That
mankind has a future, tenuous though it may be, is a given. What that
future should (must?) be is currently being contested primarily by
those who insist we must go small, such as Bill McKibben on the one
hand and those who insist we must go big, albeit with greater concern
for humanity than current globalization has afforded, such as Joseph
Stiglitz. Both are good people concerned for what is best for
humanity, which allows us to focus on the evidence offered rather
than the motivations behind both positions.
Those
who would have us go small propose economic and political localism.
Goods should be produced as close to the areas of consumption and use
as possible to minimize the energy and environmental costs of
transportation. Currently the average distance food travels to the
United States consumer is 1,500 miles. The economy as a whole should
also be localized to minimize the excessive accumulations of capital
that underlie the ruinous speculation that occurs when capital is
increasingly detached from production. Localism in politics brings
the political process closer to the citizen and makes participation
in the political process more relevant to citizen concerns.
Among
the downsides of localism is provincialism with its attendant narrow
mindedness that can lead to violence when the differences between
local groups are unmitigated by a cultural consciousness of our
commonality. One of the virtues of large cities is the
cosmopolitanism they can produce. McKibben sees the Internet, with
its plethora of cultural and informational content as a major offset
to localism’s potential for provincialism. Localism also fails to
take into account that the earth’s resources are not equally
distributed. Those humans living in the Sahel aridity of northern
Africa, subject to frequent drought, have far less in natural
resources than those living in temperate zones in Europe and the
United States. Interestingly, South Korea seems to understand this.
They are currently developing prefabricated, enclosed farms growing
produce hydroponically. These immense enclosures could be placed
anywhere and powered by locally-generated electricity. As population
continues to grow, humans will have to live on less productive land.
Even in the so-called developed world agricultural resources are
being depleted. In some parts of the American Midwest top soil that
was initially 2 feet thick is now down to 6 inches and has to be
intensively fertilized with fossil fuel-produced fertilizers to
maintain its productivity.
Proponents
of globalism point out that humans are one species. That the planet
is our only home and that we have to manage ourselves and our
resources in global terms to even begin to effectively address the
problems we have created. If we do not do this we risk perishing as a
species as we quibble and kill over our differences. It can be argued
that globalization has not been the problem. Globalization in the
hands of immense profit-driven financial institutions has been the
problem.
But
let us look at a third alternative. Not what we ought to do, but
what are we likely to do. The global economy and hence global power
is in the hands of those who are focused on immediate financial
and/or political objectives. As an example, the recent meeting of the
G20 on global warming took place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The first
such meeting took place 20 years ago. Currently about 25% of the
Amazon rainforest, sometimes referred to as the lungs of the planet,
has been lost. Yet this enclave of global power meeting in the very
country that contains most of that forest could come to no firm plan
of action. Brazil, one of the larger economies of the world, pleaded
that it did not have the resources to stop the steady encroachment on
the forest. There was no attempt by these world leaders to bring
together the world’s resources to stop the destruction and begin
restoring this essential feature of global geography. We can
globalize financial speculation to a 24/7 world-wide operation, but
we cannot find the resources to protect life on this planet. That is
but one of many instances that illustrate mankind’s inability to
deal effectively with problems of this magnitude. It is, in my
judgment, more likely that this incapacity to take seriously problems
that will take more than one human generation to eventuate,
compounded by the inability to overcome the relatively petty issues
that have always divided us, that will spell the end of our species
or at least spell the end of civilization and send us back to the
tribal cultures of our forebears. We know how to obliterate our
species. The idiocy of scientists' creating a much more virulent
version of the pandemically deadly avian flu virus is testament to
that.
Evolution
produced an animal with a brain that has done absolutely amazing
things, but encased it in the usual emotion-driven, narrow focus of
the rest of the animal kingdom. This brain, that with its discovery
of the Higgs boson is now in a position to understand the universe it
inhabits, that sees inadequacies in its thinking as opportunities for
further understanding and because of that does not war and kill over
major differences such as Newtonian or Einsteinian cosmology as
religion does over its differences, was unfortunately encapsulated in
the same emotion-driven body as the rest of the animal kingdom. Our
curse is knowing more than we can ever be and the inability to
control that small portion we can be.
Bob
Newhard
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