
And the obvious answer for me is the opposite -and that is economic localization.
00:36:16
We've got to begin localizing our politics, localizing our economies, localizing our cultures
00:36:26
localizing our spirits, you know, even our spiritual natures.
00:36:30
There is only one economics that will make sense.
00:36:33
That is local economics.
00:36:35
Everywhere.
00:36:37
localization, noun.
00:36:39
1. the removal of fiscal and other supports that currently favor giant transnational corporations and banks.
00:36:46
2. reducing dependence on export markets in favor of production for local needs.
00:36:53
(Often confused with isolationism, protectionism, the elimination of trade).
00:36:59
Localization is a systemic, far-reaching alternative to corporate capitalism.
00:37:06
Fundamentally, it's about reducing the scale of economic activity.
00:37:12
That doesn't mean eliminating international trade or striving for some kind of absolute self reliance.
00:37:19
It's simply about creating more accountable and more sustainable economies
00:37:25
by producing what we need closer to home.
00:37:29
No-one's saying there's going to be a complete end to international trade.
00:37:33
But at the very least we should be saying, "local needs should come first."
00:37:39
At a policy level the first step is to start the process of bringing
00:37:44
transnational corporations under democratic control.
00:37:48
We need to focus on three key mechanisms that governments use to shape the economy:
00:37:55
what they choose to regulate, both at the national level, and internationally through trade treaties
00:38:02
what they choose to tax; and what they choose to subsidize.
00:38:08
At the moment governments of every political color are using these mechanisms
00:38:14
to favor the big and the global.
00:38:18
If there is to be any chance of averting further social and environmental breakdown,
00:38:24
we need to level the playing field.
00:38:27
In the United States right now local governments are giving 50 billion dollars a year
00:38:32
to attract and retain non-local businesses
00:38:35
and we've calculated that the federal government is giving another 63 billion dollars.
00:38:40
That is 113 billion dollars a year that is making local businesses less competitive.
00:38:47
If, for example, a fraction of the subsidies that have gone into nuclear power or fossil fuels
00:38:55
were to go into renewable energies,
00:38:57
if a fraction of the subsidies that have gone into the whole infrastructure
00:39:02
that supports the private car was to go into mass transit systems,
00:39:07
it's incredible what we could achieve.
00:39:12
LOCAL BUSINESS AND BANKING
00:39:15
One of the initiatives I'm involved in is the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies,
00:39:20
and it's about bringing together local independent businesses
00:39:24
to withdraw their dependence on the corporate global economy
00:39:29
and begin to weave together the relationships of a new economy
00:39:32
that is really grounded in community and works by community values.
00:39:37
In the global economy it's as though our arms have become so long
00:39:41
that we can't see what our hands are doing.
00:39:43
But when the economy is operating on a more human scale,
00:39:46
it becomes easier for us to see the impact of our choices.
00:39:50
We can see if the environment has been polluted with chemicals or if workers have been exploited.
00:39:57
And so business becomes much more accountable.
00:40:00
Across the United States communities thought that their pathway to prosperity
00:40:04
was to attract and retain non-local business.
00:40:07
And they've come to realize that this is a fundamental dead end.
00:40:12
So instead they are now working with their local businesses to nurture local jobs
00:40:17
and helping those businesses connect with local markets.
00:40:21
By redefining their economic problem as a local one,
00:40:25
they have been able to take control over forces that previously seemed overwhelming.
00:40:33
Global business creates enormous wealth for the few, but leaves the great majority worse off.
00:40:40
Small businesses and local economies, on the other hand, can generate wealth in ways that
00:40:45
are both more equitable and sustainable.
00:40:50
One of the most important studies that we have on the effects of local business
00:40:54
compared the impacts of $100 spent at a local bookstore versus $100 spent at a chain.
00:41:01
$100 spent at the local bookstore left $45 in the local economy. $100 spent at the chain left $13.
00:41:10
So you get three times the income effects, three times the jobs,
00:41:14
three times the tax proceeds for local governments.
00:41:18
The principal difference was that the local bookstore had a local, high-level management team,
00:41:25
it used local lawyers and accountants, it advertised on local radio and TV.
00:41:30
None of those things were true of the chain store.
00:41:34
There are movements to localize not only business, but banking and finance as well.
00:41:41
One of the things we have to do is put finance back into its box.
00:41:47
So the re-regulation of the banking sector is vital.
00:41:51
Breaking up banks that are too big to fail -or were called "too big to fail"
00:41:56
Separating speculative functions from high street, mainstream, retail functions of banking,
00:42:03
so that money becomes our servant once more, rather than our master.
00:42:08
The financial crisis has actually given us a reminder that local banking and local pensions
00:42:16
are, in fact, more stable financial institutions.
00:42:19
We can have our money at credit unions - where that money is available to the community
00:42:23
for community reinvestment and the profits are reinvested in the community -
00:42:27
rather than these huge speculative bubbles caused by financial shenaniganry by big banks.
00:42:34
Turning away from global business has nothing to do with turning away from the world,
00:42:39
turning away from international collaboration or cultural exchange.
00:42:44
More than ever today, with our global problems, we need global cooperation,
00:42:51
but that is very different from the globalization of the economy.
00:42:57
LOCAL FOOD
00:43:07
Agriculture and food production is one area where not only is localization desirable,
00:43:14
in fact it is necessary.
00:43:18
If you shorten the distance between producers and consumers,
00:43:21
you're cutting out your food miles, you're cutting out your emissions, your oil dependency,
00:43:25
you're putting money straight back into the local economy where it's desperately needed.
00:43:30
In a local food economy consumers often pay less while farmers' earnings increase.
00:43:37
What's more, local food systems actively benefit the environment.
00:43:44
Localization is structurally, inextricably linked to the revitalization of diversity on the land.
00:43:52
When farmers sell in the global market,
00:43:55
they are forced to specialize in a very narrow range of standardized products.
00:44:00
Whereas when they sell in the local market
00:44:02
it's actually in their economic interest to increase the variety of their products.
00:44:09
A whole array of food-based movements is emerging:
00:44:13
farmers' markets, consumer/producer cooperatives, community supported agriculture,
00:44:19
edible schoolyards, slow food, permaculture, and urban gardens.
00:44:28
Let's take the example of a farmers' market. It's good because it uses less energy.
00:44:33
It's really good because it builds more community.
00:44:36
The average shopper at the farmers' market has ten times as many conversations
00:44:40
as the average shopper at the supermarket.
00:44:43
You know how you go into the supermarket and you just run in and grab something and run out.
00:44:46
You come shopping here and you just go, "Ahhh."
00:44:52
Paradoxically, many of the most effective initiatives to rebuild local food economies
00:44:57
are happening in big cities, from London to Sydney.
00:45:02
In San Francisco, government policy now requires all public institutions
00:45:07
- from schools and hospitals to prisons -to obtain their food from local sources.
00:45:16
It goes without saying that most of the food that's consumed in this country is consumed by cities.
00:45:22
So by definition citizens within those urban centers
00:45:25
should be designing and directing policy around food procurement.
00:45:31
So we have an executive order that is advancing a series of principles.
00:45:37
One is we want to see more gardens like this throughout at least our city and county.
00:45:42
Second, we want to establish new procurement strategies, new purchasing strategies.
00:45:46
If we're going to buy food in San Francisco, let's buy it regionally.
00:45:51
In Detroit, a city hit hard by the collapsing car industry,
00:45:56
a focus on local food is helping people regain control over their own lives.
00:46:06
We went from a situation where this area was fully populated.
00:46:12
Today most of the land is vacant.
00:46:16
The grocery stores that we have are basically liquor stores that have a little food in them,
00:46:23
but the food is old, old, old and terrible quality.
00:46:29
And since we have so many people who need food, it's only logical for us to use the land to raise food.
00:46:36
The garden feeds any and everybody,
00:46:38
from that person who comes down here every day in her Jaguar
00:46:41
to the person who comes down here asking if we have any cans.
00:46:44
So any and everybody can eat, but the only thing we ask is, "Come and get dirty...
00:46:49
If you see a weed, pick a weed, and you can always eat."
00:46:53
I mean people come looking for the garden. "I see your tomatoes over there - looking good -
00:46:55
can I get a couple of those?" "Yeah, man, c'mon."
00:46:59
If you want one to grow, you gotta put water, seeds, and sunshine and water on them too.
00:47:08
We should have something to share with the rest of the country and with people who are middle class
00:47:13
about what needs to be changed in society: changes in values, changing in ways of surviving.
00:47:20
You know, just as a prophetic message, I think that Detroit might need to look into agriculture again,
00:47:24
We have no choice, with the state of our economy and where we're headed,
00:47:29
the Big Three no longer, so there are no factories to take care of people,
00:47:34
you're going to see a lot more people actually getting back and attempting to reclaim
00:47:37
that which was once theirs.
00:47:42
The rapidly growing local food movement represents a powerful challenge to the corporate order.
00:47:50
Increasingly, big businesses are attempting to jump on the bandwagon by painting themselves as "local".
00:47:57
I've been growing potatoes for Lay's since 1964.
00:48:01
We grow potatoes in Texas. Lay's makes potato chips in Texas.
00:48:05
So it's a natural fit.
00:48:13
At the same time it's commonly argued that if we in the West localize,
00:48:19
we'll be depriving the Third World of an important export market.
00:48:23
The reality, however, is very different.
00:48:27
The idea that poverty reduction in the South depends on market access to northern markets
00:48:33
is a child of globalization.
00:48:35
We have limited resources. There's limited land, there's limited water, there's limited energy.
00:48:42
And if we have to use that land and water and energy
00:48:45
to produce one extra lettuce head for a British household,
00:48:52
we can be sure we are robbing Indian peasants of their rice and their wheat.
00:48:56
We are robbing India of her water. We are, in fact, creating a situation
00:49:01
where we are exporting to the Third World and the South famine and drought.
00:49:08
The smarter thing to do is to help communities in the global South achieve food self-reliance
00:49:15
and other forms of self-reliance.
00:49:18
That's a vision for eliminating global poverty I think we can stand behind.
00:49:23
Proponents of globalization argue that on a crowded planet,
00:49:28
only large-scale industrial farms can feed the world.
00:49:34
But smaller, locally-adapted farms are much more 'efficient' in two very important ways.
00:49:41
First, because they are less mechanized,
00:49:44
they provide far more jobs than their industrial counterparts.
00:49:48
And second, they are able to produce substantially more food per acre.
00:49:55
This is our vegetable garden. It's 100% organic. You can see the yield of these...
00:50:00
Basically, we get very good yields because we don't use fertilizers.
00:50:04
The soil, if it is managed well, the productivity is unbelievable.
00:50:09
For 15 years we have been analyzing small farms in India:
00:50:13
in the wet areas of Kerala, in the high Himalayas, in the deserts of Rajasthan.
00:50:18
And our research has shown again and again and again that bio-diverse, small farms
00:50:23
using ecological inputs produce 3 to 5 times more food than industrial monocultures.
00:50:32
All I need is a complete integrated farm of one acre and I can feed 20 people.
00:50:38
We don't need agricultural scientists, we don't need hybrid seeds, we don't need GM,
00:50:41
we don't need anything. We just need to be left alone to do our farming.
00:50:46
LOCAL ENERGY
00:50:52
Global warming is already here, and the era of cheap oil will soon be over.
00:50:59
But projections of energy needs for the future
00:51:02
almost always assume the continued growth of global business and long-distance trade -
00:51:09
and that means a continued large-scale use of fossil fuels.
00:51:14
We need to get back to basics, to see what our real energy needs are.
00:51:20
Do we really need the stuff that the consumer culture is foisting on us?
00:51:24
And couldn't most of our real needs -for clothing and housing, for food and drink -
00:51:32
be produced far closer to home?
00:51:35
If we cut out the outrageous waste inherent in the current system,
00:51:39
we'd be able to meet a far higher proportion of our energy requirements
00:51:45
from decentralized, renewable sources.
00:51:48
We have wind power, we have photovoltaics. We know how to save energy,
00:51:54
we can cut energy consumption in half in the next few years by some strategic investments at no cost.
00:52:01
The wide range of renewable energy technologies, small, medium, and large scale,
00:52:06
will pound for pound, dollar for dollar, yen for yen give you between 2 and 4 times as many jobs
00:52:14
as the kind of centralized, old-fashioned energy technologies we've got at the moment.
00:52:20
There 's a win - win - win.
00:52:24
The argument for pursuing a more localized energy path
00:52:28
is particularly strong when applied to the global South.
00:52:32
In the less industrialized world most people still live in relatively decentralized towns and villages
00:52:39
and are far less dependent on fossil fuels
00:52:44
It's not a question of "no development".
00:52:46
In Ladakh we've been working with local NGOs
00:52:49
to demonstrate a range of renewable energy technologies
00:52:54
from photovoltaics to passive solar, small-scale hydro and some wind.
00:53:00
We've been able to show that it's far less expensive and much easier
00:53:05
to introduce a decentralized, renewable energy infrastructure,
00:53:10
than it is to build up the conventional fossil fuel-based infrastructure.
00:53:15
And it also allows the fabric of community and social cohesion to continue.
00:53:26
LOCAL IDENTITY, LOCAL KNOWLEDGE
00:53:33
When we localize, we give our children role models and a standard they can live by
00:53:44
that affirms them, and affirms who they are in society
00:53:49
without having to look outside their culture to find imagery or symbols, to emulate.
00:53:57
The symbols, the standards, the values are right here amongst them.
00:54:02
When people turn away from the global consumer culture
00:54:06
and start reconnecting with each other in their own local communities,
00:54:10
they're providing very different role models for their children.
00:54:15
The distant images of perfection in the global media and in advertising create feelings of inferiority
00:54:23
which all too often in later life translate into fear, small-mindedness, and prejudice.
00:54:31
On the other hand, when children identify with real, flesh-and-blood people
00:54:36
who all have their strengths and weaknesses,
00:54:39
they get a much more realistic sense of who they are, of who they can be.
00:54:46
I saw this so clearly in Ladakh.
00:54:51
There were no 'celebrities' there. Everyone was seen, heard, and appreciated.
00:54:55
In effect, everybody was 'somebody'. And that sense of belonging built confidence
00:55:02
and a deep sense of self-respect, which in turn generated respect for others.
00:55:09
Local economies create a more secure identity not only by strengthening community,
00:55:16
but by nurturing a deeper connection with the earth.
00:55:21
Young people are now desperately looking for something else than what they learn in universities.
00:55:31
They were desperately looking for contact with nature.
00:55:37
It's important to learn traditional farming, but at the same time
00:55:40
just being in the mud, having fun working like this...
00:55:45
They are learning what it means to live.
00:55:48
They eat rice everyday and now they're learning, "Hey, this is where rice is coming from."
00:55:55
Local knowledge is knowledge that tells you about life. It is about living.
00:56:00
I call it "grandmothers' knowledge" and I think the biggest thing we need,
00:56:03
the task for today, is to create "grandmothers' universities" everywhere,
00:56:07
so that local knowledge never disappears.
00:56:11
LOCALIZING GLOBALLY
00:56:16
Sometimes we get an impression that it's all doom and gloom, that absolutely nothing is happening.
00:56:24
That's both complacent and wrong.
00:56:26
Wherever you look, there are things happening at the local level that
00:56:30
if they were identified and supported, could rapidly accelerate the change
00:56:35
to a more sustainable way of doing things.
00:56:39
In 'eco-villages', 'transition towns', and 'post-carbon cities'
00:56:45
people are working to rebuild their economies from the ground up
00:56:49
by favoring local production for local needs over long-distance trade.
00:56:58
The transition town movement in Britain and in other countries around the world
00:57:03
has been described as one of the fastest growing social experiments we've ever seen.
00:57:09
We're going to be looking much, much more towards the local, towards urban agriculture,
00:57:14
realigning our local agriculture towards local markets rather than international markets.
00:57:20
Building will move much more back towards local materials -
00:57:25
using straw bale, cob, clay plasters, hemp, timber,
00:57:29
using the best of modern design, but using those local materials.
00:57:35
In the Japanese town of Ogawamachi an organic waste recycling scheme
00:57:41
is the starting point for a whole range of locally run projects.
00:57:46
A collectively-owned biodigester produces both energy for the community
00:57:51
and compost for a nearby farm.
00:57:56
The farm, in turn, sells its produce to local residents and a local food restaurant.
00:58:02
Purchases within the community can be made in the town's own currency.
00:58:09
All over the world, money leaks out of the local economy
00:58:13
like something falling through the mesh of a basket.
00:58:16
What we're trying to do here in Ogawamachi is to cover the mesh,
00:58:21
to prevent those leaks from happening.
00:58:25
On every continent a pattern is emerging.
00:58:28
We are seeing the beginnings of a worldwide localization movement.
00:58:34
One organization alone, Via Campesina, which both opposes globalization
00:58:40
and campaigns for food sovereignty and local self-reliance,
00:58:45
represents more than 400 million small farmers worldwide.
00:58:53
It's a very big change we've had on account of these gardens.
00:58:58
We've got tomatoes, and cabbage!
00:59:01
People are much happier.
00:59:05
Our aim is to defend our own cultures.
00:59:10
Our very existence is a barrier, a form of resistance to the industrial model.
00:59:22
In some communities even the government is supporting a shift toward the local.
00:59:28
Local governments realized in recent years
00:59:30
that we have a much bigger role to play in what goes on in the world.
00:59:36
And what we've encouraged is local business- local people supporting each other
00:59:40
rather than relying on the multinationals.
00:59:44
It's about building community as well as a strong economy.
00:59:47
We can do this, and do it well, and enjoy a quality of life that is far superior
00:59:53
to a homogenized, corporate way of life that's imposed on people.
00:59:58
Local communities are gaining strength by linking up across the world
01:00:02
to collaborate and share information.
01:00:06
In exchanges with the less industrialized world, westerners can play an important role
01:00:12
by exposing the reality behind the romanticized images of the consumer culture.
01:00:18
People often say, "How can we tell them in the Third World not to consume, not to drive cars?
01:00:24
We're doing it."
01:00:27
And, of course, that's absolutely true. We have no right to tell people how to live their lives.
01:00:33
But we can tell them that they are not stupid and backward or primitive if they live on they land,
01:00:39
and that there's no need to blindly emulate a consumer culture in order to feel that you're worthy.
01:00:48
We can provide more real information about the situation in the West:
01:00:53
about our social and environmental problems, and also about our search
01:00:58
for more ecological and sustainable solutions.
01:01:03
We've been doing this in our work in Ladakh.
01:01:05
We've also been providing community leaders with 'reality tours' to Europe
01:01:10
where they can see with their own eyes that, yes, there are certain comforts and technologies
01:01:16
that can improve life, but there are also huge problems.
01:01:29
We've lost so many of the things that the Ladakhis take for granted:
01:01:33
we've lost our connection with community, our connection with nature,
01:01:38
we don't have time - something that the Ladakhis have plenty of.
01:01:45
So there's a reality there that needs to be conveyed.
01:01:51
Have you got any grandchildren, Albert?
01:01:54
No. Not married.
01:02:09
The global consumer culture is failing us, but we're told it's the only way - that there's no alternative.
01:02:20
For an increasing number of people across the world, however, there is an alternative,
01:02:26
and one that offers the prospect of real and lasting prosperity.
01:02:32
LOCAL FUTURES
01:02:35
Bringing the local economy back home, back to the local level, isn't about sacrifice,
01:02:39
it's not about returning to the Dark Ages and asking people to do things they wouldn't want to do.
01:02:44
On the contrary, it's about enriching our lives.
01:02:46
It could be more vibrant and diverse and abundant; and people working closer to home,
01:02:52
spending more time with their families, breathing cleaner air, eating better food...
01:02:57
...rediscovering the values of community and mutual caring,
01:03:01
that's where the real happiness, the real well-being lies.
01:03:05
Consumerism has got us weighed down with carbon chains, and I suppose the message would be
01:03:11
"Break your carbon chains, be free, have a better quality of life."
01:03:16
The wonderful thing is that as we decrease the scale of economic activity,
01:03:23
we actually increase our own well-being.
01:03:27
That's because at the deepest level localization is about connection.
01:03:33
It's about re-establishing our sense of interdependence with others
01:03:38
and with the natural world.
01:03:41
And this connection is a fundamental human need.
01:04:28
Don t leave the economy to the experts
01:04:34
Join the movement for economic change!
