Fear is a lousy motivator. People just can't stay constantly terrified. They can't live with fear. We shut it out and shut it down, find ways to carry on with a regular life. In many ways it's an admirable quality and a prime factor in human resilience. We get used to fear.

And once we're used to it, it stops motivating us to change our situation. It becomes normal, and tolerable.

As an environmental movement, we have absolutely failed to offer people the positive alternative to our current culture that might actually lead to sustained positive change. The best we've been able to do is a raddish: wholesome, healthy, not very tasty. Back to the land! Let's all live in cabins in the woods, growing our own food, doing without electricity and cars and modern medicine. We're meant to be hunter gatherers; let's return to a more natural lifestyle!

That will never work. People see right through it; they know it's misery. Given the option between embracing misery now, and having misery forced upon them at an undefined later time, people will naturally choose misery-later. You all know exactly what I mean. There is a reason we are all still living in cities, buying our food from supermarkets, and it's not just that we've forgotten how to grow and pick cotton and make it into something that might actually clothe us. It's because many of the modern conveniences of life are actually good, truly good, not just good because advertising told us so.

For instance, I depend on insulin. I am a type 1 diabetic. If we all go back to the land, how do I stay alive? Where does my insulin come from?

What about our vaccines and water treatment plants? Building codes and safe roads? Public schools and post-secondary education? Art? A community large enough to sustain diversity? Recorded music? Libraries? Books? Big Science, the good kind that leads to medical breakthroughs and knowledge that improves the lot of humankind?

We tell people our suburbs are killing us, and it's true, they are. Things are too far apart; it necessitates cars, which leads to air pollution and smog, too little exercise, too much fast food, isolation from our neighbours, and a continued voracious gulping of our remaining arable lands. In general: Not good. But what are the alternatives? Where is the positive vision of something that will lead people to leave the suburbs?

What, cram everyone into a highrise in a noisy downtown core, whether they want it or not? What will that do to the morale of the human race? Can we honestly say we're surprised that single-family detached homes continue to sprout like mushrooms all over the countryside when we cannot think of a single positive alternative for the majority of North American families?

We need carrots, and we need them fast. We need a whole feast to counterbalance the demons riding our backs.

There are a few options, but they tend to remain firmly entrenched in the academic literature, safely away from the polluting touch of the Great Unwashed Masses. Partly it's the fault of the academics, who do a lousy job of communicating with regular folk. Partly it's the fault of the mainstream media, who realize that apocalypse sells more papers than the Garden of Eden any day. Partly it's our politicians, who are scared to rock the boat and offer change that is one iota more than seems currently absolutely necessary. And partly it's us, quite willing to shut our eyes and sing loudly to cover the sounds of the gathering storm.

Here are a few of my favourites. They're heavy on theory and short on practice, because that's what I like, but you can find more practical and tangible solutions too, if you're willing to dig a bit:

Bioregionalism: There are two threads to bioregionalism. One is political: setting up a system whereby political boundaries more or less reflect bioregional boundaries, so that political decisions made are in tune with biological realities. For instance, today air pollution is a big problem in part because airshed boundaries bear little resemblance to national boundaries; and it's on the national level that policies are formed and decisions are made which affect air quality (often badly). So US midwestern air pollution continues to form smog in Southern Ontario, and coal fumes from Ontario continue to migrate south of the border. A bioregional system would be based on airsheds and watersheds so that political decisions would factor in all negative environmental externalities (to use an economics term).

The second thread is a social/cultural one that can best be summed up as "living in place": knowing what your own local environment is, and living within and celebrating it. Eating locally grown food, knowing where your water comes from, choosing locally sustainable alternatives for transportation, electricity generation, enjoying local art and culture, and so on.

Some efforts have already been made to make this kind of thinking a reality. Local food co-ops that deliver fresh organic locally-grown produce to people's doors is one example. Ontario has Conservation Authorities that make environmental decisions on watershed boundaries; that's another example.

Bioregionalism is easy to criticize because it's not something that an individual can accomplish on their own ("By George, that's it! Tomorrow I'm forming an alternative local government based on bioregional boundaries!")--but the fact is that any real change is going to have to come from groups working towards systemic change, and not individuals buying better lightbulbs and dish detergent (not that that's not important too).

It can be seen as turning back the clock on globalism; and globalism does have positive things to offer. I'm not sure bioregionalism by itself is the best and only answer. Local cultures can be vibrant and wonderful; they can also be destructive and oppressive. Working together will always be a big part of the solution, within boundaries and across them.

Also, it's utopian; but IMO that's part of it's strength. It offers people something better than what we already have. Something to shoot for, instead of something to be resigned to.

A few links:

Great River Earth Institute
Bioregionalism: The need for a firmer theoretical foundation
Ecological Philosophy: Bioregionalism

Deep Ecology: Deep Ecology is a philosophy first developed by Norwegian academic Arne Naess, which might be summarized as the moral or quasi-religious flipside of ecological knowledge (which he terms "shallow ecology," somewhat insulting to scientists, I'm sure). His philosophy has a few arguments, which centre on the place humans give themselves in the world (and which I talked about briefly before): In essence, he argued that the environmental crisis has been directly precipitated by human beings thinking of themselves as outside of and above nature. He criticized this thinking as "anthropocentric."

In his view, the solution to our problems lies in developing an "ecocentric" viewpoint, one which sees people as one of many strands in the natural world; not more important, not less important. He believed that people could develop another way of thinking about the Self, that it doesn't end at the border of the skin, and includes not only family, community and nation--but also humanity and the natural world. That we could include our local environments in our conceptions of ourselves, in which case, of course, we wouldn't act directly to harm them and would act directly to save them.

Deep Ecologists further believe that this "leap in consciousness" will enable a shift in values so that we no longer focus on lifestyle or standard of living, but on self-actualization and quality of life instead. So that human happiness would be increased as a direct result of decreasing the misery of the earth. Deep Ecology argues that all of the things we think we're getting when we buy things and consume now, all the things advertising promises us with ownership and acquisition--love of self and others, acceptance, belonging, beauty, happiness, health, and so on--would actually result from this shift in values and the resulting economic reorganization. Again, it's utopian; but I believe that's exactly what we need.

A few links:

Foundation for Deep Ecology
Introduction to Deep Ecology (interview)

Of course, the criticism is that people are incapable of being ecocentric; that we could try, but it would just be a different form of anthropocentricism. That we can't help putting ourselves in the centre anymore than a wolf can help putting wolves in the centre or a pig can help putting pigs in the centre, but I'm not sure I buy that. People put themselves into the experiences of the Other all the time, through fiction and art. Yes, a human imagining what it's like to be a wolf or a tree will inevitably not actually be what it's really like to be a wolf or a tree; but I think the act of attempting, of imagining it, is what counts.

I think I'll stop with those two. Two nice, fresh carrots for anyone who's looking for a reason to go forward instead of a reason to fear what's behind us. I hope you find them delicious.

You know....

It's been a long time since I've consciously thought about or written down any of my values on these subjects. I get so exhausted by the effort of running around writing EAs and developing policies that I forget the values and choices that brought me here, and when I remember it's easily overwhelmed by a sense of bureaucratic futility. It felt good to remind myself, to go back there for a while and remember why it is I went the way I did. I should do it more often.