REVIEWS

BOOKS

Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future
Bill McKibben
[Times Books, 261 pages]

In Deep Economy, McKibben argues against the current neoliberal social order while creating a very approachable prescription for a sustainable society. To McKibben, sustainability rests in a resurgence of community, exemplified by locavorism and public radio movements, which he believes offer true alternatives to the malaise of endless hyper-individualist consumerism. If, in McKibben’s words, the “two birds named ‘Moreˆ and ‘Better’” can no longer perch on the branch they have for centuries, society must slow down and put more energy into our local communities to revitalize the important, immediate bonds that make up a fulfilling, sustainable life. But is depth enough?

A mainstream understanding of economy is rooted in individual choice—we have sustainable “alternatives” rather than a system that is simply sustainable. The dominant logic is that before the Arctic becomes beachfront property, consumers will become enlightened and invest in a sustainable world. But who gets to define “sustainability” in the first place?

McKibben touches on the economic exploitation of global workers while arguing that the world’s poor cannot use the same industrial capitalism used since the 1700s by North America and Europe to achieve a higher standard of living. But he fails to bridge the Western, white, bourgeois understanding of sustainable society to the globally and locally disenfranchised experience, which is based around material lack. As the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen has recently demonstrated, privileged nations have a fundamental inability to understand the experiences of poor nations. Our current global infrastructure, proudly built in the West, is a veritable blueprint for exploitation and unsustainable accumulation. Yet the West’s solutions to climate change ignore a history of Western global exploitation while admonishing poorer nations for attempting to follow in our footsteps. Locally, farmer’s markets and many other supposedly sustainable practices occur within an individualist system with a history of exploitation. Within such systems sustainable goods become luxury goods that are not economically attainable for many. So long as sustainability is defined in a public arena where malls speak louder than parks, sustainability will fail to address the experiences of marginalized people. What is a community where sustainability is for those who can afford it as a lifestyle product? It is unsustainable.

Despite the disjuncture between equity and sustainability, Deep Economy can open eyes to an alternative way of understanding society. It diagnoses our energy use, eating and purchasing habits, and the underlying way that we value things as terminal, but goes well past the gloom and doom. McKibben weaves together the disparate threads of community-driven alternatives to mainstream consumer society into a thoughtful prescription of how we might start to reorganize our lives so that they are less economically, but more socially valuable. Perhaps in time, McKibben’s work will help bring the many experiences of “sustainability” out of the marketplace and into a society-driven discourse.

by Christopher B. Langer

World As Lover, World As Self: Courage for Global Justice and Ecological Renewal
Joanna Macy
[Parallax Press, 202 pages]

Joanna Macy’s text, World as Lover, World as Self explores our relationship with the future and the future of our planet. In it, she examines what we can do as individuals to influence the outcome of this path we are following.      
“Life on our planet is in trouble,” Macy begins. “It is hard to go anywhere without being confronted by the wounding of our world...a world that can end.” How do we deal with our unique place in history as participants in an era that offers “no certainty that there will be a future for humans?” Our children and theirs will inherit the Earth. Herein lies my pressure, my responsibility, our responsibility. How can we make a difference? In the spirit of engaged Buddhism, Macy draws a plan, particularly for westerners crippled by apathy, for grappling with the global skeleton-in-the-closet of our time: the ruin of planet Earth.     

As an eco-philosopher and scholar of Buddhism, general systems theorist and deep ecologist, Macy is the best of teachers. She is well-known in peace and justice movements. She was instrumental in helping the Rinpoche lamas of Tibet found the now-famous exile settlement of Tashi Jong in the foothills of the Himalayas. Her insight, knowledge and experience shine through each anecdote, creating a poetic, yet instructive text.      

World as Lover, World as Self suggests a problem-solution model of analysis which focuses on applying the jewels of past learning from cultures as disparate as Tibetan Buddhism, German Poetics, and Mohawk, to our unique circumstances, in order to help us prepare for a better future. We learn of a reality that will confound reasoning and frighten the soul. Then, as a tonic for this philosophical reality, Macy recommends adopting thankfulness for life, seeing with new eyes and going forth into the world-as-lover and world-as-self. This final revelation comes about by taking ownership of our awareness of pain in the Earth, in the decimated natural world around us, in its beings and in the Earth’s half-destroyed elements. By facing instead of hiding from such pain, we gain all the spiritual energy and creativity required to actually begin working on global rejuvenation.  

In the words of Thich Nhat Hanh, “give me a song, a song for sadness too vast for my heart.” In singing the song and grieving, we sip our first medicine. Naive, though it may seem, I believe that in reading Macy’s text, I might have germinated within myself the tiniest spores required to begin brewing that cure.

by Joanna Marshall

Apples to Oysters: A Food Lover’s Guide to Canadian Farms
Margaret Webb
[Penguin Books, 272 pages]

Travel writer Margaret Webb recounts a two-year journey across Canada in her latest book, Apples to Oysters: A Food Lover’s Guide to Canadian Farms. She toured from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the US border to the Arctic, searching for the best, the most passionate, the most active and the most influential in Canadian producers.

Prompted by the vibrant taste of a fresh Annapolis Valley carrot, Webb’s journey was spurred both by her need to know and the desire to reconnect with her roots as an Ontario farmer’s daughter. Along the way, she prompts readers to reconsider their own relationship with food and consumption. As consumers, our main concern is that our food tastes good, that it fills our bellies and feeds our bodies, but how often do we stop to consider the people who have brought the produce to our plates?  

Twelve unique stories make up the book, a chapter for each province and territory to feature their own specialty food. Each chapter centers around an individual producer, like Nova Scotia scallop farmer Duncan Bates. Most often, the producers take a liking to Webb and provide insight not only into their work, but into their lives, happily sending her home with some of their finest produce.

In Nova Scotia, she meets a chef who convinces her that a great dish starts with great ingredients. “He buys from suppliers who raise food the way he cooks— with love, on an intimate scale, and with passion,” she writes.

A bit of a foodie herself, Webb takes great joy in experimenting with the foods she finds. Each chapter closes with a couple of recipes borrowed from those she meets on her journey or concocted in her own kitchen by her or her partner, the “seafood goddess,” Nancy.

Apples to Oysters finds that industrial farming replaces the taste of our food with chemicals, gives us widely available food but robs it of its freshness, gives us low prices but costs us our environment and takes the humanity right out of farming. Webb discovers that the humane and considerate approach to natural processes in farming translate right through to the food. She finds time and time again that it is tastier, fresher and more satisfying than its industrial counterpart.

by Laura Underwood

MOVIES

The Power of Community : How Cuba Survived Peak Oil
Directed by Faith Morgan
[Community Service Inc., 53 minutes]

In the early 1990s, Cuba faced the dual dilemma of the Soviet Union’s collapse and the United States’ tightening of the trade embargo. What resulted was a deep recession dubbed the Special Period. With oil imports dropping by nearly two-thirds, Cuba, formerly the most industrialized country in Latin America, suffered deeply from the lack of pesticides, gas and other petroleum-based products, resulting in severe health, transportation and social problems. This story is of the Cuban people’s intelligent, forward-thinking response to the crisis. The crisis mimics what would happen in the event of a sudden oil shortage, serving as a valuable lesson on how to adapt to the impending threat of peak oil and still live well. Given the global uncertainty over oil reserves, it’s a much needed lesson that comes at an opportune time.

This 53 minute documentary begins with sad stories of malnourished pregnant women and four-hour long waits for buses, but quickly launches into the country’s quick response to the challenge of oil scarcity, outlining how the Cubans adapted their agriculture, transportation and economic systems. Through a series of interviews of local farmers, permaculturists and urban planners, the viewer gets a feel for the struggle the Cuban population went through to transform their country. Further into the documentary, the viewer is then treated to the smiling faces of a proud population, content at the transformation of a chemical-dependent culture to one that is relatively pure, with 80% of the country’s food production now produced organically and much of it being distributed locally through its extensive network of urban gardens and markets.     

In addition to showing how the country adapted to the oil shortages, the story that is told equally well is that of community. Rather than dryly telling the viewer about the importance of community in overcoming the oil crisis, the documentarians instead chose to tell the story more through visual content—scenes of community involvement, people singing and working together. More than any government policy, it is the spirit of community that carried Cubans through the challenges of the Special Period. The Power of Community is a poignant story of collective achievement that proves that an organic, locally-based agricultural system is completely possible.