Joel Magnuson - The Approaching Great Transformation: Toward a Livable Post Carbon Economy

Surrounded as we are by so many crisessocial, economic, and environmentalit is easy to feel overwhelmed and disempowered. But there is good news too, particularly in a localization movement that is gaining strength across the world.

Most of the serious problems we face today have their roots in the globalization of economic activity, which has meant the continuous deregulation of trade and finance in favor of very big corporations and banks. The profit needs of these giant businesses lie behind the dramatic impoverishment of our natural and social wealth. In order to maintain economic growth in the global economy, the life support systems of our planet are being undermined and the fabric of community torn apart.

Despite what its proponents would have us believe, corporate globalization is not our only option. As we see in these pages, localization is not just an ideal, it is a concrete and viable alternative. More than that, it is essential for our survival: human well-being is intimately linked to the well-being of the planet, and localization protects both.

I first became aware of the impact of economic globalization in the early 1970s when I visited Ladakh, or Little Tibet, in the Indian Himalayas. There, I found a remarkable culture, one based on cooperative and localized economic interactions. The people were well-fed and relatively prosperous, and possessed a joie de vivre I hadnt encountered anywhere in the industrialized world.

I was a linguist by training andhaving fallen in love with the people and the placeI decided to stay in Ladakh to work on a Ladakhi-English dictionary. During the following years, I saw the region opened up to conventional development, making way for the intrusion of economic globalization. It was a rapid and disturbing shift. Subsidized food and other goods from the outside destroyed the market for local producers. The interdependent bonds that had held village communities together for centuries were replaced by competition and divisiveness. For the first time in Ladakhs history, there was unemployment and toxic pollution.

My book, Ancient Futures, along with a film by the same title, describes these changes in detail. Again and again I have been told by community leaders from diverse cultures all over the globe that the story of Ladakh is our story too.

Worldwide, people are beginning to recognize the disastrous impact of the global economy on society and the natural world. From climate change to peak oil, from the epidemic of depression to unending wars over natural resources, from species extinction to the breakdown of communityall these problems are connected to the massive unregulated movement of goods and capital across the planet.

As this book makes very clear, an economy based so heavily on fast-disappearing sources of oil has no future. Ultimately, peak oilin fact, peak everything will force us to adapt our consumption-based lifestyle. But how will we adapt? The limits of growth are mathematically certain. As Magnuson says, Resource depletion and climate change are the feet of clay of our economic system. More economic growth, more technologyin other words, more of the samewill not save us. But a different way of doing economics can.

Magnuson points out that stopgap measures will only make things worse: instead we need systemic what he calls institutional changes. Building a sustainable, just future requires reimagining our social and economic structures. Magnuson shows us how practical, realistic shifts in those structures can bring about a whole range of short- and long-term benefits.

I know from three decades of experience on five continents that locally-based economic structures are more transparent and accountable, and are better able to meet peoples real needs. Shortening the distance between producer and consumer, particularly when it comes to the provision of the food we all need two or three times a day, is undoubtedly a necessary step forward.

I believe we also have to change policies at a governmental level. As things stand today, transnational corporations and banks are free to roam the globe in search of the most corporate-friendly working conditions, while at a national level they benefit from an array of tax breaks and subsidies that make smaller businesses seem inefficient. For the sake of the planets future, we urgently need to turn this around. Trade treaties need to be reformed, and the playing field leveled.

Changes are also needed in the values weand especially our children are taught through the media and advertising. As Magnuson writes, People feel shame and alienation if they lack material goods. In this hyper-materialistic world of ours, we are encouraged to believe that happiness comes from owning the latest running shoes, the latest gadget. But this is a cruel lie. More than anything, our individual well-being depends on connection: on our sense of oneness with both other people and nature. It is precisely this sense of connection that the globalized consumer culture is breaking down. Recovering and nurturing it is perhaps our number one priority.

The Approaching Great Transformation is a timely call for a deeper understanding of our current predicament. A greater awareness would not only allow us to see that our crises stem from a fundamentally flawed global economy, it would also reveal what we need to do to turn things around. I call this education as activism, and believe it is the way to form powerful alliances for change.

Make no mistake, these alliances have the potential to make a real difference. Magnuson treats us to a cornucopia of new and emerging initiatives that are playing their part in the move toward the local: farmers markets and urban food gardens, LETS (Local Exchange Trading System, or Scheme) schemes and credit unions, and a range of community projects in places as far apart as Portland, Oregon, Totnes in the UK, and Mondragn in Spain. He tells us about the Transition Town movement and the thousands of transitioneers who are designing communities to prepare for peak oil. Its an uplifting read, giving us all much-needed hope for the years ahead.