at the heart of earth, art and spirit

November/December 2007 No.245 £4.95 US$9.75

THE MORAL ECONOMY

ANITA RODDICK’S LAST TESTAMENT:
CURRENCY OF IMAGINATION
BILL BRYSON • WANGARI MAATHAI
PETER RANDALL-PAGE
WOLFGANG SACHS • ANDREW SIMMS
 at the heart of earth, art and spirit
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82 Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007
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A N I TA R O D D I C K • L A S T T E S TA M E N T

BEAUTY
IMAGINATION
&
Bringing beauty into public spaces.
Anita’s own life reflected this message:
her creativity gave rise to one of the most
innovative, precedent-setting companies of
the 20th century, which raised the bar for
ethical and corporate social responsibility.
One of the many joys of being in Anita’s
company were her incredible flights of
imagination: she had the ability to easily
deconstruct a particular problem or issue
and come up with the most astonishing
solutions – ones that at first seemed un-
realistic or even downright crazy, but that
turned out to be ground-breaking and
visionary. To Anita, nothing was impossi-
ble. She was able to ‘think outside the box’
and challenged ‘authority’ at all levels. If
she was told that something could not be
done, in her unique way and with colour-
ful language she would ask, “Why the hell
not?” And she would go and do it.
Anita Roddick intuitively understood
that humanity will never be able to solve
the many problems it faces with the same
mindset that created them. She knew that
imagination is the key to a sustainable,
equitable future on this planet and that
beauty is the key to a joyful and creative
life. Her article in this issue is, sadly, the
last she will write for Resurgence. We will
Anita Roddick PHOTOGRAPH: Adrian Brooks/PA Wire/PA Photos
sorely miss her voice of wisdom and her
rebellious spirit. So, it is fitting that her last

I T IS WITH a great sense of loss that we dedi-

cate this issue of Resurgence to our dear friend
and long-time supporter Anita Roddick, who
died unexpectedly on 10th September 2007. It was
Anita who had the idea for this issue’s feature on
testament should be a call to beauty: that in order
for life to be joyful and meaningful, it should also
be beautiful. Anita raged against the ugliness of
industrial society both physically and spiritually and
it was her wish that humanity should seek out and
‘The Moral Economy’. She talked to us at length celebrate the beauty that is life.
about the need to evolve as individuals and societies
to embrace a new set of values – those that respect
creativity, imagination and beauty. THE RESURGENCE TEAM

Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007 

 CONTENTS No.245 November/December 2007

F RO N T L I N E THE MORAL ECONOMY

at the heart of earth, art and spirit

6 A DROP TO DRINK 22 MORAL COMPASS November/December 2007 No.245 £4.95 US$9.75

ANDREW SIMMS
7 KEEPING IT LOCAL What is the economy for, and how do
FASCINATING FUNGI we know if it is succeeding?

8 ENERGY LESSONS 24 CURRENCY OF THE

CARBON DIET IMAGINATION
ANITA RODDICK
To restore beauty in our economy, we
9 GREEN MARKETING need a new currency.
WASTE NOT . . .

K E Y N OT E S 27 POVERTY AND THE MORAL ECONOMY

ANITA RODDICK’S LAST TESTAMENT:
EMPOWERMENT CURRENCY OF IMAGINATION
BILL BRYSON • WANGARI MAATHAI
WANGARI MAATHAI
10 ECOCIDE
PETER RANDALL-PAGE
WOLFGANG SACHS • ANDREW SIMMS
Social justice and sustainability are
PETER BUNYARD prerequisites for peace.
Mitigating climate change through Another Place, sculpture by Antony Gormley
rainforest protection. PHOTOGRAPH: HARRYMOON/istockphoto.com
30 ECONOMICS OF
HAPPINESS
13 THE TYRANNY OF HELENA NORBERG-HODGE
URGENCY Community is a key ingredient for
CARLO PETRINI
Gastronomy and ecological wisdom.
health and wellbeing.
REGULARS
32 EARTH I LOVE 3 BEAUTY & IMAGINATION
16 A CHERISHED LAND SATISH KUMAR
TRIBUTE TO ANITA RODDICK
BILL BRYSON Nature is the real source of our wealth.
A pledge to safeguard England’s
national heritage. 34 NATURAL ECONOMY 48 SLOW TRAVEL
BARBARA HADDRILL
MIGUEL MENDONÇA
18 NONVIOLENCE Addressing climate change by working
JACK SANTA BARBARA with Nature. 50 SENSIBLE SOLUTIONS
Strengthening effectiveness through OLIVER TICKELL
shared values. UNDERCURRENTS
52 TURNING POINT
CAROLE BAMFORD
38 LOWER CARBON,
HIGHER QUALITY
POORAN DESAI
54 GARDENING
BRIGITTE NORLAND
How will low-carbon lifestyles work?

40 GLOBO-PETRO-COPS 56 LETTERS TO THE EDITORS

TONY CLARKE
Oil, war and climate change.

T H E A RT S
42 POETRY ILLUSTRATORS
FIONA SAMPSON Noma Bar illustrates for The Guardian
The new eco-poets.
CLIFFORD HARPER is a militant anarchist
Matt Kenyon illustrates for The Guardian
44 PATTERN AND METAPHOR
LORNA HOWARTH TRUDA LANE is an artist living in North
The sculpture of Peter Randall-Page. Devon
Axel Scheffler illustrates children’s
47 MARBLING books, most recently Charlie Cook’s Favourite
SANDY BROWN Book
June, sculpture by Emily Young, from Time in the Stone, A fluid, unpredictable process. Linda Scott is a freelance illustrator
published by Tacit Hill Editions, 2007, UK

 Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007

REVIEWS 61 AGRICULTURE OF 65 THINKING DIFFERENTLY
NONSENSE MARY TASKER reviews
COLIN TUDGE reviews Visionaries of the 20th Century
58 IN MY OWN WORDS A History of World Agriculture
Fair Future 66 FOOD AT ITS FULLEST
WOLFGANG SACHS 62 UNDER STRESS PETER KINDERSLEY reviews
LORNA HOWARTH reviews Slow Food Nation
59 MONOPOLISING The Upside of Down
ADVANTAGE 67 WE ARE ARCHITECTS OF
DAVID BOYLE reviews 63 WHOLE PLANET RE-THINK AN EMPTY HOUSE
Tescopoly HORATIO MORPURGO reviews PETER ABBS reviews
Earthy Realism North Flight
60 LESSONS FROM THE PAST
DAN GRACE reviews 64 GIVING NATURE ITS DUE 68 CLASSIFIED ADVERTS
A New Green History of the World EDMUND O’SULLIVAN reviews
Nature’s Due 70 DISPLAY ADVERTS

Mawddach Estuary, from Journey Through The British Isles by Harry Cory Wright, published by Merrell, 2007, UK, ISBN 978-1-8589-4367-1

FOR CONTACT INFORMATION FOR RESURGENCE OFFICES AND AGENTS, PLEASE SEE PAGE 82

www.resurgence.org and how it is actually degrading rather than enhancing the

Editors’ Selection
To read a selection of articles that didn’t make it into the
magazine this issue, visit www.resurgence.org/selection.
There you will find a piece by John Moat called ‘Clayman’
on the surreal and inspiring work of artist Andrew Wood.
Then, Deborah Ravetz dicusses the work of artist Sylvia
von Hartmann in her article ‘A Cause for Celebration’.
There is also a fascinating article called ‘Beauty and the
Bomb’ by Christopher Powici that discusses our percep-
tion of landscape and how what we find beautiful is not
always natural. Last but not least is Karen Rideout’s ‘Food
for Thought’, a delve into innovation in the food industry
quality of food. www.resurgence.org/selection
Online Issues
PDF files of our current issue, and many of our back issues
(some now out of print), are available for download from our
website at a special price.
www.resurgence.org/sales/download.htm
Resurgence Newsletter
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on articles, book reviews, news and events, by subscribing to
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Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007 

 F R O N T L I N E
NEWS FROM THE GRASSROOTS
Researched and edited by Paul Kingsnorth
Lake Volta, one of the few sources of water in Ghana
GHANA
A DROP TO
DRINK
Citizen action for clean, safe water.
BERNICE LIFTS THE bucket of murky
water onto her young daughter’s
head; standing knee deep they collect
the day’s rations. Bare tree stumps
protrude starkly out of the lake, and
algae congregates on the surface.
Bernice lives in the Afram Plains
in east Ghana, where fresh-water
shortages are a major problem. Most
people walk miles to collect dirty,
untreated water from Lake Volta, the
world’s largest artificial lake. More
than 9 million people have no access
to safe drinking water in Ghana,
with thousands suffering waterborne
diseases such as diarrhoea, bilharzia,
guinea worm disease, trachoma and
typhoid. But now things are begin-
ning to change.
A new scheme, the Local Millenni-
um Development Goal Initiative (LM-
DGI), is currently being implemented
in six West African countries, includ-
ing Ghana. The idea is simple: search
 Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007
PHOTOGRAPH: KATE ESCHELBY
for the solution within local commu-
nities. “The best way to achieve these
global targets is to bring them down
to local government level,” says
Emmanuel Addai of WaterAid Ghana.
For a long time, Ghana’s central
government planned water and
sanitation for the country as a whole,
rather than looking at the specific
needs of different regions. It also
assigned a dangerously low budget
Bernice and her daughter carry murky water many miles
for water and sanitation, seeing them
as less important than other services
such as health and education, and
traditionally relying on NGOs to
provide them.
Under the new scheme, needs
are defined by the communities
themselves. Communities first fill
out questionnaires detailing what, if
any, water and sanitation provisions
they have; the final results are then
collated and analysed. This method-
ology has been carried out in all
the villages, even remote ones, in
four chosen pilot areas. Citizen Ac-
tion meetings are then held, where
people discuss the services supplied
to them, making their local councils
more accountable. “We finally have
a voice,” says Gladys Ankuvie, from
Samankwae village. Her reaction is
typical.
Despite these hurdles the LMDGI
has been so successful that Ghana’s
central authority in charge of rural
water and sanitation is to extend it
beyond the pilot areas. It will now
be used nationally to plan water and
sanitation services. There is still a long
way to go, but at last people in Ghana
are beginning to control their own
fate – or at least what they drink.
With thanks to Kate Eschelby for
this article.
PHOTOGRAPH: KATE ESCHELBY
USA
KEEPING IT LOCAL
Community currencies can be used
to sideline corporate monopolies.
FOR YEARS, THE march of the
megastores and the corporate behe-
moths across the American land-
scape has been seen as unstoppable.
Wal-Mart, Starbucks and the rest have
killed thousands of small shops and
sucked the life out of communities
with their below-cost pricing and
ruthless targeting of competitors.
But in recent years some of those
communities have been developing
innovative ways of fighting back.
One of them is the Southern Berk-
shire region of Massachusetts, which
has been making headlines all over
the world in recent months with its
innovative local currency, BerkShares.
ECUADOR
FASCINATING
FUNGI
Cleaning up contamination created
by the petroleum industry.
OVER FORTY YEARS of oil extrac-
tion in the Ecuadorian Amazon have
created what may well be the worst
oil-related disaster on the planet.
The incidence of cancer and other
illnesses is among the highest in
the world. It has been likened to an
‘Environmental Chernobyl’ – and is
all the more disastrous for being so
under-reported and little known in
the wider world.
The highly toxic river water con-
tains a mixture of petroleum, heavy
metals and radioactive substances,
all created by oil firms over decades
of destructive extraction. At present,
Texaco is being sued by 30,000 local
people over the toxic wasteland it left
behind during its twenty years of oil
exploitation in the region.
Cleaning up this pollution will
be an enormous task, but it may be
helped by a newly developed tech-
nique known as mycorestoration, a
permaculture technique which uses
Nature to clean up what industry has
messed up.
With enthusiastic support from local
businesses, banks and citizens, Berk-
Shares is helping to strengthen the
ties of community, and hold back the
tide of corporate ‘box stores’.
BerkShares began life in 2006,
when local people got together with
the local E. F. Schumacher society
to develop a local currency that
could be used for local services, and
exchanged for dollars. BerkShares
Inc., a non-profit organisation, works
with the Southern Berkshire Cham-
ber of Commerce, participating local
banks, local businesses, and local
NGOs and charities, with the aim of
maximising local trade in local busi-
nesses. If local currencies seem like
a new idea, they are anything but.
In the early 19th century they were
widely used across the USA. Today, as
the dollar loses its value and people
lose faith in the corporate economy,
they are enjoying a resurgence.
BerkShares can be bought at local
The Ecuadorian Amazon has been severely polluted by waste from Texaco oil production
PHOTOGRAPH: NICOLA PEEL
Mycorestoration involves the
detoxification of contaminated soil
and water through the use of fungi.
Published data from multiple experi-
ments has demonstrated its efficacy.
Fungi growing on contaminated soil
have shown an extraordinary capacity
to metabolise petroleum and other
industrial pollution.
The method is incredibly simple.
It involves filling burlap bags with
substances such as woodchips, straw
or coffee grounds and placing inside
them cardboard lined with mush-
room spawn. The bags are then laid
on the affected area. The fungi is able
to break down hydrogen and carbon
and absorb concentrated amounts
of heavy metals. The soil can then be
turned into mushroom compost and
used to grow hardwood trees, which
will absorb the heavy metals. If the
trial is successful, it could lead to
banks with dollars, and spent at
participating local businesses, which
give customers using them a 10%
discount. All the BerkShares spent
remain within the local community
and benefit the local businesses that
accept them. The people who use this
currency make a conscious commit-
ment to buy local first. ”I just love
the feel of using a local currency,”
says Trice Atchison, a local teacher.
“It keeps the profit within the com-
munity.” Her attitude is typical of
the growing number of people using
the currency: there are 844,000
BerkShares in circulation, and 280
participating businesses, and the
numbers are growing. So popular are
they that local banks are considering
installing cash machines to dispense
them, and issuing debit cards. PK
For more information visit
www.berkshares.org
much wider use of this pioneering
natural technology.
The oyster mushroom (Pleurotus
ostreatus) has been found to be the
best at breaking down hydrocarbons
and a number of other pollutants. A
native fungus in the Amazon is also
being cultivated for the Amazon My-
coremediation Project, which is run
by an international group of scien-
tists, teachers, activists and research-
ers. This pilot project will include
the cultivation and inoculation of
a native mushroom species at three
contaminated sites within the region.
It will be the first time mycorestora-
tion has been used in the Amazon.
Further information: www.cloud-
forest.org/Solution_to_the_Pollu-
tion or www.eyesofgaia.com
With thanks to Nicola Peel for this article.
Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007 

Pupils from Seaton primary school, Devon feeding their wormery
UK
ENERGY LESSONS
Students lead the way with their
eco-clubs and eco-councils.
WHILE POLITICIANS AND environ-
mentalists exhort us to live more
sustainably, to think about climate
change, to reduce our energy use
and our waste, it seems that the next
generation is already way ahead. Two
primary schools, in different parts of
Britain, show how young children
are already acting to create a greener
future.
The motto of Seaton primary
school in Devon is ‘Caring now for
the future’, and it tries to live up to
GLOBAL
CARBON DIET
Calculating your daily ecological
footprint.
TROUBLED BY THE lack of accuracy
of some of the ‘carbon calculators’
currently used by people to calculate
their contribution to climate change,
British computer expert James Smith
 Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007
F R O N T L I N E
COURTESY: ANDY AITCHSON/ashdenawards.org
it. The school is pioneering a range
of renewable energy technologies. It
has a wind turbine and photovoltaic
panels on the school roof. These
link to display meters in the school
hall that show the pupils how much
electricity their school is using every
day. The swimming pool gets its heat
from solar panels. Meanwhile, the
pupils themselves take part actively
in monitoring and reducing their
impact on the environment. Pupils
are employed as energy agents, and
make up an eco-club, which reports
to the school assemblies.
There is an energy task force,
which promotes cycling and walking
to school and studies of weather,
climate change and energy use,
linked to lessons about personal
behaviour in everyday life. If that all
has invented the Carbon Diet. The
new website – which he calls “a
carbon calculator on steroids” – is an
interactive carbon calculator.
Rather than providing a single
yearly figure for carbon use, the
Carbon Diet calculates your daily
footprint, which you keep up to
date by entering data on a regular
basis. This allows you to see exactly
how your footprint varies based on
your activities. The site also suggests
customised actions you can take to
sounds a bit too much
like hard work, the school
also has its own compost-
ing area, its own orchard,
and a greywater collection
system to refill its wildlife
pond, providing ample
opportunities for the chil-
dren to gain a hands-on
understanding of ecology.
“We are proud that we go
to a school which is trying
to save the planet,” say the
pupils.
Meanwhile, over in
Cheshire, Woodheys
primary school is equally
enthusiastic. The school
aims to reduce its car-
bon footprint through
energy audits, installing
photovoltaics and energy
monitoring systems, and
rethinking the travel of its
pupils and teachers. The
Year Six Energy Team reads the me-
ters which tell the school how much
energy it uses, and reports back to
the eco-school council. Every year,
money is invested in new energy-re-
ducing technologies. Every corridor
and class now has energy-efficient
lights and energy is taught through-
out the curriculum, with a special
focus on the connections between
the big issues and the everyday lives
of the pupils.
Both schools have made such an
impact that they were finalists in
this year’s Ashden Awards, which
promote the best energy efficiency
projects in the country.
Further information:
www.seatonprimary.co.uk and
www.woodheys.trafford.sch.uk
improve your footprint.
As well as using the carbon-
tracking features of the site, you can
also make your profile public, add
‘friends’, and join ‘groups’, which
enables you to compare yourself
with people you know or with
whom you share a certain interest.
This could turn out to be the Face-
book of climate change. PK
To use the Carbon Diet, go to
www.carbondiet.org
UK
GREEN
MARKETING
Turning sustainable behaviour
from a chore to a pleasure.
THERE IS A rising tide of green
consciousness which means people
are at the point where they are ready
to be tipped into behaviour change.
Research shows that in the UK alone
there are about 40 million people
who are ready to adopt a sustainable
lifestyle. But the problem is that there
is a gap between their intention and
their action.
In a way, this gap can be seen as a
failure of ‘green marketing’. There has
been a conspicuous lack of rigorous
thinking about how to connect with
people and get them to change their
behaviour. The campaigns seem to be
either too preachy or too complicated.
So, why not reframe the problem
of adopting a sustainable lifestyle and
make it something people actually
want to do rather than feel they ought
to do? Green Thing is a new online
marketing effort to make this shift.
In Africa there’s an innovation
called the PlayPump. This children’s
merry-go-round is attached to a
water pump and storage tank that
provide essential clean drinking
water to children and families. As the
children play, the water is pumped
and a serious environmental problem
is effortlessly solved by imagination
and delight. Green Thing works in
the same way, turning sustainable be-
haviour from a chore into a pleasure.
Green Thing makes it as easy as
possible for people to take them-
selves on a deeper journey of under-
standing by offering environmental
explanation at a pace and a depth
that every person is comfortable
with. Green Thing then suggests and
facilitates more meaningful ways you
can change your lifestyle.
To take part, visit
www.dothegreenthing.com
With thanks to Andy Hobsbawm for this
article.

INDIA

WASTE NOT …
Transforming food waste into
biogas.

INDIA HAS LONG had a tradi-

tion of throwing waste food onto
the roadsides for animals to eat. In
small rural villages this was often a
sensible thing to do, but in today’s
towns and cities it is causing a real
problem. Scavenging dogs, rats and
crows, and the foul smells gener-
ated by rotting food are proving a
serious health hazard. Because the
climate in India is so warm, the
health problems are exacerbated.
But the warm climate, which
makes the food rot more quickly, also
provides an opportunity for a more
environmentally sound solution to
the problem of food waste. BIOTECH
India, an NGO based in Kerala, has
found a way to transform food waste
into biogas. Crucially, it does so at a
small-scale local level which benefits Biogas plant supplied by BIOTECH at Panavila Muslim Working Women’s Hostel,Trivandrum
ordinary people. COURTESY: ashdenawards.org
BIOTECH makes various sizes
and types of biogas plant, rang- state. Householders and local com- ing is wasted. So successful has the
ing from large ones for schools, munity leaders are clamouring for project been that BIOTECH India
hostels and local councils to small more, as the project removes food was an international finalist in this
household plants. The prefabri- waste and health risks from the year’s Ashden Awards for sustain-
cated parts enable the plants to be streets and provides clean, cheap able energy solutions. PK
constructed simply and quickly, energy. The residue from the plants
and 12,000 of them have already is even used as a fertiliser, ensuring Visit: www.ashdenawards.org/
been installed in households in the that, as in natural systems, noth- finalists_2007

Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007 


C L I M AT E C H A N G E
P E T E R B U N YA R D
Forest clearance for ranching, Roraima State, Amazon
If we are truly concerned about climate change, then protecting rainforests and
other ecosystems around the world is of paramount importance.
I
N THE DEBATE about global
warming, we forget at our peril
the role of ecosystems in giving
us a climate we can live with. Life
co-evolving with our planet over thou-
sands of millions of years has created
an environment apt for millions upon
millions of species, from bacteria to the
massive whale or towering redwood
trees. In its totality and working to-
gether through complex and symbiotic
relationships, life gives us a relatively
stable climate, modifying the amount
of heat stored at the Earth’s surface,
regulating the clouds that bring rain to
the continents, and changing the col-
our of the Earth so that it differentially
absorbs energy from the Sun or reflects
it back into space.
10 Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007
K E Y N O T E S
ECOCIDE
Gaia is always in the process of
modifying conditions at the Earth’s
surface, and bringing about tem-
perature regulation as an emergent
property of the intertwined system of
life and its local environment. How
inadequate, therefore, are the great
majority of climate models, which,
on account of the difficulty of putting
precise numbers to life’s role in gen-
erating climate, take the easy way out
and leave life out of the equation! Yes,
in our obsession with greenhouse-
gas emissions — ironically, as a result
of burning fossilised life — we have
not just omitted life’s current role in
forming climate, but we have crudely
deemed that disrupting and tearing up
ecosystems, with our chainsaws, bull-
PHOTOGRAPH: JOHN MAIER, JR./STILL PICTURES
dozers and monoculture agro-industry,
will have minimal impact on a process
that surely is governed and powered
by the Sun. How absurd, say the cli-
mate change cynics, to imagine that
life, as no more than a puny veneer on
the Earth’s surface, would be able to
alter and regulate climate. Yet a better
scientific understanding of the power
of that veneer of life to alter every-
thing has put the ball firmly back in
the court of human responsibility for
global warming and climate change.
We are now playing with tech-
nologies to reduce our emissions of
greenhouse gases. We will dump car-
bon dioxide from power stations in
spent oil wells; we will install thousands
upon thousands of wind machines,
some on hill tops, some out at sea; we
will cover roofs with photovoltaics that
capture sunlight and convert it to elec-
tricity; we will construct tidal turbines
and wave machines; and not least, in
our scrabble for energy, we will build
nuclear power stations to generate elec-
tricity. The list goes on, with more and
more elaborate and high-tech ways to
prevent CO2 from floating dangerous-
ly into the atmosphere. Even the idea
of rocketing up a reflective shield to
send the Sun’s rays harmlessly out to
space has been mooted yet again in the
United States. Just the sort of thing that
technomaniacs love. At all costs, we
must keep the global system running,
so that we don’t have to alter one jot
our consumer aspirations.
Let technology do the work, just
as President Bush has said. And, in the
mad rush to make money out of cli-
mate change, through carbon dealing
and giving multinational agribusiness
full rein, Bush has belatedly realised
that his ‘head in the sand’ policies
have left the United States out of the
loop. And how virtuous is the project
of transforming chaotic Nature into
a production line for ‘green’ biofu-
els, which, as they are consumed, get
replaced by new growth of the same
energy crop, with all the emissions be-
ing reabsorbed conveniently back into
the system? In other words, by manag-
ing life we are managing the planet.
What hubris! The very production
of biofuels, from a suite of differ-
ent crops that range from maize and
rapeseed to sugar cane, soya and not
least African Oil Palm (Elaeis guineensis),
will probably prove the last straw for
our beleaguered planet. We are now
in the hands of massive agro-indus-
trial enterprises that gobble up land as
fast as they can, while sowing it with
genetically modified crops and pour-
ing on poisons to wipe out any living
opposition to their scheme of absolute
domination. And, of course, govern-
ments are complicit in the process, for
there’s money to be made – bags of it.
Fuelled by cheap petroleum we
have destroyed a staggering proportion
of the world’s tropical forests in the
fifty years since the end of the Second
World War, with an average 20,000
square kilometres a year going up in
smoke. Indonesia alone has destroyed
the majority of its biodiverse-rich for-
ests to make way for plantations of oil
palm, as have Malaysia and Paraguay.
Colombia, too, is getting in on the act.
Meanwhile, Brazil is adding sugar cane
to soya as an Amazonian crop, with the
plan to sow 30,000 hectares alongside
the BR-317 road in Acre. Over-
all, we are talking of tens of
millions of hectares of forests
destroyed to make way for the
‘green’ fuels of the future.
How many tens of thou-
sands of farmers and their
families have had their lands
wrenched from them and have
lost their livelihoods and means
of support? How many have
been murdered for resisting
the corrupt practices of gov-
ernments, assisted by an illegal
militia or even by the army?
How many of those who have
stayed to work the plantations
have found their health ruined
because of the massive use of
agrotoxins? How many forests
have been eliminated from the
face of the Earth so that we can
run our cars on ‘green’ fuels?
And what has happened to
soils, rivers and indeed climate
as a result of planting crops that
are tailor-made to respond to
agrochemicals?
Cumulus storm cloud over the Amazon River, Peru
In fact, the idea that ‘bio-
PHOTOGRAPH: © AMAZON-IMAGES/ALAMY
fuels’ are ‘green’, benign fuels
is for the most part the biggest
deceit ever. The use of maize in the Nowhere on Earth can be more
United States for the production of eth- important than the mighty rainforests
anol requires an investment of energy of the Amazon Basin. Convection ever
that is 70% more than can be gained upwards of the air mass over the Ama-
by putting the stuff in the fuel tanks zon Basin, fuelled by the condensation
of our cars. The release of greenhouse of water vapour which the forest has
gases from the destruction of tropical pumped into the atmosphere, sucks in
rainforest, some 200 tonnes of carbon the mighty trade winds that traverse
per hectare, would take generations the ocean between Africa and South
upon generations of oil palm – which America. And while those winds are
gives thirty times more energy per passing over the tropical Atlantic, they
hectare than US maize – to make
up, if ever. And how on Earth can
we justify that the 10% of bio- We are talking of tens of millions of
fuel substitution for petroleum
products in Europe, and 20% in hectares of forests destroyed to make
the USA by 2020 will consume a
sixth of the world’s cropland, or way for the ‘green’ fuels of the future.
the land mass of an India?
WE HAVE FORGOTTEN the role of eco- pick up volumes and volumes of water,
systems and the incalculable services just enough to keep moist the rainfor-
that they provide, and not least their ests over a stretch of more than 4,000
role in giving us a liveable climate. kilometres and to form the grand riv-
How unbelievably selfish and stupid ers, such as Madeira, Napo, Putumayo
we are to permit the dismantling of the and Caquetá in the Cordilleras of the
world’s great tropical forests, whether Andes – rivers that in coming together
in South America, Africa or Southeast form the largest single transport of
Asia. The Amazon Basin is now be- fresh water in the world.
ing invaded, as never before, by the If it were not for the evapotranspi-
agro-multinationals, with their suite ration from the trees, forests further to
of chemicals. And the more we rape the west of the air circulation system
and pillage, the more we discover the would never receive sufficient rain to
extraordinary role that tropical forests enable them to survive. Indeed, the
play in determining climate. same drop of water from the ocean
Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007 11
 K E Y N O T E S
may therefore get recycled six or more
times as the air mass passes over the
rainforest towards the Andes. The rain-
forests of the Amazon also react to the
penetrating sunshine of their summer
by increasing their foliage to benefit
from enhanced photosynthesis. But
more foliage also translates into more
transpiration, by which water is drawn
up from the roots and passes out of
the stomata in the leaves in the form
of water vapour. Clouds begin to form
and convection upwards again takes
place, drawing in humid air over the
equatorial line. Rain now falls and the
forest receives its essential watering.
Consequently, by intensifying the rate
of evapotranspiration, the rainforests
of the Amazon are effectively manag-
ing their local climate.
Some 20,000 million tonnes of wa-
ter are evaporated and transpired every
day over the 5 million square kilome-
tres of the Legal Amazon of Brazil, an
amount that exceeds the 17,000-mil-
lion-tonne flush of water each day into
the Atlantic Ocean via the Amazon River.
The Brazilian climatologist Antonio No-
bre estimates that the energy required
to bring about that evapotranspiration
is equivalent to the summed output of
Itaipu, the largest hydroelectric dam in
Deforestation for agribusiness, near Santarem, Para State, Brazil
12 Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007
the world, for a period of 135 years.
Such a powerful process, involving the
transfer via water vapour of forty times
more energy than is currently used by
all humans on the planet, has conse-
quences for climate all over the globe.
The forest, as a gigantic, irre-
placeable water pump, is therefore an
essential part of the air circulation sys-
tem. And it is that system which takes
the latent energy inherent in water va-
pour out and away from the Amazon
Basin to the higher latitudes, to the
more temperate parts of the planet.
Argentina, thousands of miles away
from the Amazon Basin, gets no less
than half of its rain courtesy of the
rainforest, a fact that few, if any of the
Argentinian landowners – increasingly
engaged in producing soya for agro
fuels – are aware of.
THE UNAVOIDABLE CONCLUSION is
that, unless the world acts swiftly to
prevent further deforestation in the
Amazon, we could find the impact
of global warming far worse than
anticipated in the latest report of the
International Panel on Climate Change.
The deforestation now taking place
over the Amazon Basin is an act of
global ecocide, for as the forest is cut
back, its ability to recycle essential rain
becomes more and more threatened,
until the entire system collapses. With
that collapse the atmosphere will be
filled with the greenhouse gases from
the destruction and decay of the veg-
etation and we will have lost forever an
essential energy pump and deliverer of
water over most of the South American
continent. The boost to global warm-
ing will make irrelevant our efforts,
through the Kyoto Protocol, to reduce
carbon dioxide concentrations in the
atmosphere.
It should be of no surprise that our
climate is being profoundly affected
by what we are doing to the Amazon.
In blaming greenhouse gases emit-
ted from our factories, transportation
systems, electricity production, agri-
culture and non-sustainable consumer
lifestyle as a cause of climate change,
we are neglecting at our peril the role
that the Amazon and other rainforests
play. The destruction of ecosystems for
biofuel production is not the solution:
it has become the problem. Trying to
match biofuel production with our
current and projected use of fossil fu-
els will be the death of us all.
Peter Bunyard is Science Editor of the Ecologist.
PHOTOGRAPH: RICARDO FUNARI/STILL PICTURES
 E C O - G A S T RO N O M Y • C A R L O P E T R I N I

Amaranth is a crop of South American origin which
can be harvested for its grain, or its leaves can be
eaten as a green vegetable
PHOTOGRAPH:ANTONIA REEVE/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
THE TYRANNY
OF URGENCY
In our headlong rush towards development at any
cost, we have lost so much traditional knowledge
regarding taste, nutrition, biodiversity and agriculture.
The art of eco-gastronomy can help to restore this
wisdom.

I
N 1996, I HAPPENED to be trav-
elling, as I often do, along the
highway that links Cuneo with
Asti, passing via Bra, the small
provincial town where I live and where
the international movement Slow Food
is based. Southern Piedmont has al-
ways been an agricultural region, but
more recently the area has seen the
introduction of small industries and
the emergence of burgeoning interna-
tional tourism, drawn not just by the
beauty of southern Piedmont’s hilly
landscape, but by its gastronomy too.
The highway that runs across this
countryside, as well as being notorious
for its inadequacies as a thoroughfare,
has become a striking symbol of the
‘affluence’ that has transformed the
land of my birth. It runs alongside a
string of factories, suburban shopping
centres and big-box stores that are
among the worst architectural horrors
that could possibly be imagined. Only
here and there do you still find a few
surviving greenhouses where food is
grown. It is a depressing experience to
drive through such squalid surround-
ings, especially as the slowness of the
road always gives plenty of time to
meditate at length on ‘development’
and its effects.
Along the road – if you make just
the smallest of detours – the concen-
tration of excellent restaurants and
traditional osterie serving local cuisine
is far higher than in any other part of
Italy. It was here that I began to learn
about gastronomy, and I owe a crucial
part of my training as a gastronome to
the chefs and farmers of this area.
But to return to that day in 1996:
on my way home, I stopped at a restau-
rant owned by a friend whom I hadn’t
seen for several years and who was re-
nowned for his peperonata, a common
Italian dish whose Piedmont version
is traditionally made with the ‘square’
peppers of Asti. I wanted to have a help-
ing of this speciality to refresh myself
after the tiring journey. To my great
disappointment, the peperonata served
was awful – completely tasteless. The
chef’s skills were not in doubt, so I
asked for an explanation for this great
deterioration in flavour. My friend told
me that he no longer used the same
ingredients as those of the peperonata
that echoed in my gustatory-olfactory
memory. The square peppers of Asti, a
fleshy, scented, tasty variety, had almost
ceased to be grown locally, because
they had been supplanted by pep-
pers imported from Holland that were
cheaper, grown with intensive farming
methods, using hybrid varieties that
were visually striking with their garish
colours, and perfect for export – but
utterly tasteless.
Resigned to the fact that the won-
derful peperonata had gone forever, I
drove on down the road towards Bra.
Passing along one of the stretches of
road where there are still some green-
houses, I stopped at a place called
Costigliole d’Asti: surely this was
where they used to grow those square
Asti peppers? What could be under
those nylon sheets now? I met a farm-
er, who confirmed that it was indeed
here that those magnificent vegetables
had been grown. But not any more, as
he explained to me: “It’s not worth
it: the Dutch ones are cheaper and
nobody buys ours any longer. It’s
hard work producing them and it’s
all wasted effort.”
“What do you grow now, then?” I
asked.
He smiled. “Tulip bulbs! And after
we’ve grown the bulbs, we send them
to Holland where they bring them into
bloom.”
I was dumbfounded. I had come
up against one of the paradoxes of
agro-industry and its interaction with
globalisation: peppers crossing fron-
tiers and travelling over mountains in
exchange for tulips; products that were
the symbols of two different regions
being grown more than a thousand
kilometres away from their respective
homes, completely overturning the
two agricultural traditions that had
once firmly embedded them in their
original ecosystems; a wonderful va-
riety of pepper now on the verge of
extinction; a traditional recipe distort-
ed out of all recognition; and goodness
knows how much pollution from ferti-
lisers and pesticides and from exhaust
fumes discharged into the air by con-
tainer trucks and other vehicles going
back and forth across Europe.
That day for me was the offi-
cial starting date of eco-gastronomy:
where produce must be grown in a

Resurgence No. 245 Novemb er/December 2007 13

 K E Y N O T E S
San Juan Chamula market, San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas Province, Mexico
sustainable way and biodiversity and
local traditions of cuisine and produc-
tion must be preserved even if it costs
more.
DURING THE SUMMER of 2001, I
went on a trip to Mexico, a country
and a culture of which I am very fond
and which I had not visited for some
time. I stayed for a while in the Fed-
eral District of the immense Mexico
City, where I saw the extreme poverty
endured by millions of people who
had left the countryside after selling
off what little land they possessed,
and who were now clogging up the
suburbs of the capital in the hope of
making a living. The small-scale fam-
ily-based subsistence farming they
practised was no longer profitable:
the neighbouring United States had
created illusions with the glitter of its
products and stimulated new needs,
but its primary effect had been to im-
pose methods of industrial farming,
resulting in a reduced agricultural
workforce, making it difficult for
remaining farmers to avoid being
drawn into the vicious circle imposed
by multinationals (i.e. the commer-
cialisation of seeds, fertilisers and
pesticides), and stripping a farming
14 Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007
PHOTOGRAPH: MICHELE FALZONE/JAI/CORBIS
culture of its traditional knowledge, in water with a little lime – a home-
formed over thousands of years. made product, skilfully cooked by the
As far as corn is concerned, of the women and rich in flavours which vary
more than 1,000 indigenous varie- according to the type of corn used.
ties that evolved over the centuries This gastronomic richness should not
in perfect harmony with the various be underestimated: together with the
Mexican ecosystems, almost 80% have infinite variety of traditional Indian
been patented by US multinationals cuisines, which were always based on
searching for new hybrids. These local local products, it has made Mexican
varieties have then been gradually re- gastronomy one of the most complex
in the world.
The spread of
Industrial agriculture and modernisation has the intensive culti-
wiped the slate clean; all it took was the vation of corn has
threatened other
introduction of a few cultivatable varieties and vegetable species
too, such as ama-
within two generations the local population ranth. This food,
had lost all the traditional knowledge that had together with beans
and corn, was the
once enabled it to subsist on the freely basis of the Az-
available fruits of nature. tec diet, but was
banned by the first
colonisers because
placed by those very same US hybrids, it was assumed to be associated with
which need much more water (and the rituals these civilisations practised.
many parts of Mexico suffer from a As a result, it has become extremely
serious water shortage) as well as hav- rare, gradually forgotten by the local
ing a far lower nutritional value and farming cultures, and this is a pity, for
poorer taste. Hybrid corn threatens the not only does the plant need very little
very basis of traditional Mexican cui- water to complete its productive cycle,
sine: tortillas, made with corn soaked but it also constitutes an ideal supple-
ment to the country-dwellers’ diet.
So, that summer I went to Tehuacán
in the state of Puebla to learn more
about an excellent project – winner of
the Slow Food Award for the Defence
of Biodiversity – to reintroduce ama-
ranth to one of the poorest areas in
Mexico, where the desert is inexorably
advancing. The Quali project combines
with an ingenious plan to regenerate
the water supply using some clever
methods devised by the ancient inhab-
itants of this area.
I visited a tiny family-run farm to
see a small amaranth allotment and to
hear from the farmers themselves what
they thought of the project. With me
went the directors of Quali, some of my
own colleagues, and Alicia De’Angeli, a
well-known Mexico City chef and an
expert on native Mexican cuisine.
The poverty of the family we met
was unmistakable, but they were very
dignified and expressed satisfaction at
having found a plant, amaranth, that
was easier to grow and more profitable
than corn. Their house was modest; the
children played on a small threshing
floor strewn with disused tools, frag-
ments of Coca-Cola bottles, and empty
Pan Bimbo wrappers. Pan Bimbo, the
best-known brand of bread produced
by the Mexican food industry, is grad-
ually supplanting corn tortillas in the
everyday diet of the poorer sectors
of society, creating many nutritional
problems in a country where white
bread made from wheat had never
formed part of the traditional diet.
The little amaranth field was close
to the farm buildings, and as we walked
back to the farmhouse after viewing
those colourful plants, I overheard
an interesting conversation between
De’Angeli and the wife of the farmer
who was our host. The two women
stopped by the side of the short path
down which we were walking. There
were ‘weeds’ all along the path; in fact,
the house was completely surrounded
by weeds. The attention of the women
(both of them cooks, but very differ-
ent from one another) was attracted to
one of these leafy weeds.
“This is a wonderful herb! But
I’m sure you know it, don’t you?”
De’Angeli asked.
“No. Why?” replied the woman of
the house.
“It’s excellent for making cal-
dos (soups and broth) and it’s very
nutritious and tasty too. The reci-
pes I discovered during my research
originate from this very area; they’re
traditional to your people.”
The perplexity of this farmer’s
wife was shyly expressed on her face
as she asked how to make soup with
the plant. Her house was surrounded
by these freely growing herbs which
over the centuries her ancestors had
learned to use for nutritional and me-
dicinal purposes, but she had no idea
how to cook them; in fact, she didn’t
even know they were edible.
Industrial agriculture and modern-
isation have wiped the slate clean; all it
took was the introduction of a few cul-
tivatable varieties that do not actually
thrive in this increasingly arid envi-
ronment, and within two generations
the local population had lost all the
traditional knowledge that had once
enabled it to subsist on the freely avail-
able fruits of Nature. A simple form of
gastronomic knowledge, an ancient
wisdom, a recipe, had disappeared
from local culture and made life even
more difficult in this region where the
temptation to sell your field and move
to Mexico City or to take a job in the
nearby maquiladoras making jeans for US
firms is stronger than anywhere else in
the country.
THE SIDE-EFFECTS of the processes
of industrialisation are clear in the
poverty of those marginalised by
‘development’. Profit prevails over
politics, and economics prevails over
culture. Quantity is the main if not
the sole criterion for judging human
activities. Jérôme Bindé of UNESCO
says, “The times we are living in today
are entirely dominated by what I call
‘the tyranny of urgency’ … financially,
through the media and in politics.”
Examples of native maize varieties grown in Oaxaca State, Mexico
PHOTOGRAPH: PETER MENZEL/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
Our societies live in a kind of ‘instan-
taneanism’, which denies and conceals
the complexity of the world and of the
relations and interdependencies that
characterise it.
Food and its production must re-
gain the central place that they deserve
among human activities and we must
re-examine the criteria that guide our
actions. It is impossible to discuss food
without discussing agriculture – all
gastronomes should be aware of this.
Gastronomes should know about ag-
riculture because we want to know
about food and we want to support
agricultural methods that preserve bio-
diversity and the associated tastes and
knowledge. The gastronome should
have an environmental conscience and
be well informed, for without it we
will be deceived in every way possi-
ble. The crucial point now is no longer
the quantity of food that is produced,
but its complex quality: a concept that
ranges from the question of taste to that
of variety, from respect for the environ-
ment, the ecosystems and the rhythms
of Nature to respect for human dignity.
The aim is to make a significant im-
provement to everybody’s quality of
life without having to submit, as we
have until now, to a model of devel-
opment that is incompatible with the
needs of the planet.
Extracts from Slow Food Nation by Carlo
Petrini, published by Rizzoli, 2006,
ISBN 0 8478-2945-6.
Carlo Petrini is Founder of the Slow Food
movement. www.slowfood.com
Resurgence No. 244 September/October 2007 15
 K E Y N O T E S

Holly and beech, Day 67, 25th May, 6.07 pm,Wye Valley, Herefordshire, from Journey Through The British Isles by Harry Cory Wright, published by Merrell,
2007, UK, ISBN 978-1-8589-4367-1. www.journeythroughthebritishisles.com

C O N S E RVAT I O N • B I L L B RY S O N

A CHERISHED LAND
As new President of the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE),
Bill Bryson pledges to safeguard our national heritage.

S
OMETHING I HAVE often won-
dered is why you don’t make
the whole of England a National
Park. In what way, after all, are
the Yorkshire Dales superior to the
Durham Dales? Why is the New Forest
worthy of exalted status but glorious
Dorset is not?
It’s preposterous really to say that
some parts are better or more im-
portant than others. It’s all lovely. And
there’s not much of it. Of all the surface
area of the Earth, only a tiny fragment
– 0.0174069% , or so I gather – can
call itself Great Britain. So it’s rare and
dangerously finite and every bit of it
should be cherished.
The miracle, in my view, is that on
the whole it is. For all the pressures
on rural England, and all that could
be made better, the countryside re-
mains one of this country’s supreme
achievements. I know of no landscape
anywhere that is more universally ap-
preciated, more visited and walked
across and gazed upon, more artfully
worked, more lovely to behold, more
comfortable to be in, than the country-
side of England. The landscape almost
everywhere is eminently accessible.
People feel a closeness to it, an affin-
ity, that I don’t think they experience
elsewhere.
If you suggested to people in Iowa,
where I come from, that you spend
a day walking across farmland, they
would think you were mad. Here
walking in the country is the most
natural thing in the world – so natural
that it is dangerously easy to take it for
granted.
Because the countryside is so gen-
erally fine and looks so deceptively
timeless, it’s easy to think of it as some-
how fixed and immutable and safely

16 Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007

permanent. In fact, it is none of these
things, of course, though it is very an-
cient – even more ancient than people
often realise.
Not far from where I live in East
Anglia, there is a hedge called Judith’s
Hedge, which looks like any other. But
in fact Judith’s Hedge is very venerable
indeed. It was planted by a niece of
William the Conqueror in the second
half of the 11th century. So it is older
than Windsor Castle, Westminster Ab-
bey, York Minster – older than most of
the buildings in Great Britain.
Even closer to home for me – in-
deed just beyond my bedroom window
– is a handsome church tower that was
built at about the same time. It has been
standing there, adding a little touch of
nobility and grandeur to the landscape,
for 900 years. I find that a literally fan-
tastic statement. If this church were in
Iowa, people would travel hundreds of
miles to see it. It would be a venerated
relic. And here it is just an anonymous
country church, treasured by a few ag-
ing parishioners and one overweight
American, and otherwise almost en-
tirely unnoticed because it is just one
of 659 ancient parish churches in Nor-
folk alone.
Altogether there are 20,000 an-
cient parish churches in Britain. There
are more listed churches in Britain
than there are petrol stations. Isn’t that
an amazing fact? If you decided to visit
one every day, it would take you fifty-
four years to see them all.
Wherever you turn in Britain you
are confronted with wondrous and
interesting things – 19,000 scheduled
ancient monuments, 600,000 record-
ed archaeological sites, 100,000 miles
of public footpaths, 250,000 miles of
hedgerows, 73,000 war memorials,
6,500 listed bridges, fourteen National
Parks, 100 or so Areas of Outstanding
Natural Beauty, over 4,000 Sites of Spe-
cial Scientific Interest. You can’t move
ten feet in this country without bump-
ing up against some striking reminder
of a long and productive past.
And it is almost entirely human-
made. That’s really quite interesting.
Where I come from, when the land-
scape is stunning it’s because Nature
made it that way. In Britain, when it’s
stunning it is, more often than not,
because people made it that way. Of
Britain’s twenty-seven World Heritage
Sites, only four are natural formations.
All the rest are monuments and land-
scapes built by humans. What makes
this country superlative is the things
that people have done for it.
All that posterity asks of us is that
we look after what has been created 32%, Italy 34%, Sweden almost 70%.
for us already. Creating an enchant- Britain has just 12% – the fourth low-
ing landscape is of course only part of est amount in Europe. Even Cyprus
the achievement. Keeping it is the real has more. What’s more, as the govern-
trick. ment minister responsible cheerfully
You hardly need me to tell you how conceded in a parliamentary answer
lucky you are to have what you have recently, there are no specific targets
in this country. Being surrounded by for woodland creation in England.
such a sumptuous diversity of history Well, I think there ought to be.
and beauty is a delight and a privilege, And I think there ought to be a
of course, but it is also a great danger. lot more thoughtful and vigorous
When you have such an abundance of landscaping of motorways, dual car-
great things, it is easy to think of it as riageways and other roads. I think we
essentially inexhaustible and to per- should be pushing forcefully for that.
suade yourself that it can be nibbled And while we are talking meaning-
away at without serious loss. I hate it fully about planting things, I think we
when people think like that. should be pushing forcefully for the
To me, the mathematics of the restoration and renewed planting of
British landscape is wonderfully
simple and compelling. Britain has
about 60 million acres of land and
There are more listed churches in
about 60 million people. That’s Britain than there are petrol stations.
one acre for each of us. Every time
you give up ten acres of greenfield If you decided to visit one every day,
site to build a superstore, in effect it would take you fifty-four years to
ten people lose their acres. To en-
joy the countryside they must go see them all.
and use other people’s acres. By
developing countryside you force more hedgerows. They are what define the
and more people to share less and less English landscape, and everywhere
space. Trying to limit the growth of they are just quietly fading away. Even-
development in the countryside isn’t tually you end up with no hedgerows
Nimbyism, in my view. It’s common at all – and this is the fate that I fear
sense. is awaiting very large swathes of the
countryside.
THERE ARE THREE matters that I in- Of course, I am new to all this and
tend to pursue as President of CPRE. have a huge amount to learn. But I am
The first is litter and fly-tipping; determined to try!
this is something of an obsession of
mine. Second, pylons and overhead This is an edited version of Bill
wires generally. To me, marching ranks Bryson’s inaugural speech as Presi-
of pylons are way too common in the dent of the Campaign to Protect Rural
countryside, and inexcusably alien and England (CPRE). For more infor-
ugly. Too often when you go into the mation about the work of CPRE see
countryside you end up feeling as if www.cpre.org.uk
you have wandered onto a set from
War of the Worlds. Bill Bryson is author of many books, most
In 1986, at the time the elec- recently A Walk in the Woods.
tricity companies were being
privatised, The Economist magazine
calculated that if all the electric-
ity-generating companies were
required to devote one half of
one per cent of their turnover
to burying overhead cables, we
would be able to bury 1,000
miles of cable every year. There
are 8,000 miles of high-voltage
power lines in this country, so
they would all be buried now.
Finally, number three: trees,
forests, woodland. You can never
have too many trees, in my view.
The UK has less forest cover
than almost any country in Eu-
rope. France has 28%, Germany Beachy Head PHOTOGRAPH: HARRY CORY WRIGHT
Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007 17
 K E Y N O T E S
VA L U E S • J A C K S A N TA B A R B A R A

NONVIOLENCE
Recognising this core value could strengthen the effectiveness of
non-governmental organisations.

The Scryer, sculpture by Emily Young, from Time in the Stone, published by Tacit Hill Editions, 2007, UK, ISBN 978-0955476600

18 Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007

T
HERE IS STRENGTH in num-
bers but the essence of such
strength lies not in the num-
bers alone, but in the common
values around which many people
align themselves, providing a sense of
shared vision.
Might it be that many progressive
movements around the world are less
effective than they might otherwise
be because they have not articulated a
common core value that unites them?
Nonviolence might be such a core
value. If nonviolence is understood
in its broadest sense, both in terms
of avoiding harm and enhancing the
general wellbeing of all, then it could
serve as a core value for a wide range
of seemingly unconnected movements.
This sense of nonviolence involves un-
derstanding violence in all its forms:
not just the direct physical violence
of war, genocide, murder and sexual
abuse, but also structural and
cultural violence. These forms of
violence can be as deadly as direct Progressive movements around the world in this diversity, generate energy and
violence, and actually account for
more death and destruction than
direct physical violence. wise be because they have not articulated
Structural violence is the harm
caused by the normal operations
of the structures of our society,
our businesses, our banks, our media,
our government institutions, our inter-
governmental bodies. One example
is the poverty created by economic
and political systems and by policies
such as the structural adjustment pro-
grammes of the World Bank or the
International Monetary Fund. An-
other form of structural violence is
committed by the World Trade Organi-
zation when it prohibits nations from
legislating for the protection of workers
or the environment if such legislation
interferes with ‘free’ trade. A global
trade system which destroys local food
production and cultural practices is
surely a form of structural violence.
Poverty per se should be considered a
form of structural violence.
Cultural violence involves those
pervasive systems of beliefs which rein-
force the direct and structural violence
that occurs in our society. Examples
include the belief system that allows
economic growth and globalisation to
be regarded as more important than
maintaining climate stability; or the set
of beliefs that lead to the imposition
of democracy on a nation by military
intervention.
Extending the concept of nonvio-
lence beyond humans is an important
step in broadening our understanding
of this core value. If we understand
wellbeing in terms of thriving, then it all of these challenges to the wellbeing
applies to every living thing; to each of people and the planet. Thought of
creature which seeks to thrive in the in this way, nonviolence can be viewed
unique way its nature directs. Any hu- as a core value that underlies many of
man action that interferes with the these movements. Yet the concepts of
thriving of living things is thus a form nonviolence are rarely referred to in all
of violence, regardless of whether or but a few of these struggles.
not such harm is intentional. Not only
human rights but the right of all liv- WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES it make?
ing beings to live unharmed have to Should all these movements refocus
become a core value and a common their efforts on nonviolence and aban-
aspiration of us all if we are to come as don the particular issues they care
close as humanly possible to our ideal about?
of nonviolence. No, this is not what I am suggesting.
As the living world depends on My proposition is that when various and
the non-living world around it, we currently unconnected movements come
can understand the importance of to appreciate a shared core value, then
the delicate interactions and interde- new and creative opportunities emerge.
pendencies between the animate and The benefits of a core value can be many
inanimate. When they are not in bal- and varied, and they certainly do not re-
ance, it is difficult for the living to quire or involve uniformity of focus. In
thrive. Disrupting the balance which fact, diversity of activities is an essential
living things depend on is thus a form component of a broadly based move-
ment united by a core value. What
the core value does is to bring unity
are less effective than they might other- enthusiasm, and elicit collaboration
and co-ordination.
Sharing a core value can go
a common core value that unites them. influencethehowconceptual
beyond level and
various parts of a
broad-based movement co-ordi-
of violence, resulting in their decline nate their activities. There have been
and extinction in far too many exam- many examples where peace and
ples. As we learn more about the impact conflict groups have engaged in joint
of human activities such as ‘free’ trade, campaigns with social justice groups.
mining and forestry and expansion of We are just beginning to see the co-
industrial infrastructures, it becomes ordination of environmental, energy
harder to ignore these violent conse- and peace groups as the roles of oil
quences of ‘business as usual’. and other fossil fuels are emerging as
Unfortunately, understanding of sources of violence. When we realise
the violence inherent in such realities that the unequal distribution of energy
as poverty, racism, sexism, hunger, dis- is as unjust as the distribution of mon-
ease and environmental degradation is ey, we make yet another connection for
scant. Our media may focus on these the network of the nonviolent move-
stories, but often they do little to ex- ments that cover the planet.
pose the underlying structural and The wellbeing of all (sarvodaya) is a
cultural violence they represent. All too way of expressing the essence of non-
often these ‘problems of the human violence. It is both a goal and a means
condition’ or ‘costs of doing business’ of achieving that goal. It provides us not
are not understood as examples of vio- only with a guiding light to direct our
lence; as examples of harms done by energies, but also with pathways to that
our mainstream institutions. Too often shining light. Another practical result of
we blame the victims as bringing these a shared value and vision among many
maladies on themselves, or as unfortu- progressive movements is that it helps
nate consequences of ‘progress’. us to design common strategies that are
The range of issues encompassed more effective. By co-ordinating our
by this perspective on violence is nonviolent strategies, we collectively
broad indeed. It links movements con- become a force more powerful than if
cerned with peace and conflict, social we act alone.
justice, human rights, poverty and
development, racism, sexism, over-
consumption, environmental causes, Jack Santa Barbara is Director of the Sustainable
democratic and economic reforms, Scale Project, member of Transcend, and Associ-
civil liberties, and many more. Vio- ate of the Centre for Peace Studies, McMaster
lence of one form or another underlies University.
Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007 19
 T H E M KO ERYANL O ET CE O
S N O M Y

20 Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007

 THE MORAL
ECONOMY
Forty years ago, E. F. Schumacher published
his well-known essay Buddhist Economics.
By ‘Buddhist’ he meant that economics should
be based on moral, ecological and ethical
principles. Forty years later, the modern ‘free
market’ economy still lacks a moral compass.
In this feature, authors challenge the
paradigm of value-free economics.
ILLUSTRATIONS: NOMA BAR

Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007 21

 T H E
W COMPASS
AITING LISTS FOR
the ultra-rich queuing
to buy petrol-hungry
super-cars are getting
longer. Pity, for a moment, the frustrat-
ed plutocrat who might have to wait
five years to become the proud owner
of a Rolls-Royce Phantom Drophead
Coupé. To many this is a great suc-
cess of wealth creation. The car costs
US$412,000 and, driven in the city, it
will manage just twelve miles on a gal-
lon of petrol.
At the very same time, we face the
prospect of potentially imminent and
irreversible global warming. And the
share of the world’s poor in the ben-
efits of global economic growth has
dwindled. A little less than half of the
world’s population, a bewilderingly
large number of around 2.7 billion
people, live on the equivalent of US$2
per day or less. We can say that mon-
ey should not be the measure of all
things, but similarly we cannot dismiss
the hardship that results from a level
of income that, if endured in the UK,
would be the equivalent of surviving
on the minimum wage and having sole
responsibility to support an extended
family of at least eighteen other people.
‘Capable of knowing right and
wrong’ is one of several definitions the
dictionary gives for the term ‘moral’.
So, two questions: first, is it wrong for
the global economy to push the world
toward catastrophic climate change be-
cause so many of the things it depends
upon require fossil fuels? Some do not
think so. Just listen to the people who
argue that we should build more air-
ports, and who oppose fuel taxes.
Second, is it wrong that the glo-
bal economy leaves nearly half of the
world’s population in a level of poverty
so deep that even meeting basic needs
becomes impossible?
If these are wrong, can the economy
be moral? Can it distinguish between
right and wrong? More than that, is it
possible to even make sensible or use-
ful generalisations? The economy is a
mixed and messy place. It’s made up
of you and me, of sometimes outright
criminality, as well as of sometimes
truly saintly enterprises.
The global economy is the sum of
22 Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007
M KO ERYANL O ET CE O
S N O M Y
NEW ECONOMICS • ANDREW SIMMS
MORAL
What is the economy for, and how do we know if it
is succeeding?
countless deals, contracts, haggles, buy-
outs, mergers and daily acts of buying
and selling. Because of that, you some-
times have to step back several paces
to understand their full consequences.
It may be pedantic to say so, because,
in the real world of human hardship
and environmental degradation, out-
comes matter as much as intentions;
but a long gaze at the global economy
leads inexorably to the conclusion that
today we face a crisis of amorality, as
much as immorality. We have now a
good choice of fairly traded goods in
shops, and ethical investment funds to
put our savings into, but these never
seem to get beyond a small percent-
age of the overall market. It seems that,
left to itself, the economy can only be
moral at the margins. For example, as
concern about climate change has ris-
en to record levels, so has the amount
of money being invested in the City of
London to further exploit fossil fuels.
During the 1980s, the so-called
lost decade of tackling the ‘economic
problem’ – what the great economist
J. M. Keynes called the struggle to meet
basic human needs – from every $100
worth of global economic growth,
around $2.20 found its way to people
living below the absolute poverty line.
Bad enough, but a decade later that
had shrunk to just $0.60. There was,
in effect, a sort of ‘flood up’ of wealth
from poor to rich, rather than a ‘trickle
down’. Perversely, it means that for
the poor to get slightly less poor, the
rich have to get very much richer. It
now takes around $166 worth of glo-
bal growth to generate a single dollar
of poverty reduction for people living
below $1 a day.
It’s possible to imagine the excuses
that, were it not for the inconvenient
fact that we live on an island planet,
subject to fuzzy but real environmental
limits, people who favour conspicuous
consumption might make, such as,
“But the poor are still getting some-
thing, aren’t they?” But a constant
flow of new findings on the science
of climate change has eroded residu-
al doubts about the causes of global
warming, rooted in fossil-fuel energy
use and broader consumption patterns.
In a warming world the frequency and
intensity of extreme events like the
summer 2007 UK floods is likely to in-
crease. The contrarian levy has broken
along with numerous river banks.
HOW, THEN, IN a world of abiding
deprivation and in an age increasing-
ly defined by climate change, should
we measure the performance of the
economy? What could provide us with
some kind of moral compass capa-
ble of respecting the biosphere upon
which we depend, at the same time as
guiding us towards a solution to the
‘economic problem’?
One problem is that we still use road
signs to find our way that were long
ago discredited – such as measures of
economic growth like Gross National
Product (GNP). Four decades ago, US
politician Robert Kennedy dismissed
the use of GNP to set our priorities be-
cause, he said, it “does not allow for
the health of our children, the quality
of their education, or the joy of their
play. It does not include the beauty of
our poetry or the strength of our mar-
riages, the intelligence of our public
debate or the integrity of our public
officials. It measures neither our wit
nor our courage, neither our wis-
dom nor our learning... it measures
everything, in short, except that

which makes life worthwhile.”
A new approach that is more in
tune with our times is long overdue.
No single measure can capture all
these factors in detail. But there are
a few important things that it is vital
we do measure. In practice we need
to assess the efficiency with which
we turn fundamental inputs into the
economy, such as the natural resources
from our overstretched biosphere, into
desirable and meaningful human out-
comes – such as relatively long and
satisfied lives. That would at least give
us a meaningful picture that we could
learn from of whether things are get-
ting better or worse.
Standard, comparable international
data now exist for these factors, for most
countries. Interestingly, while some
doubt the robustness of new measures
of human life satisfaction, these corre-
ILLUSTRATION: NOMA BAR
late very closely with a wide range of
other quantitative data, including on
health, depression and suicide. In oth-
er words, when asked in the right way,
people have a good idea of their overall
wellbeing. Combining life expectancy
and satisfaction produces perhaps the
most fundamental indicator of human
wellbeing: what academics refer to as
‘happy-life-years’.
Apply this analysis to Europe, for
example, and a surprising and wor-
rying picture emerges. For all the talk
of successful, knowledge-driven, re-
source-light service economies, the
core European nations have become,
as a whole, less carbon efficient at de-
livering wellbeing for their citizens in
terms of life expectancy and satisfac-
tion. Europe is less carbon efficient
now than it was in 1961.
Better news comes from finding
that across Europe, and even more so
within the UK, people report com-
parable levels of wellbeing whether
their lifestyles are high-consuming
and very resource intensive, or are low
consuming and leave a much smaller
ecological footprint. The range of lev-
els is enormous, from lifestyles that if
followed by the whole world’s popu-
lation would imply the need for the
resources of six and a half planets like
Earth, down to just the one that we
actually have.
Yet research shows that people
are just as likely to lead satisfied lives
whether their levels are at the top of
the consumption scale or the bottom.
This could be a message of liberation
to policy-makers previously too ter-
rified to tackle demand management.
Although a transition would need to
be carefully handled, there is no rea-
son why a comprehensive reduction in
consumption should negatively affect
quality of life or life satisfaction. Poli-
ticians should no longer be afraid of
policies to reduce demand.
Domestically, the UK has a lot of
room for improvement. It came a poor
twenty-first out of the thirty countries
analysed, and nations that most close-
ly follow the Anglo-Saxon economic
model showed up as the least efficient.
Scandinavian countries turn out to be
the most efficient. They achieve the
highest levels of wellbeing in Europe
at relatively low environmental cost.
Sweden and Norway join Iceland at
the top of the table. Their combination
of strong social policies and extensive
use of renewable energy demonstrates
that living within our environmental
means doesn’t mean sacrificing human
wellbeing.
IF WE ARE to chart a course for the
economy so that it can navigate the in-
separable challenges of environmental
sustainability and human need, a new
compass specifically designed for the
task is necessary. If we call it a moral
compass we will not be out of step with
the founding father of modern eco-
nomics, Adam Smith. It was Smith, after
all, who, in 1759 wrote a book called
The Theory of the Moral Sentiments, arguing
that people are deeply, innately moral.
It would be both ironic and basically
wrong to allow a system that often
takes his name in vain to separate and
immure us from our moral selves.
Andrew Simms is policy director of nef (the New
Economics Foundation) and author of Ecological
Debt (Pluto, 2005) and Tescopoly (Constable &
Robinson, 2007).
Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007 23
 T H E M KO ERYANL O ET CE O
S N O M Y

Sculpture with mosaic by Gaudí at Güell Park, Barcelona PHOTOGRAPH: GRÄFENHAIN GÜNTER/SIME

24 Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007

 E C O N O M I C S O F B E A U T Y • A N I TA R O D D I C K
CURRENCY OF
THE IMAGINATION
In order to restore beauty in our economy, in our cities and in our lives
we need a new currency.
I
T IS NEARLY a decade since I was
tear-gassed in a Seattle street – a
strange situation for the chief ex-
ecutive officer (CEO) of one of the
biggest retailers in the world. It was
the end of November 1999, and I was
in the city, together with thousands of
others, for what proved to be the failed
summit of the World Trade Organiza-
tion (WTO). One day, there were 300
children dressed as turtles, a reference
to the WTO decision that it was illegal
to discriminate against shrimps caught
in nets that also drown 150,000 sea
turtles. The next day I was witnessing
scenes I had never encountered be-
fore. There was tear gas everywhere,
rubber bullets fired point blank into
crowds of demonstrators, pepper
spray, and police looking like storm-
troopers, with gas masks, full body
armour and jackboots, and without
visible badges or forms of identifi-
cation. There was also a great deal of
blood on the streets of Seattle.
What seemed particularly unjust
was that, as far as I know, there was no
property destruction or violence be-
fore this, although the WTO delegates
had been prevented from entering the
Convention Centre and the Paramount
Theater, where the opening ceremo-
nies were supposed to be held. It was
unnerving watching tear gas and rub-
ber bullets used against students, their
professors, clergy, Tibetan monks, even
medical staff. Scrambling for safety as
the pepper spray hit us, choking on the
smell of cayenne pepper that sticks to
everything, I grabbed the environmen-
talist Paul Hawken and found we were
both temporarily blinded, with burn-
ing faces, stumbling between other
protesters as we searched for water.
The whole experience of being
tear-gassed in Seattle changed my life.
For one thing, I realised I was probably
the only CEO on that side of the police
cordons, and that made me feel wor-
ried – not for me but for the business
world. Being a successful entrepreneur
is about imagining the world differ-
ently; if the only ones who succeed in
doing so side with the powerful, then
something is wrong. For another thing,
I realised also that the people behind
that kind of globalisation would really
stop at nothing to impose their will on
the world.
Because there is more than one
kind of globalisation. I mean that I
am still overwhelmingly in favour of a
sense of the planet that is aware of the
multiplicity of cultures and respects
them, can see into the dark corners
and reveal the cruelties going on there
– can even do something about them.
I am in favour of such global solidarity.
But the side of globalisation peddled
by the WTO, and taken to a whole new
level since by the Bush administration,
is that only money and power mat-
ter – and that, somehow, the exercise
of both will filter down and help the
poorest people of the world. Being in
Seattle, trying to find vinegar and wa-
ter for my smarting eyes, made me
horribly aware of this rogue globalisa-
tion and what it meant.
IN THE YEARS that followed, Seattle
came to mean something else to me. It
was the turtles, fancy dress, costumes,
colour and music, and the sense of car-
nival. The sheer joy of it. It was a valiant
attempt, not just to seize the streets in
a crude pretence at power, but to hu-
manise that vision of raw power with
creativity, imagination and fun.
Most corporations are in two minds
about the whole idea of carnival. They
like a sense of occasion because they
can sell greeting cards, fizzy drinks
and gifts. But, equally, they tend to be
afraid of this creative power that peo-
ple have, of people taking their own
initiative, and they share the fear that
governments have always had of what
they call ‘the mob’, of people taking
their own decisions, or doing almost
anything in the street except shopping
or commuting to work.
Neither of those is necessary in it-
self for people to lead fulfilled lives; joy,
colour and a sense of occasion are vital
and – most of all – so is beauty. People
have a range of needs to live a reason-
able life, and often it may be more
obvious to us what makes us unhappy
than what makes us happy. If we feel
isolated, unappreciated, insecure mate-
rially and socially, or simply unloved,
we will be unhappy. But it is more
complicated than that: the evidence
suggests that we are more miserable
when we live in a society where there
is a huge gap between the rich and the
poor, when life and society make no
sense, or where we have less influence
in our political institutions.
On the other hand, we know that
people thrive on love and intimacy
within the family, and trust and care
within the community. Abraham
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs suggests
that we grow from the fulfilling of ba-
sic needs – food and warmth – to find
fulfilment in sharing, even in sacrifice,
and to find joy in the community and
creativity. The consumer society pro-
vides little of either. It has even been
suggested that the consumer society
keeps everyone in perpetual infancy
because, if we ever became satisfied
with our material lives, we would
cease to play the game of expanding
desires that keeps the perpetual econ-
omy going.
Consumerism prevents the possi-
bility of fulfilling those higher needs. It
doesn’t care whether we buy in beau-
Resurgence No. 245 November/December 25
 T H E
tiful or ugly surroundings. Few
aspects of the global economy
provide beauty or community
and, worse, in many ways it
drives them out by the deliber-
ate manipulation of debt, which
is as powerful a motivator as any
invented in human history. On
the other hand, providing for
these vital human needs requires
another kind of economy alto-
gether, which emphasises beauty,
community and creativity.
SO LET’S IMAGINE, for a mo-
ment, that beauty is the central
plank in the government’s new
manifesto. Let’s go further, and
imagine that I have been sworn
in as a government minister
charged with responsibility for
public space! The first thing I
would discover once I was be-
hind my Whitehall desk would
be that the job wouldn’t just be
fun: it would be really inexpen-
sive. The first thing I would do
is organise a Day of Common
Delight, an annual carnival of
beauty which could turn the The Iron Man sculpture by Antony Gormley, next to a telephone box in
world upside down. The sec- Birmingham’s Victoria Square PHOTOGRAPH: BRITAINONVIEW/JEAN BROOKS ent means. It is an objective that
ond item on the agenda would
be to draft a new law for billboards.
They would no longer be allowed to
sell products; only poetry, wit and art
would be allowed.
That should take the first few days.
After that, it’s a matter of getting theft-
and waterproof pianos to arrive in
public squares and fields. Then there
would be legislation to allow Italian
Pavement Art Day, when people could
paint and decorate the pavement. Also
Art Car Days, when you could decorate
your car any way you wanted – covered
in grass, or emblazoned with coloured
glass, or covered in cake.
In fact, my work as minister of state
would be made much easier because
the traditional notion of public art
– some discreet object made without
much consideration for a particular
place – is already undergoing a trans-
formation. Artists seem much more
aware of what it means to work in the
community, increasingly in prisons
or schools or among homeless peo-
ple. I have seen death row art: prison
art where the artist plays the role of a
facilitator, helping to draw forth the
stories.
Sometimes you barely need an art-
ist at all. I remember travelling by tube
from Victoria recently, and as I entered
the train, someone hijacked the loud-
speaker system and sang, “Hey, ho, hey
26 Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007
M KO ERYANL O ET CE O
S N O M Y
ho, it’s off to work we go…!” Com-
muters burst out laughing, and looked
at reactions from others, and it was
rather an amazing transformation:
the community of commuters finally
having fun.
As minister in charge of public
space, I would put myself alongside
the work of the younger artists who
are trying to make art change the
world, doing reclamation art projects
in degraded sites, creating dialogue
between polarised groups, working in
foster homes. At the Battle of Seattle,
it was exactly those groups that I met,
who were working to create a sense of
carnival, designing flags and puppets,
dropping banners from impossible
sites. I thought then, and I think now,
that they are an energetic future for art
that is helping to knit art and life back
together again.
THE ECONOMIST JOHN Maynard
Keynes talked about the hideous waste
of an economic system that could not
recognise art or beauty. In a speech
to the Irish government in 1933, he
urged politicians and economists to
raise their ambition, and spend the
money on beauty.
Keynes was an economist with a
deep interest in art. He launched the
Arts Council, poured money into the
Cambridge Arts Theatre and mar-
ried a ballerina. We might take
his word for this. Yet a short walk
through the outer estates of many
of the greatest cities in Europe,
let alone America or Asia, betrays
the hideous ugliness that we ex-
pect large groups of the world’s
population to live in. Often it
is ugliness that has been delib-
erately designed as a concrete
monstrosity, using regeneration
money that remains an unpaid
debt long after the new bastilles
have crumbled away.
Nor is it just the buildings.
It is the litter and pollution and
the inhuman absence of green
trees and plants which are a vital
human need. Why is it that our
political masters and business
leaders believe that the poor
uniquely need nothing green or
natural in their lives?
So, you can expect me, as
minister of public space, to
argue in the Cabinet that the am-
bition of beautification means a
different measure of success, a
different currency and a differ-
requires human ingenuity, hu-
man warmth and imagination. Nor is
there a trade-off between beauty and
economic success. The most successful
places on the planet are mostly beau-
tiful, and if they are not they don’t
remain successful for long, because
people want to live there and invest in
places that make them feel alive.
I have spent a quarter of a centu-
ry trying to use retailing as a lever to
change the world, so I am not one of
those puritans who think that shop-
ping should be beneath the notice of
civilised people. But beautifying our
public space is not primarily about
shopping: consumerism will not help
us here. Retail-led regeneration will
need beautifying in itself. What we
will need is a new currency altogether:
we will succeed or fail according to
how much imagination is in circula-
tion. We will succeed to the extent to
which we encourage human connec-
tion and conversation. We will succeed
also to the extent to which we spend
the small change of imagination – the
human stories about people and places
and what they aspire to do.
Anita Roddick was Founder of The Body Shop
and author of many books, most recently
Take It Personally. www.anitaroddick.com.
 D E V E L O P M E N T • WA N G A R I M A AT H A I
POVERTY AND
EMPOWERMENT
I There can be no peace on Earth while millions of
FOUNDED THE Green Belt Move-
ment thirty years ago to respond
to environmental challenges,
which I observed both during my
childhood and while working at the
University of Nairobi and the National
Council of Women of Kenya. These chal-
lenges included loss of indigenous forests
and local biodiversity, soil erosion, lack
of clean drinking water, malnutrition
and lack of firewood. I realised that to
live in a clean and healthy environment
ought to be a human right.
I worked with women because it is
they who fetch firewood, look for water
and food and feed the family. A degrad-
ed environment is more visible to the
women than to the men, who can es-
cape into urban areas in search of jobs
and opportunities. It is the women who
are left to deal with an environment no
longer able to sustain livelihoods.
Identifying the causes of the
problems women faced became an
important part of our work. We would
have seminars where we would ask
ourselves the following questions:
1. What problems do we face in
our community?
2. Where do these problems come
from?
3. What are their solutions?
Even when it became clear that
women needed to establish tree nurs-
eries and plant trees on their farms to
address their problems, it was a major
challenge to help them understand that
the degradation of the environment
was a symptom and that they needed
to know the cause.
We needed to go through this
process for the participants to under-
stand that many of the problems we
face in our communities are a result of
our not taking appropriate action, that
we are often the cause of many of our
problems, and that they can be solved
by us if we can empower ourselves
and believe in ourselves. This process
became an important part of our work
and we called it ‘civic and environ-
mental education’.
people are trapped in poverty and the natural
environment is destroyed by the economics of greed.
Social justice and sustainability are prerequisites for
peace.
As we spent time with women in
the rural areas, we discovered that it
was often the poor women who came
to work with us, because we made tree
planting an income-generating activ-
ity. However, they had to understand
that they needed to take care of their
environment, not only because of the
financial incentives but also because it
was in their interest to do so. We all
depend on a healthy environment.
Therefore caring for the environment
is a survival imperative.
Some have said that the poor will
always be with us; that perhaps we
cannot eliminate poverty altogether.
What we know for sure is that we can
greatly reduce dehumanising poverty
that denies human beings a sense of
self-respect and dignity. To do so, it is
important to have a holistic approach
to our work. That is why in the Green
Belt Movement we take care of the
environment and we also deal with
governance issues, with human rights
and with the issues of equitable distri-
bution of resources.
When I started environmental work
I was not thinking of poverty. I was
thinking about the environment and I
did not make the connection between
environmental degradation and pover-
ty. However, I quickly realised that the
rural women I was working with were
talking about basic rights and those
without such rights are the poor.
Because I had grown up in the
same countryside, I was perplexed by
the rapid impoverishment of our peo-
ple at a time when they were supposed
to have developed both during and
after the colonial era. After all, during
the post-colonial period they could
grow tea, coffee and other crops not
grown by African farmers. They kept
high-breed dairy animals and were
governed by their own. Why were the
women poor in a country which has so
much to offer? In the course of time I
came to realise that poverty is a symp-
tom and a result of injustices, which
become entrenched in the governance
systems we adopt. I came to realise that
poverty is human-made.
Often, those in power invent ex-
cuses to justify the causes of poverty.
They create governance systems that
exclude, exploit, oppress and humili-
ate those who are perceived to be weak
and vulnerable. That is what slavery,
colonialism, apartheid, occupation,
dictatorships and other unjust forms
of governance are about.
Unless the victims of such systems
understand why they are so governed,
they can easily succumb and make lit-
tle efforts to challenge systems that
deliberately impoverish them. One of
the most important responsibilities we
have is to empower victims of such
injustices so that eventually they can
liberate themselves.
IN THE COURSE of my work with the
Green Belt Movement I came to real-
ise that poor people tend to over-use
and degrade their environment. Un-
fortunately, a degraded environment
does not support livelihoods. As the
environment degrades, communities
compete for the same scarce resources,
and often conflict and wars ensue. I
made the linkage between sustainable
management of resources and con-
Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007 27
 T H E
Women from the Green Belt Movement tend tree nurseries throughout Kenya
flict by observing the tribal clashes at
home.
I also became curious about why
people living on fertile lands such as I
knew in Kenya, surrounded by forested
mountains and with plenty of rainfall,
would complain about resources that
should have been bountiful.
It was then that I realised that while
governments have a responsibility to
take care of the commons such as for-
ests, rivers, mountains and to protect
such important resources from exploi-
tation, they can decide not to share
them as if they own them. They stop
being custodians and become exploit-
ers. When governments fail to protect
such commons and instead start priva-
tising them, they are no longer being
responsible custodians, and citizens
should hold them accountable and
punish them at the ballot box. But that
assumes these citizens live in democra-
cies.
Also, only informed and empow-
ered citizens can hold their leaders
accountable. Leaders who know that
their citizens cannot hold them ac-
countable tend to be irresponsible,
abuse power and abuse their citizens.
They mismanage resources and in the
process cause much poverty and suf-
fering. In fighting poverty it is essential
to empower communities.
In many parts of the world econom-
28 Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007
M KO ERYANL O ET CE O
S N O M Y
ic and political systems are inherently
unjust and ensure that there is an ever-
increasing number of poor people and
an ever-increasing gap between them
and the rich. This is true both in the
rich industrialised countries and in
the developing and non-industrialised
economies. It is also more prevalent in
countries where societies are perceived
to be multi-ethnic.
I can talk about my experience in
Africa where the majority of the poor
are found. We should find it unaccept-
able that dehumanising poverty is so
prevalent, especially in sub-Saharan
Africa. How can we explain such pov-
erty in a region so endowed with men
and women who work very hard,
where there is so much wealth of
gold, diamonds, oil, sunshine, forests,
water, wildlife, land and horticultural
products? Why are her people so poor?
They are poor simply because of in-
justice and inequitable distribution of
wealth.
In my opinion, until a critical mass
of Africans are sufficiently empow-
ered, especially through education, to
hold their political and business lead-
ers responsible and accountable, the
resources in Africa will continue to
benefit few while poverty continues to
be the dominant feature.
At this point, allow me to draw
your attention to the historic decision
PHOTOGRAPH: GREEN BELT MOVEMENT
by the Norwegian Nobel Committee
to give the Nobel Peace Prize to me in
2004 and recognise the need to make
the connections between a sustainable
environment, good governance, equity
and peace.
I am privileged to hold the award,
but I know that this was in recognition
of all people and organisations who
work for peace by working for sustain-
able management of natural resources,
justice, respect for human rights and
the rule of law. The Nobel Commit-
tee wanted to emphasise that we need
to work for political and economic
systems of governance that help to pre-
empt the many causes of conflicts and
wars. Without such a system people
will continue to compete over scarce
resources and go to war for them.
THE CHALLENGES ARE likely to get
worse as a result of climate change.
It is suggested that weather patterns
will be less predictable, prolonged
droughts and desertification proc-
esses will get worse, rainfall patterns
will change and crop failures will be
more frequent. Under such difficulties
the fate of the poor will only worsen.
Conflicts, wars and displacements will
increase as resources degrade and be-
come scarcer and no longer able to
sustain livelihoods. The poor may not
have contributed much towards cli-
mate change but they will suffer most. been a bit startling for the beggar, be- to be inspired by Peter and John. To re-
It is also for this reason that we cause people did not usually talk to ally help them we need to empower
appeal to the G8 countries to do every- him. Peter went on, “Silver and gold them so that they no longer need our
thing they can to reduce emissions of we have none, but what we have we aid.
greenhouse gases. We have addressed give to you. In the name of Jesus of We will have to implement a more
them before on behalf of the poor Nazareth, rise up and walk!” sustainable way of managing natural
regarding unpayable and illegitimate And much to his surprise, the beg- resources, a more equitable way of
debts, with the issues of fair trade, with gar felt his limbs get strong. He rose sharing them. We will have to devel-
the percentage of development aid and up and walked forward. He had a new op a governance system that respects
other promises made to help countries sense of self-confidence and pride. He human rights and the rule of law; a
meet the Millennium Development was an empowered man: no longer a system that embraces diversity and
Goals. We need them to provide leader- beggar, no longer dehumanised. No gives a voice to the minorities and the
ship and encourage other governments longer in need of alms. Now he could vulnerable. That means we move from
like India and China to prepare for a go and take care of himself with dig- treating the symptoms to eliminating
carbon-neutral economy. nity and self-respect. the root causes of poverty.
I am deeply concerned about the There must have been many wor-
protection of forests and habitats. I am shippers who, in their kindness, had Edited extracts from a talk given to
a Goodwill Ambassador for the Congo given him a few coins but had never the 18th General Assembly of Cari-
Basin Forest ecosystem. I am working thought of alternatives to alms. But Pe- tas Internationalis in Vatican City in
with governments in the Central Africa ter and John decided to empower him: June 2007.
region to conserve and protect this to give him back his sense of dignity
forest, which along with the Amazon and self-respect. Wangari Maathai is the founder of The Green
forest and the forests of Southeast Asia It is a wonderful parable for our Belt movement in Kenya and recipient of the
is the major lungs of the planet. In this time. As we work for the poor we need Nobel Peace Prize, 2004.
connection I thank the British Govern-
ment, which recently allocated £50
million (US$100 million) to a kitty
for the Congo forest. We appeal to gov-
ernments to protect forests and trees,
including those far away from their
countries. They are very important for
the world’s climate.
With a light touch, I often remind
people that, according to the Book of
Genesis, God created everything on the
first five days. Then on the sixth day, in
His infinite wisdom, He created the
human species. If He had made a mis-
take, and created humans on Monday,
we would have been dead on Tuesday
because we would not have survived.
Everything created before us was es-
sential for our survival! We ought to be
humbled by the fact that we need the
environment to survive, but the envi-
ronment does not need us.
Remember the story of Peter and
John who went to the synagogue for
prayer. As they approached, they en-
countered a beggar who was crippled
since birth. The beggar had all the
symptoms of a disempowered person:
he was poor, self-effacing, dejected,
humiliated, had very low self-esteem
and was unwell.
The beggar did not even dare to
look up at the people from whom he
was begging. He was too ashamed of
his status. The Bible says that he bowed
his head, hid his face and stretched his
hand for alms.
Peter and John, upon seeing him
in that dehumanised and humiliated
state, decided to give him, not coins,
but wholeness and confidence. And so
Peter said, “Look up!” That must have Green Belt women singing and dancing PHOTOGRAPH: GREEN BELT MOVEMENT

Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007 29

 T H E
T Community is a key ingredient for health and wellbeing.
HIRTY-THREE YEARS ago, I
watched as a culture that had
been sealed off from the rest
of the world was suddenly
thrown open to economic develop-
ment. Witnessing the impact of the
modern world on an ancient culture
gave me insights into how economic
globalisation creates feelings of inad-
equacy and inferiority, particularly in
the young, and how those psycho-
logical pressures are helping to spread
the global consumer culture. Since
that time I have been promoting the
rebuilding of community and local
economies as the foundation of an
Economics of Happiness.
When I first arrived in Ladakh,
or ‘Little Tibet’, a region high on the
Tibetan plateau, it was still largely un-
affected by either colonialism or the
global economy. For political reasons,
the region had been isolated for many
centuries, both geographically and
culturally. The Ladakhis were the most
contented and happy people I had ever
encountered. Their sense of self-worth
was deep and solid; smiles and laugh-
ter were their constant companions.
Then, in 1975, the Indian government
abruptly opened Ladakh to imported
food and consumer goods, to tour-
ism and the global media, to Western
education and other trappings of the
‘development’ process.
Romanticised impressions of the
West gleaned from media, advertising
and fleeting encounters with tour-
ists had an immediate and profound
impact on the Ladakhis. Sanitised and
glamourised images of the urban con-
sumer culture created the illusion that
people outside Ladakh enjoyed infi-
nite wealth and leisure. By contrast,
working in the fields and providing
for one’s own needs seemed backward
and primitive. Suddenly, everything
from their food and clothing to their
houses and language seemed inferior.
The young were particularly affected,
quickly succumbing to a sense of in-
security and self-rejection. The use of
a dangerous skin-lightening cream
30 Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007
M KO ERYANL O ET CE O
S N O M Y
LOCALISING • HELENA NORBERG-HODGE
ECONOMICS
OF HAPPINESS
called Fair and Lovely became wide-
spread, symbolising the newly created
need to imitate the distant role models
– Western, urban, blonde – provided
by the media.
I have studied this process in numer-
ous other cultures around the world
and discovered that we are all victims
of these same psychological pressures.
In virtually every industrialised coun-
try, including the US, the UK, Australia,
France and Japan, there is now what is
described as an epidemic of depres-
sion. In Japan, it is estimated that one
million youths refuse to leave their
bedrooms – sometimes for decades
– in a phenomenon known as hikiko-
mori. In the US, a growing proportion
of young girls are so deeply insecure
about their appearance that they fall
victim to anorexia and bulimia, or un-
dergo expensive cosmetic surgery.
Why is this happening? Too often
these signs of breakdown are seen as
‘normal’: we assume that depression is
a universal affliction; that children are
by nature insecure about their appear-
ance; that greed, acquisitiveness and
competition are innate to the human
condition. What we fail to consider are
the billions of dollars spent by mar-
keteers, targeting children as young as
two, with a goal of instilling the belief
that material possessions will ensure
them the love and appreciation they
crave.
As global media reach into the
most remote parts of the planet, the
underlying message is, “If you want
to be seen, heard, appreciated and
loved you must have the right running
shoes, the most fashionable jeans, the
latest toys and gadgets.” But the real-
ity is that consumption leads to greater
competition and envy, leaving children
more isolated, insecure, and unhappy,
thereby fuelling still more frantic con-
sumption in a vicious cycle. In this
way, the global consumer culture taps
into the fundamental human need for
love and twists it into insatiable greed.
TODAY, MORE AND more people are
waking up to the fact that, because of
its environmental costs, an economic
model based on endless consumption
is unsustainable. But because there is
far less understanding of the social and
psychological costs of the consumer
culture, most believe that making the
changes necessary to save the environ-
ment will entail great sacrifice. Once
we realise that oil-dependent global
growth is responsible not only for cli-
mate change and other environmental
crises, but also for increased stress,
anxiety and social breakdown, then it
becomes clear that the steps we need
to take to heal the planet are the same
as those needed to heal ourselves: both
require reducing the scale of the econ-
omy – in other words localising rather
than continuing to globalise economic
activity. My sense from interviewing
people in four continents is that this
realisation is already growing, and has
the potential to spread like wildfire.
Economic localisation means
bringing economic activity closer to
home – supporting local economies
and communities rather than huge,
distant corporations. Instead of a glo-
bal economy based on sweatshops in
the South, stressed-out two-income
families in the North, and a handful of
billionaire elites in both, localisation
means a smaller gap between rich and
poor, and closer contact between pro-
ducers and consumers. This translates
into greater social cohesion: a recent
study found that shoppers at farmers’
markets had ten times more conversa-
tions than people in supermarkets.
And community is a key ingredi-
ent in happiness. Almost universally,
research confirms that feeling connect-
Satellite dish outside traditional ger, Gobi desert, Mongolia
ed to others is a fundamental human
need. Local, community-based econo-
mies are also crucial for the wellbeing
of our children, providing them with
living role models and a healthy sense
of identity. Recent childhood devel-
opment research demonstrates the
importance, in the early years of life,
of learning about who we are in rela-
tion to parents, siblings, and the larger
community. These are real role models,
unlike the artificial stereotypes found
in the media.
A deep connection with Nature is
similarly fundamental to our wellbeing.
Author Richard Louv has even coined
the expression ‘nature-deficit disor-
der’ to describe what is happening to
children deprived of contact with the
living world. The therapeutic benefits
of contact with Nature, meanwhile,
are becoming ever more clear. A recent
UK study showed that 90% of people
suffering from depression experience
an increase in self-esteem after a walk
in a park. After a visit to a shopping
centre, on the other hand, 44% feel
PHOTOGRAPH: KONSTANTIN MIKHAILOV/NATURE PICTURE LIBRARY
a decrease in self-esteem and 22% feel
more depressed. Considering that
over 31 million prescriptions for anti-
depressants were handed out in the UK
last year, this is a crucial finding.
DESPITE THE ENORMITY of the crises
we face, turning towards more com-
munity-based, localised economies
represents a powerful solution multi-
plier. As Kali Wendorf, editor of Kindred
magazine, says, “the way forward is ac-
tually quite simple: it’s more time with
each other, more time in Nature, more
time in collective situations that give
us a sense of community, like farmers’
markets, for example, or developing
a relationship with the corner shop
where you get your fruits and vegeta-
bles. It’s not going back to the Stone
Age. It’s just getting back to that foun-
dation of connection again.”
Efforts to localise economies are
happening at the grassroots all over the
world, and bringing with them a sense
of wellbeing. A young man who start-
ed an urban garden in Detroit, one of
America’s most blighted cities, told us,
“I’ve lived in this community over thirty-
five years and people I’d never met came
up and talked to me when we started
this project. We found that it reconnects
us with the people around us – it makes
community a reality.” Another young
gardener in Detroit put it this way: “Eve-
rything just feels better to people when
there is something growing.”
Global warming and the end of
cheap oil demand a fundamental shift
in the way that we live. The choice is
ours. We can continue down the path
of economic globalisation, which at
the very least will create greater human
suffering and environmental prob-
lems, and at worst, threatens our very
survival. Or, through localisation, we
can begin to rebuild our communities
and local economies, the foundations
of sustainability and happiness.
Helena Norberg-Hodge is a pioneer of the inter-
national localisation movement and founder of
ISEC – the International Society for Ecology and
Culture. www.isec.org.uk
Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007 31
 T H E
I Nature is the real source of our wealth.
F WE WANT to bring about a trans-
formation in the way our society
is run and in our attitudes to other
living things on the Earth we need
to differentiate between the problem
and its symptoms. For example, at the
moment everybody is talking about
global warming, but global warming
is not the problem – it is a symptom
of the problem and we need to go
deeper than just talking about treating
the symptoms. It is a characteristic of
modern times to look at how to treat
the symptoms rather than tackling the
real reasons why we are changing the
whole atmosphere that sustains us.
Sir Nicholas Stern has written a
600-page review on climate change,
but it does not go deep enough into
the reasons underlying the position
we now find ourselves in – how did
we manage to reach the stage where
we are sawing off the tree the branch
upon which we are sitting? The an-
swer is that we have lost the idea of the
spirit and we have just concentrated
on matter; we have become wedded to
the religion of materialism. But matter
is no matter unless it has spirit. Matter
on its own is useless. A human body
is made up of a head, arms and legs,
but it is of no use without the human
spirit; the body serves no purpose un-
less it has a spirit to bring it to life.
In the last few hundred years a
number of Western philosophers and
scientists such as Descartes and New-
ton looked upon the Earth as an object
of human dominance. We have come
to believe that humans are the master
race, the super species in charge of the
Earth. Over the years we have tried to
rid ourselves of many of the ‘-isms’,
such as imperialism, nationalism and
sexism, but now we are in a world of
species-ism where we think that the hu-
man species is special and that humans
are in charge of everything. We used to
own slaves but now we own Nature;
Nature has no rights and we can claim
possession of natural things wherever
and whenever we want. But the mo-
ment we have a different worldview
and we see Nature not as dead matter
but as a living thing, suddenly we are
in a deep relationship with the natural
32 Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007
M KO ERYANL O ET CE O
S N O M Y
S P I R I T U A L E C O N O M Y • S AT I S H K U M A R
EARTH I LOVE
world. Then we recognise that Nature
rights are equal to human rights.
In fact humans are also an integral
part of Nature. The Latin word nata-
lis means ‘born’ and is the root of the
word ‘nature’ and words relating to
the birth of humans such as ‘prenatal’
and ‘postnatal’. Similarly, for example,
we refer to ‘native Africans’, meaning
those who are born and live in Africa.
‘Natal’, ‘native’, ‘nativity’ and ‘nature’
all come from the same word. We are
part of Nature and not owners of Na-
ture; we do not own the trees, the land
and the rivers: we have a relationship
with them.
The idea, prevalent in modern eco-
nomics, that we human beings own
Nature and can therefore treat her as
we like is fundamentally flawed. Un-
less we can change this idea and make
a fundamental shift from ownership of
Nature to a relationship with Nature,
global warming will never come to
an end. Even if we change from burn-
ing fossil fuels to generating power in
other ways – whether wind power, so-
lar generation, nuclear energy or using
biofuels – all we are doing is treat-
ing the symptoms. If we think we can
control the rivers, the animals and the
rainforest based on the ideas of sepa-
ration from and ownership of Nature,
then all our efforts towards sustaina-
bility are just an illusion. Technological
solutions have to be balanced by psy-
chological transformation.
There is a big difference between
ownership and relationship. There
was a time when men thought they
could own women; we have man-
aged to change this idea and now we
know you cannot own your wife; it is
a relationship, not ownership. There
was also a time when people owned
slaves and wealth was measured by the
number of slaves in a household. But
the idea still remains that the forests,
the land and the animals are our slaves.
We put animals into factory farms and
cages. We treat them and use them as
we like. As long as this mindset – this
anthropocentric view – continues, glo-
bal warming is not going to go away.
We need to make a quantum leap
from an anthropocentric worldview
to a geocentric worldview. We need
to accept the intrinsic value of all life
– human life as well as other-than-hu-
man life. The human community is part
of the Earth community. Economy has
to operate in harmony with ecology.
This change of worldview as well as a
change of heart has to come about from
the bottom up, from the grassroots. We
have to build a people’s movement to
create a culture of ecology.
We can live in an illusion thinking
that governments should do something
about global warming, but the reality
is that the world will never be free of
global warming unless people change
their relationship with the Earth. We
are guests of the Earth and we should
be the friends of the Earth.
IN THE WESTERN world we follow
fashions, and the current fashion is to
talk about climate change. In the 1960s
the fashion was to talk about nuclear
war. When I met Bertrand Russell (then
aged 92), I said, “Lord Russell, you are
my inspiration but I have one problem
with your philosophy, and that is that
your agenda on nuclear war is driven
by fear.”
The same is happening with the
mounting public awareness of climate
change: it is driven by fear – fear of
the loss of the consumerist way of life
and of our material possessions. It is
fear that is driving much of the envi-
ronmental movement. As I pointed out
to Bertrand Russell, “Peace is a way of
life – peace does not come from fear
of nuclear weapons.” In the same way
sustainability is also a way of life – it
is not something we do just to save
our possessions. We have to move away
from the mindset of fear. Our environ-
mentalism should be inspired by love
of life, love of communities, love of
people, love of the Earth and love of
Nature. The Buddha was an environ-
mentalist 2,600 years ago before there
was any global warming; he sat under

Snow gum,Waterfall Valley, Tasmania, from Wilderness, published by CEMEX, 2002, ISBN 9686397698
a tree seeking enlightenment and said,
“We must have love for the tree.” But
nowadays we don’t sit under the tree;
instead we think, “How can I use the
tree for my profit – how can I make
money out of it or how can I build my
house or make my furniture with it?”
For the Buddha, the tree was sacred:
it had intrinsic value; but for Western
civilisation it is just an object.
SPIRITUAL ECONOMY TEACHES us to
have no fear and to celebrate the Earth
– that is the reason we are environmen-
talists. We do not want to save the Earth
because of our fear of global warming
but because of our love for the Earth.
In a spiritual economy the relationship
between every living plant and creature
is part of a delicate balance; worms are
sacred, for without them to condition
the soil there would be no food – so
we have to respect worms. Once we
have this reverence for the Earth then
all our economic systems will naturally
be sustainable.
The endless talk about global warm-
ing is distracting us from the real issue.
The world’s approach to climate
change is all about treating the
symptoms. Everyone, especially
politicians and business leaders,
is jumping onto this bandwagon.
They have not learnt to love the
Earth; rather, they are consumed
by the idea that climate change
will provide them with new busi-
ness opportunities for economic
growth. They are enthralled by
the mantra “economic growth,
economic growth, economic
growth”. I prefer my mantra,
which is “Earth I love, Earth I
celebrate, Earth I enjoy.” And to
enjoy the gifts of the Earth we
must look after her, care for her
and preserve her as privileged
members of life on Earth.
Global warming or no global
warming, caring for the Earth is
our prime responsibility. Econom-
ics of course has its place, but it
must be kept in its place and not
be allowed to dominate. Ecos is the
Greek word for ‘home’, logos means
‘knowledge’, and nomos means
‘management’. If we don’t know
our planet home, how are we go-
ing to manage it? Therefore ecology
comes first. Once we realise the
subservient place of economics to
ecology then global warming will
go away. Global warming is caused
by the dominance of economics
and by globalisation. As Einstein
told us, we cannot solve a problem
with the same mindset that caused
it in the first place.
We need to aim for something
better than endless economic
growth – a growth which is
soulless and leads to ecological
destruction. And what happens
to the trillions of dollars that
economic growth has created?
We see it spent on war or the
weapons needed for war. Money
beyond a certain limit can be a
burden; it can bring unhappiness
and, worse, poverty and exploi-
tation. Money is not real wealth. The
Earth is the true source of our wealth.
The middle way is the ideal to aim for,
where there are no extremes of wealth
and poverty, because as long as there
are wealthy people there will be poor
people. If we truly want to make pover-
ty history, we also have to make wealth
history. A state of balance, equity and
equanimity is the spiritual economy.
Satish Kumar is Editor of Resurgence. His new
book is Spiritual Compass: Three Qualities of
Life, published by Green Books at £9.95.
Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007 33
 T H E
I
N THE RECENT history of anthro-
pogenic climate change, there has
thus far been a largely inverse rela-
tionship between political power
and action taken. Faced with unthinka-
ble calamity for all life, the international
response has been an unending string
of ineffective conferences, a panoply of
meek targets with weak enforcement, a
raft of business- and industry-friendly
market mechanisms, and a seemingly
eternal wait for binding international
agreements.
Political power is generally more
restricted the higher one goes, so lo-
cal initiatives commonly prevail where
there is good organisation; the Tran-
sition Towns initiative shows great
promise, for example. Most citizens
want exciting, innovative responses
at the local level. However, there are
some governments that buck the trend.
Although in the UK this may be some-
what hard to grasp, other countries
are not only good at spotting prob-
lems and finding bold, win-win-win
solutions – they also have the will to
manoeuvre them through parliament
and into law.
Germany in particular has demon-
strated such initiative in many areas,
including the most crucial: energy. It
has consistently supported renewable
energy and has made excellent gains
in increasing the share of it in the na-
tional energy mix, thereby reducing
inputs of fossil fuels and nuclear. It is in
fact committed to phasing out nuclear
energy, although this is being hotly de-
bated once more by those with vested
interests. Because Germany’s energy
demand has remained fairly flat, the
use of renewables has achieved a net
reduction in national CO2 emissions. It
has to be acknowledged that much of
the success in achieving these goals is
because of government power-sharing
with the Green Party.
Since 1990, German governments
have been developing and fine-tuning
legislation to facilitate the transition.
Their Renewable Energy Law of 2000
is probably the most effective and cost-
effective law yet devised to support the
deployment of renewable energy. It is
a feed-in tariff (FIT), which obliges
utilities to purchase electricity from
34 Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007
M O R A L E C O N O M Y
ENERGY • MIGUEL MENDONÇA
NATURAL
ECONOMY
Addressing climate change by working with Nature.
renewable energy producers. It costs be grasped by the public.
more to generate electricity from FITs do more than any other policy
some sources, so FITs scientifically to promote cheap building-integrated
calculate a tariff for each, thus ensur- renewables, and avoid costly third-par-
ing profitability. Finally, the duration is ty financing arrangements. Buildings
set, usually for 20 years. Thus, between can and should become net energy
all of these guarantees, investors know producers, especially if designed or
exactly what their return will be, and retrofitted with energy efficiency in
for how long. This lowers investment mind. We will soon have widespread
risk, and hence cost. ‘breeder plants’, where renewable-
Germany has set no limit to the energy-powered factories produce
amount of renewable energy that can renewable-energy products. Although
be fed into the grid, and indeed people this is an inevitable step, it is exciting
say that it is almost a national sport to to know that people are moving to-
see how little energy citizens can take wards it already.
from the utilities. Needless to say, this Today, around forty-five countries,
has not gone unnoticed by the con- states and provinces are using FITs to
ventional energy industry, which has help establish or develop their domes-
relentlessly attacked the law since first tic renewables market, and no wonder,
realising that it could have a significant when the statistics from Germany are
effect on its market share. The con- so impressive. Despite various periods
ventional industry advocates
a system similar to the UK’s
Renewables Obligation. This Germany has set no limit to the
uses a market-based model amount of renewable energy that can be
called a ‘quota’ system, which
sets an amount of generation fed into the grid, and indeed people say
to be achieved, and producers
receive ‘green certificates’ for
that it is almost a national sport to see
their energy, which can be sold how little energy citizens can take from
for extra income. Because the
future value of the certificates the utilities.
is unknown, as it is linked to
the future market price, the
uncertainty created attracts extra risk of slow economic growth and reces-
pricing in the financing of renewable sion since the introduction of the first
energy projects. This extra cost makes feed-in law at the dawn of the 1990s,
it a more expensive, complex system, Germany has enjoyed strong, sustained
which excludes all but the most deter- growth in the sector. It now employs
mined and credit-worthy investors. towards a quarter of a million people,
The effect is to produce a market compared to a few thousand in the UK.
dominated by large energy companies, Its annual turnover is around £14.5
which excludes independent power billion, while the UK’s is around £280
producers. Therefore, the democratisa- million. Renewable energy in Germany
tion and true decentralisation of energy saved 83 million tonnes of CO2 from
is thwarted, an effect which has still to being emitted in 2005, and in 2007
View of the hydro-electric power station Hohenstein, Ruhr Valley, Germany
around 12.5% of electricity consump-
tion comes from renewables.
Germany is now world leader for
installed capacity of solar photovolta-
ics, and is leading the way in other
solar technologies. Japan, Spain, the
USA and now China are also top man-
ufacturers in this field.
Spain has a very good FIT system
also, and is creating a massive indus-
try of its own. It joined with Germany
to create the international Feed-in Co-
operation, which hosts biannual
workshops to exchange information
and experience on FITs, including
technical, legislative, administrative,
political and other matters. They have
now been joined by Slovenia. In the
continued absence of an international
renewable energy agency, such part-
nerships are a necessity.
With so many good FIT systems
emerging, the industry is finally get-
ting the good run that its benefits
warrant, which include environmen-
tal protection, energy security and job
creation.
IN ADDITION, OTHER policies and
practices are promoting more sus-
tainable industrial practices, such as
‘industrial symbiosis’ approaches,
where the waste materials from one
industry become feedstocks for anoth-
er. Whole ‘eco-industrial parks’ have
been set up on this basis. This ‘bio-
mimicry’ approach, or copying from
Nature’s behaviour and systems, is one
of the most important for us to perfect.
Nature tends to avoid waste, conserve
energy and live within its means.
German waste management legisla-
tion is also excellent. Before Germany
took serious steps in this field, each
urban area had its own landfill site
– totalling around 50,000 across the
country. This was cut to below 2,000
by the millennium, and strict opera-
tional regulations were introduced. The
waste hierarchy approach of ‘Reduce,
Reuse, Recover’ successfully became
the operating concept in this area.
The waste management sector in
Germany now employs more than
250,000 people, including engineers,
refuse workers and civil servants. Col-
leges run waste management courses
and there is even special training for
professions in the waste disposal sec-
tor. Annual turnover in the sector
PHOTOGRAPH: S. ZIESE/STILL PICTURES
now exceeds €50 billion.
Domestic recycling rates in Germa-
ny are currently over 50%, while the
UK’s figures are closer to 22%. The UK
is still the biggest landfiller in Europe,
with 27 million tonnes annually going
into the ground – 7 million more than
in any other EU member state. This is
despite the introduction of a landfill
tax in 1996. Germany plans to send no
more waste to landfill by 2020. Every-
thing after that date will be recycled,
or incinerated for energy production.
Despite common issues around di-
oxins produced in incineration, it is
highly likely that solutions will be in
place for such issues.
The 1996 Closed Substance Cycle
and Waste Management Act is a major
step towards closed-loop recycling and
building a ‘circular economy’. Product
responsibility is one of the centrepiec-
es of the act, and is shown to create the
preconditions for waste avoidance. The
act promotes the development of prod-
ucts which are of multiple use, have a
long life and are repair-friendly as well
as capable of being recycled and dis-
posed of in the safest possible way.
Climate protection is well served by
Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007 35
 T H E
Photovoltaics installations, Shell Solar System, Bavaria, Germany
this proactive approach to waste man-
agement. Since the early 1990s, annual
greenhouse-gas emissions from waste
management have been reduced by 30
million tonnes of CO2 equivalent.
Air pollution is addressed in Ger-
many through several measures. Clean
and alternative fuels have been pro-
moted successfully and ground-level
ozone has been targeted through re-
ducing the precursor substances that
cause it. There is also a strong law gov-
erning emissions from power plants
and factories.
However, there are some things the
Germans do not do so well – yet. The
German car industry is leading the fight
against improved emission standards in
the EU, and there is still no speed limit
on all German motorways. When the
US imposed the 55mph speed limit in
1974, savings of 255,000 barrels of oil
per day were made.
Berlin is to introduce a system
which allows only vehicles of a low
emission class to enter the area of the
city surrounded by the subway, and
around a dozen more cities are ex-
pected to join the scheme. This entry
limitation will move up a class in a few
36 Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007
M O R A L E C O N O M Y
years, becoming more stringent and
taking more cars off the roads, and/or
forcing car manufacturers to rethink
their opposition to improved emission
standards. If they want to sell a wide
range of commuter vehicles for use
in the major cities, they will have to
improve their standards. This simple
mechanism gets around the political
impasse created when industry at-
When the US imposed the
55mph speed limit in 1974,
savings of 255,000 barrels of oil
per day were made.
tempts to block innovation.
On energy-efficiency measures,
the German goal is that by 2020 each
unit of gross domestic product (GDP)
will require half the energy that it con-
sumed in 1990. The new national plan
covers every sector, including transport,
housing and industry, and addresses
both demand and supply sides.
THE GERMAN WAY has been to inno-
PHOTOGRAPH: LUFTBILD BERTRAM/STILL PICTURES
vate in policy: to take leadership. The
results are clear in terms of the coun-
try’s economic development path and
the level of public awareness and sup-
port. But this path is still based on the
same economic growth imperatives
as everyone else’s. The environment
minister, Sigmar Gabriel, is clear in his
message that environmental protection
will not impinge upon the ‘aspirations’
of citizens. The drive is still towards the
consumerist model; growth of GDP is
critical.
Innovative policy and technologi-
cal solutions can only carry us so far,
yet wholesale systemic change is not
an option favoured by Germany or any
other country. We need to address the
full range of climate change factors at
all levels. The process of taking this vital
responsibility presents an opportunity
to make the transition to a safe, just,
sustainable world. Doing things irre-
sponsibly and unsustainably is simply
not an option for life on Earth.
Miguel Mendonça is a researcher, writer and
campaigner for the World Future Council. He is
the author of Feed-in Tariffs: Accelerating the
Deployment of Renewable Energy.


Dear Secretary of State,

MY FRIEND, WHO is in farming at the moment, recently
received a cheque for £3,000 from the Rural Payments Agency
for not rearing pigs. I would now like to join the “not rearing pigs”
business.
In your opinion, what is the best kind of farm not to rear pigs on,
and which is the best breed of pigs not to rear? I want to be sure I
approach this endeavour in keeping with all government policies, as
dictated by the EU under the Common Agricultural Policy.
I would prefer not to rear bacon pigs, but if this is not the type
you want not rearing, I will just as gladly not rear porkers. Are there any
advantages in not rearing rare breeds such as Saddlebacks or Gloucester Old Spots, or
are there too many people already not rearing these?
As I see it, the hardest part of this programme will be keeping an accurate record of how
many pigs I haven’t reared. Are there any Government or Local Authority courses on this?
My friend is very satisfied with this business. He has been rearing pigs for forty years or so,
and the most he ever made on them was £1,422 in 1968. That is, until this year – when he
received a cheque for not rearing any.
If I get £3,000 for not rearing fifty pigs, will I get £6,000 for not rearing 100?
I plan to operate on a small scale at first, holding myself down to about 4,000 pigs not
raised, which will mean about £240,000 for the first year. As I become more expert in not
rearing pigs, I plan to be more ambitious, perhaps increasing to, say, 40,000 pigs not reared
in my second year, for which I should expect about £2.4 million from your department.
Incidentally, I wonder if I would be eligible to receive tradable carbon credits
for all these pigs not producing harmful and polluting methane gases?
Another point: these pigs that I plan not to rear will not eat
2,000 tonnes of cereals. I understand that you also pay farmers
for not growing crops. Will I qualify for payments for not growing
cereals to not feed the pigs I don’t rear?
I am also considering the “not milking cows” business, so please
send any information you have on that too.
In view of the above you will realise that I will be totally unem-
ployed, and will therefore qualify for unemployment benefits.
I shall of course be voting for your party at the next general
election.

Emailed by an anonymous Resurgence reader

ILLUSTRATIONS: AXEL SCHEFFLER

Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007 37

 undercurrents
ENERGY
POORAN DESAI
Eco-towns and zero-carbon homes will work only
within the context of a low-carbon lifestyle.
T
HE UK GOVERNMENT NOW
does seem to be serious about
promoting environmentally
friendly homes – in particu-
lar zero-carbon homes. However, this
raises a number of questions. How
should we define a zero-carbon home?
Should we try to generate all our heat
and power from renewable energy on-
site? What policy measures should we
be supporting? And with space heat-
ing now only about 3% of the carbon
emissions of a person living in a new
home, all the evidence suggests we
should be thinking about low- and
zero-carbon lifestyles, not just zero-
carbon homes. When we take lifestyles
as our starting point, we are led to a
fundamentally more holistic, coher-
ent, people-centred and economically
rational approach.
As I write this article, the con-
struction industry is absorbing the
implications of two new documents
from the government department
Communities and Local Government
(CLG). The first is Building a Greener Future
which proposes that the UK achieve
zero carbon for all new homes by
2016 – meaning that, over a year, the
net carbon emission from all energy
use in the home (heating, hot water
and appliances) will be zero. The rate
of house building is such that by 2050
as many as a third of houses in exist-
ence in the UK will have been built
between now and then.
The second document is CLG’s Eco-
towns prospectus. The ambition of the
current Minister for Housing, Yvette
Cooper, is for new towns of at least
5,000 to 20,000 homes to be zero
carbon. Two eco-towns have been
identified already: Northstowe, north-
west of Cambridge, and Cranbrook,
in Devon. The government is prepared
to use the far-reaching powers of the
New Towns Act 1981 to ensure that
eco-towns can go ahead even against
local opposition.
38 Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007
LOWER C ARBON,
HIGHER QUALITY
The two documents from CLG build
on increasing government activity to
improve environmental standards in
our homes. Over the past five years the
government has promoted the Building
Research Establishment’s EcoHomes
system which this year has been re-
placed by the government’s own Code
for Sustainable Homes. Energy Per-
formance Certificates are becoming
mandatory as part of the Home In-
formation Pack on sales of all homes,
new and old. This sits in the context of
Treasury policy that, for a limited pe-
riod, sales of new zero-carbon homes
will be exempt from stamp duty.
Does this mean we can now leave
it all to government? Unfortunately
not. These initiatives are not yet part
of a holistic and coherent framework
to create a truly sustainable future, nor
do they address how different aspects
of our lives contribute to total green-
house-house gas emissions.
THE AVERAGE PERSON in the UK is
responsible for about twelve tonnes of
CO2 emissions; the majority is released
by burning fossil fuels in the UK, but
an increasing amount is embodied in
food, goods and services imported
from overseas. For a person living in a
home built to current building regula-
tions, heating now accounts for only
about 3% of carbon emissions, whereas
electrical appliances, hot water, waste
and personal transport account for 3%,
4%, 13% and 18% respectively.
If we consider other greenhouse
gases such as nitrous oxide and meth-
ane, and not just carbon dioxide, as
much as a third of our impact comes
from the production, processing and
distribution of our food.
Therefore, although it is worth
going beyond current building regula-
tions with the thermal performance of
our homes, the carbon savings will be
relatively small, and even smaller as our
winters become warmer. (More signif-
icant in terms of space heating is what
we do with our older housing stock,
where, for example, simple insulation
will save considerable carbon.)
We cannot think simply in terms
of building new eco-homes. It won’t
in itself save much carbon. Instead we
must build places where it is easy to
lead an eco-friendly lifestyle: places
where it is easy to walk and cycle;
places that are far less car dependent,
where it is easy to recycle and where
we have ready access to local, seasonal,
organic produce. All these lifestyle is-
sues must be integral if we are going to
make a real difference, and fortunately
it also means we can create places that
are more humane and offer a higher
quality of life.
There are other more mundane is-
sues. CLG, the Treasury and the Greater
London Authority, for example, are all
currently using different definitions of
zero carbon – so confusion currently
reigns. Preceding these organisations’
use of the term, BioRegional coined
zero carbon in the context of a ‘Z-
squared Zero Carbon Zero Waste
community’ concept. BioRegional
defined zero carbon as buildings run
on a combination of on-site and new
installed renewable capacity off-site,
using fossil fuels only for back-up.
The announcement in autumn
2006 of a stamp duty exemption on
zero-carbon homes was unexpected
but received a lot of attention with the
claim from the government that no
other country was doing this. There
may, however, be very good reasons
why no other country was doing this!
For example, will stamp duty need to
be paid if the renewable energy tech-
nology is installed but doesn’t work
or is not maintained? It is also an eco-
nomically regressive measure, in that
purchasers of ‘affordable’ homes will
not benefit, since no stamp duty is paid
on homes under £125,000, whereas
buyers of expensive homes will reap the
greatest benefit (a £15,000 saving on a
£500,000 home). Rumour has it that
the Treasury did not want many homes
to be stamp duty exempt, so as not to
affect government revenue streams.
A more coherent approach might
Computer graphic of ‘One Planet Living’ community due to start construction in Brighton shortly
have been to introduce measures to
promote energy efficiency and re-
newables in a way that would apply to
both new and existing housing. A co-
herent set of measures could include
removing VAT on energy efficiency and
renewable products whilst increasing
VAT on inefficient products and non-
renewables; requiring energy supply
companies to generate more from
renewables; and ensuring that home
owners who are generating renewable
energy can feed it into the grid at de-
cent prices.
The Treasury definition of zero car-
bon currently requires the home to
generate all heat and power from re-
newables on-site. Personally I am very
far from being convinced of its value as
a general policy – even though it retains
its place in green aspiration and ideol-
ogy. There is a role for on-site renewable
energy generation, particularly for heat-
ing and hot water (for example, using
solar thermal panels and wood-heating
systems). However, when it comes to
electricity generation there remain ma-
jor issues with initial cost, long-term
maintenance and operation.
COURTESY: CREST NICHOLSON BIOREGIONAL QUINTAIN
Photovoltaic panels generate
electricity reliably and with low main-
tenance, yet remain (and, for the
medium term, are likely to remain)
expensive for the amount of energy
they generate. There are as yet no tried
and tested small-scale biomass heat-
and-power plants.
Building-mounted wind tur-
bines may end up generating £60 of
electricity per year, but if you follow
recommended servicing with a yearly
call-out charge at an optimistic £100
per time, wide uptake is unlikely even
if capital cost is written off completely.
If we want wind energy, we probably
need to erect big turbines in windy
locations. Wind energy generated is
proportional to the square of the di-
ameter of the blades and the cube of
wind speed: a turbine with twice the
diameter in a location with twice
the average wind speed will generate
sixty-four times as much energy.
Even though we will lose some
energy in transmitting the electricity
through our high-voltage grid, pure
losses from transmission are only 7.5–
9%. (The main inefficiencies in our
energy supply arise from wasting the
by-product heat from electricity pro-
duction in conventional coal, oil, gas
and nuclear plants.)
IN A SUSTAINABLE future we will
see more local energy production
(so-called embedded generation),
but there will still be a fundamental
role for larger-scale power generation
which itself must be low-carbon.
A move to a future basically free
from dependence on fossil fuels will re-
quire us to live in zero-carbon homes.
We, and our government, must take a
considered and rational approach, rather
than an ideological one, to zero carbon,
which means supplying renewable en-
ergy through a balanced combination
of on-site and off-site renewables. We
must also recognise that zero-carbon
homes will have limited impact on our
emissions of greenhouse gases unless
we take a holistic approach based on
our lifestyles as a whole.
Pooran Desai is Sustainability Director of eco-
property development company BioRegional
Quintain Ltd. www.bioregional-quintain.com
Resurgence No. 244 September/October 2007 39
 undercurrents
GLOBO-PETRO-COPS
US army tanks at the Germersheim Army Depot in Germany, a clearing house for surplus and obsolete military equipment
A Oil is not only causing global warming; it is also the
S ECOLOGICAL AND so-
cial movements gear-up for
the ‘great transition’ de-
manded by the new age of
climate change, there is a tendency
to ignore the geo-political realities of
rising militarism in response to peak
oil conditions, as the world’s indus-
trial powers struggle for control over
increasingly scarce and expensive pe-
troleum resources on the planet.
Globally speaking, the centre of
this new wave of militarisation is the
United States, symbolised, of course,
by the invasion of Iraq to gain control
of that country’s lucrative oil reserves.
As the world’s largest consumer of pe-
troleum, the US now imports 58% of
its oil needs. Recent doctrines of na-
tional security have made it quite clear
that protecting US interests means se-
curing control over oil and other vital
resources around the world. During
George W. Bush’s presidency, US mili-
tary spending has skyrocketed 75% to
the point where, adding the Iraq war
plus new weapons technology expen-
ditures, the annual total is nearing the
one trillion dollar mark. Meanwhile,
the Pentagon itself has become the
world’s number one institutional oil
consumer, accounting for 85% of all
US federal government consumption.
As a result, the US has become the
40 Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007
A R M S R AC E • TO N Y C L A R K E
cause of global wars. We need to free ourselves from
oil dependency to save the Earth and save ourselves.
leading globo-petro-cop. Currently,
Washington has 725 military bases
in 132 countries. Through this kind
of military reach, the US is able to se-
cure control over global oil supplies,
determining the routing of oil export
pipelines and exercising undisputed
control over the sea lanes through
which the world’s oil is shipped. By
establishing its military bases in stra-
tegic locations, the US is also able to
prop up unsavoury client regimes
with armaments and credits in order
to gain access to oil supply chains,
while marginalising those countries
that stand in the way. At the same time,
the US further solidifies its control
by making strategic investments in
oil-rich countries and regions on a geo-
political basis.
But now the US is being challenged
by China and, to some extent, India
and Russia, in terms of controlling glo-
bal oil supply lines. To serve its rapidly
growing industrial production needs,
China now has to import 45% of its
oil from abroad, while India imports
PHOTOGRAPH: LEIF SKOOGFORS/CORBIS
70%. In recent years, China has signed
oil contracts with countries in five key
regions: in the Middle East (Iran and
Syria); in Eurasia (Kazakhstan and Az-
erbaijan); in Asia-Pacific (Australia,
Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Burma
and Bangladesh); in Africa (Sudan, An-
gola, Nigeria and Tunisia); and in Latin
America (Venezuela, Cuba, Peru, Ecua-
dor and Brazil). Moreover, China and
India have military and political ac-
cords with Iran, while China has allied
with Venezuela; both Iran and Asia are
in conflict with the US.
In effect, the global stage is being
set for a new wave of political strug-
gles and potential wars over the control
of oil. At present, there are at least five
major theatres of geo-political con-
frontation which could, in effect, erupt
into regional if not global oil wars:
Persian Gulf Region: Although Saudi Ara-
bia remains the leading oil supplier in
the Persian Gulf, the bonus prize is Iraq
which has abundant sources of high-
quality oil that is cheap to produce.
Indeed, only seventeen of the eighty po-
tential oilfields of Iraq have been tapped
for production to date. When the US
and the UK seized control of Iraq’s oil-
fields through the 2003 invasion, oil
contracts between China and Iraq were
suddenly cancelled, thereby heighten-
ing tensions among these powers in
the region. Iraq’s still-to-be-ratified oil
law calls for the granting of fifteen-to-
twenty-year concessions to the big US
and UK petroleum corporations, with
up to 75% repatriation of profits to the
parent companies, along with nearly a
doubling of production. Meanwhile,
both China and India have deepened
their military co-operation with Iran in
the form of joint exercises, arms deals
and long-term oil supply contracts.
Caspian Sea Region: The rich oil and gas
reserves of Central Asia have become a
major hotspot as the US, Russia and
China scramble to gain control of the
region’s resources and pipeline routes.
Backing different pipeline routes, each
of these three big powers is vying for
support from regional governments
and pitting one against the other. The
US, for example, is promoting the
Baku-Tibilisi-Ceyhan pipeline which
is designed to bypass both Russia and
Iran in order to transport oil out of
Azerbaijan to the Turkish Mediterra-
nean port of Ceyhan which, in turn,
is protected by a large US military base
located in Incirlik. In this way, the US
intends to encircle both Russia and
China with regional pro-American re-
gimes in this part of Eurasia.
South China Sea: At the same time,
the US and China have been compet-
ing for control over vital oil supply
routes in the Asia-Pacific region. On
the one hand, the US has established
an alliance involving Japan, South
Only seventeen of the eighty potential
oilfields of Iraq have been tapped to date.
Korea, Australia and possibly India.
In 2006, the US Navy carried out its
most extensive military operations in
the region since the Vietnam War. On
the other hand, China has countered
with what has been called its ‘string
of pearls’ strategy which involves a
series of alliances with countries that
have harbours along the sea route of
its oil shipments, including Bangla-
desh, Burma, Thailand and Cambodia.
The Gwadar port in Pakistan, for ex-
ample, provides China with a strategic
transit terminal for its oil imports but realities of peak oil.
also allows China to monitor US naval
operations in the region.
West-Central Africa: Similarly, coun- Canada. www.polarisinstitute.org
tries like Nigeria, Sudan and Chad have
become battlegrounds for the control
of oil by global powers. In order to
protect its oil interests in Nigeria and
Chad, the US has established a military
base in Djibouti.The Djibouti base itself
is known to be part of the Trans-Sahara
Counter-Terrorism Initiative, involving
troops from a variety of neighbouring
African countries including Algeria,
Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Morocco.
In the same region, Sudan has become
China’s largest oil supplier, while Chi-
na, in turn, is now Sudan’s number
one arms supplier.
Upper Latin America: Although the US
has long considered Latin America to
be in its political orbit, China has been
making significant inroads. Today, the
US maintains its strategic interests in
all of the continent’s oil-producing
countries, notably Venezuela, Colum-
bia, Bolivia and Ecuador. To protect
its oil and related interests, Washing-
ton has well-established military bases
in countries like Columbia, Paraguay
and Ecuador which are strategic loca-
tions for monitoring what’s going on
in the rest of the continent. While Ven-
ezuela continues to supply oil to the US,
growing tensions between Caracas and
Washington have tempered relations in
the region. Venezuela has also courted
Beijing by inviting Chinese oil com-
panies to explore its oilfields and by
enabling the construction of a pipeline
for oil shipments via Columbia that al-
lows China to bypass the Panama Canal.
IN THE GLOBAL struggle for control
over depleting oil reserves, there-
fore, we can expect to see increasing
conflict of interest between the US
and China. The great irony is that the
economies of both the US
and China are inextricably
dependent on one anoth-
er. As an export-oriented
economy, China depends a
great deal on the huge US market to
sell its mass-produced goods while the
US has become highly dependent on
borrowing dollars from China to offset
its massive trade imbalance. Whether
this economic interdependency will
be sufficient to prevent the outbreak
of oil wars between these two pow-
ers remains to be seen. In any case, the
‘great transition’ needed for the planet
to survive the challenges of climate
change will be affected by what these
globo-petro-cops do in response to the
Tony Clarke is President of the Polaris Institute,
WEAPONS
ACADEMY
DAVID KRIEGER
ACCORDING TO Professor Guillermo
Lemarchand from the University of
Buenos Aires in Argentina, most scientific
efforts are driven by large military
research and development budgets.
There is a close relationship between
research and development funding and
the exponential growth of the lethality
of weaponry.
During the 20th century the le-
thality (maximum number of casualties
per hour that a weapon can generate)
grew from about 100 at the beginning
of the century to about 6 billion at the
end of the century. The lethality growth
of weapons in the 20th century was
60 million, and now encompasses the
population of the planet.
Scientists may not be concerned
with or even know the reasons why
their basic research is being funded by
military sources. The driving of academic
research and development by military
budgets is becoming pervasive at
universities throughout the world.
The University of California is an ex-
ample of a university providing research
and development for military purposes.
It provides management and oversight
to the US nuclear weapons laboratories.
Its funds for doing this come through
the US Department of Energy, but the
work of the nuclear weapons labora-
tories is largely secret and military in
nature. Currently the labs are working
on the Reliable Replacement Warhead,
a new hydrogen bomb that the Bush
administration hopes will replace every
nuclear weapon in the US.
The management of the nuclear
weapons laboratories by the University
of California is just the tip of the iceberg
of military involvement with universities
around the world. According to Le-
marchand, the US military assigns officers
to practically all areas of the world to
seek out scientific researchers who
may be helpful in furthering US military
purposes. Too often military funding is
the only source of funding available for
academic researchers.
David Krieger is President of the
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and a
leader in the global effort to abolish
nuclear weapons. www.wagingpeace.org
Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007 41
 the arts

Poetry Guest Editor: Fiona Sampson www.poetryreview.org.uk

POETRY REVIEW AND THE NEW ECO-POETS

The poetic mainstream is changing. Alongside anecdote

and humour, celebrations of sexuality and of urban
cool, a new sensibility is revealing itself. Ecological
awareness demands a profound attention, which sinks
past surface appearances towards an understanding of the
world around us in something like its own terms. What fills KIN
the place left by superficial appearance is often meaning,
insight. As it approaches its centenary, Poetry Review is using I was just coming up
its position to encourage this quiet revolution. Here, three from the meadow,
influential eco-poets share new, unpublished work. They
could easily be joined by, for example, the Australian eco- crossing a line
activist John Kinsella; Welsh editor Robert Minhinnick; or from grass-light to summer rain,
Robin Robertson, in whose poems Scottish landscapes are
informed by traditional understandings. a warmth in my legs and arms
like the pull of the dead

going before me, with

sickles and baling twine,
A DAWN TRAIL
or stooping in under a tree
Each day we come earlier, searching for that for a moment’s shelter.
hush
no freeway hum will shatter, These days they come
more often, touched with the black
when the morning wind blows all sound
into the next creek of a motionless elsewhere:
snaking through weeds
and even our footsteps are muffled
by a soundproof carpet. or spotting the windows like rain,
they are never the dead
Deeper into the silence we notice the flutter
of dropping needles I remember, those faint Super 8s
of women in gabardines and coloured gloves
soft as feathers from the sky, and a pause
in which we sense a presence, turning to ghosts in the snow-light
for one more parting,
where we begin to see ourselves as part of the
forest, yet something is always present
the thought emerging on days like this

like a white doe who keeps a shy distance, and sometimes I think
at home in the heart of the grove, I know them: blood-kin, resonant and bright,

before language, before the human tongue walking in pairs, or alone,

took root. from grass-light to rain.

Pascale Petit John Burnside

latest book: The Huntress (Seren, 2005, £7.99) latest book: Gift Songs (Cape, 2007, £9.00)

42 Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007

 ILLUSTRATION: TRUDA LANE

THE FLOOD

A night of rain, and then
a day of rain, hanging in rails
over the blackened hills;
clouds like anvils,
black at the centre, purple-edged.
The downpour drills
a mile of cliffs; it blots out sails;
it batters thresholds;
it clambers over sills;
it takes the high ground in squalls;
it swamps the furnaces
of landmills and seamills.
Already it beats underground.
Already it seems to shrill
in the yard-pump and the well.
The world will be waterfalls
till Doomsday breaks. Listen –
the sound of the rain is endless bells.

the sodden upland and spills
into the bowl of the valley.
A sudden rush of rainfall swills
the foreshore and fills
the hoop of the sky so that it mells
with the sea. It cancels
If this is the end of the world,
it will rain until
the world is purged, and still
rain so that nothing remains
but the nub of field and fell
and water does whatever it will.
From The Hoop of the World, an opera-libretto
on the subject of global warming.
David Harsent
latest book: Selected Poems 1969–2005
(Faber, 2007, £11.99)

Poet and editor Fiona Sampson’s new books, Common Prayer (poetry, Carcanet, 2007, £9.95: www.carcanet.co.uk) and On Listening
(essays, Salt, 2007, £14.95: www.saltpublishing.com), reflect her interests in ecology and the meaningful landscape.

Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007 43

 TT H
H EE AA RR TT SS

Seed, sculpture by Peter Randall-Page in The Core at the Eden Project, Cornwall PHOTOGRAPH: BEN FOSTER

44 Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007

 PATTERN AND METAPHOR
S C U L P T U R E • L O R N A H O WA RT H
Seed, Peter Randall-Page’s iconic new sculpture at the Eden Project in Cornwall,
is the culmination of his life’s work. It embodies his interest in pattern,
collaborative working and the juxtaposition between inner and outer form.
P
ETER RANDALL-PAGE lives and
works in an idyllic, unspoilt
valley on the edge of Dartmoor
in Devon. He is immersed in
and inspired by Nature, to the extent
that all of his work is based on the
study of natural forms and patterns.
From a very early age he was interested
in the “amazing perfection of the way
things grow and the patterns in Nature.
In seemingly disparate contexts you’ll
find the same spiral forms, for example
in the way water moves, in snail shells
and in galaxies.” As time has gone on
Peter has become more and more in-
terested in the underlying principles
that determine the incredible variety
of natural form.
His latest sculpture, Seed, is based
on a particularly interesting geomet-
ric principle that underpins botany,
and plant growth, and Nature’s ef-
ficient way of ‘packing’ form. The
most obvious place you’ll see this
spiral phyllotaxis pattern is in the ar-
rangement of seeds in the head of a
sunflower. Those same numerical pat-
terns also exist in the arrangement of
pine cones, fir cones, daisies and the
leaves of plants. “As well as being visu-
ally interesting patterns, they are also
mathematically significant; they relate
to the golden proportion and the Fi-
bonacci sequence in ways that one
would never expect. When you start
examining and studying these princi-
ples, it’s almost as if there’s a ‘pattern
book’ of Nature.”
Peter’s appreciation of the prin-
ciples of mathematics and geometry
is brought to life through his sculp-
tures. Looking at them, one sees the
sheer beauty in mathematics. His un-
derstanding has come from direct
observation of the natural world –
looking at things and seeing how they
fit together. But it’s not just a question
of the objective observation of Nature:
it’s actually about how the things we
see in Nature impact on our subjec-
tive minds. He believes we are built
for pattern recognition, we love to find
pattern and we get great pleasure from
pattern. “People think of pattern as a
superficial thing, a kind of add-on, like
a pattern overlaid on something else.
But pattern and decoration are two
different things and pattern isn’t deco-
ration. Pattern is incredibly profound
and everything we see around us con-
sists of various patterns.”
Peter is also very interested in volu-
metric sculpture and the relationship
between what you see on the outside
and what that implies about the in-
terior. “I’m not trying to kid anyone
that it’s anything other than stone. I’m
simply inviting the viewer to suspend
their disbelief, to allow their imagina-
tion to go beyond the surface and to be
drawn into this dark mass of volume
inside, to imply internal dynamics that
we know aren’t really happening. In
that sense it’s a metaphor. Metaphor is
absolutely critical for me in art. I think
all art relies on the idea of metaphor.
If you lose that and art becomes too
literal, you lose something essential.
Art is metaphor; it is the truthful lie.
We know it’s not true but it can inform
one about truth.”
SEED IS PETER’S latest and perhaps
most celebrated sculpture. Hewn out
of a single piece of Cornish granite, its
sheer mass and scale single it out as a
new monolith for our time. Members
of the Eden Project team approached
him initially because they were interest-
ed in his work with organic, botanical
forms and they wanted a new, iconic
sculpture for the project. They had in
mind a free-standing piece somewhere
on the site, which was quite a difficult
proposition given that the geodesic
biomes themselves are so iconic and
so sculptural. “I played around with
a few ideas, none of which I felt very
comfortable about because of the scale
of the biomes. Then, they decided to
build a new education building and
– in a quite unusual move on their part
– asked me if I would work with the
architect Jolyon Brewis on the whole
concept and design of the building,
including art installations. There is lots
of talk about collaborations between art
and architecture, but in my experience
there is very seldom a real collabora-
tion. But, in this case, there was great
chemistry between us right from the
beginning and I was involved abso-
lutely at the very first stage. The only
brief from Eden was that they wanted a
building which was like a tree – a pretty
unusual brief for an architect to get!
“The challenge was to make a con-
temporary building where we actually
used plant imagery and form. I started
to think about the spiral phyllotaxis
pattern found in plant growth, and
wondered whether that could possibly
form the basis of the roof structure.
We gave the idea to the engineers and
they said it wouldn’t work, but when
we looked at what they’d been design-
ing, they hadn’t been using the kind
of geometry that is genuinely found
in Nature. They’d used a kind of ge-
ometry that was much more regular
– so there were the same number of
spiral elements and the same curvature
in each direction and actually that isn’t
what is found in Nature. The whole
thing with the spiral phyllotaxis pat-
tern, the Fibonacci numbers and the
golden proportion is much more com-
plex than that and it’s not something
that engineers usually come across.
“So we went back and spent some
time with the engineers and explained
this to them, and they went away and
did some more number-crunching
and came back about a week later, very
excited, and said, ‘This is the most
brilliant structural principle.’ Which
actually isn’t that surprising in a sense
because it’s to do with the economi-
cal packing structure preferred by
Nature!”
One of the most remarkable things
about this whole project for Peter was
actually researching these principles
Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007 45
 T H E
A split boulder with carved surfaces set on the lake shore marking one hundred years of the National Trust,
sculpture by Peter Randall-Page
in his own private practice for years,
and then finding that that they could
be transferred to a real building. The
nature of the geometry of this build-
ing means that it has a central ‘core’,
or hub, that the whole roof emanates
from. Indeed, the building eventu-
ally became know as The Core. For a
long time Peter had been interested in
the idea of making a sculpture within
a specially designed chamber. A lot
of the work he’s done in the past has
been not only to do with making an
object but also making a space for the
object. “I’ve done quite a lot of things
in niches where objects are contained
within a specific space. I’d done some
drawings of bell-shaped chambers, a
bit like bottle-kilns, which would have
been built around a very large carved
stone. A viewer would enter this space
and there would be natural light from
above which would bring out the re-
lief carving on the stone but would be
contained within a very limited space
with this very large volume of stone.
I showed these drawings to Jolyon
and we started to think of the central
space in The Core as being a chamber
specifically designed to house a large
symbolic seed sculpture – almost like a
seed within a pod.
“There is something powerful
about having a big mass confined in
a space. That was one of the things I
was really excited about, like the Ma-
gritte painting The Listening Room, where
an apple completely fills a room. I re-
member having those feelings when I
was a child, lying in bed with my eyes
closed going to sleep at night, feeling
that my body was filling the whole
room. Very much an Alice in Won-
46 Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007
A R T S
PHOTOGRAPH: BRITAINONVIEW/VAL CORBETT
derland-type experience: that slightly
surreal, very visceral, solar-plexus ex-
perience of being within a contained
space with something of enormous
mass. It wouldn’t be the same if it was
a hollow object, or made from more
than one piece of stone.”
BEING A SCULPTOR is quite a solitary
experience, and for a long time Peter
worked pretty much on his own. But
the inspiring thing that’s happened in
the past decade or so has been Peter’s
collaboration with other people – mu-
sicians, poets, writers and, ultimately,
architects and engineers.
Peter’s interest in stone goes much
deeper. He’s concerned with how the
experience of Nature and the world
impacts subjectively on us; on what
makes human beings tick and how we
feel things. Carving in stone is a way
he deals with those subjective expe-
riences. For instance, a lot of people
find it easy to think when they go for a
walk, or when the body is busy with a
physical activity. Stone-carving frees his
mind to think. “When you’re working
physically and you’re hammering, for
example, a bit of your consciousness
is busy with this very repetitive physi-
cal activity. Then, in a strange way you
can make decisions and be aware and
alert enough to follow your instinct – a
sensitivity that leads to something else.
Whilst carving, drawing and model-
ling I find I am constantly reacting
and appraising, reacting and apprais-
ing. This becomes a kind of dialogue
which is quite un-selfconscious. Draw-
ing and carving, for me, somehow
fuses thought and action in the work-
ing process.
“I know for a fact that an awful lot
of people think that it’s a very bizarre
thing to carve stone in the 21st cen-
tury, when there are so many amazing
technologies and ways of working. I do
use that technology as well. But work-
ing with stone keeps me in touch with
Earth and a state of mind that enables
me to find form, which I wouldn’t be
able to do by just sitting down and try-
ing to come up with an idea. Because
carving is a visual and tactile media
you can’t dream it up in words or
thought: you actually have to do it. It’s
not a matter of having an experience
in your life and then thinking, ‘Oh, I’ll
make a sculpture about that.’ It doesn’t
work like that. It’s getting yourself in
the right headspace and frame of mind
so you can actually allow things that
you have experienced to float up to the
surface of your consciousness.”
PETER RANDALL-PAGE believes that
art should be part of everyday life and
not just confined to a gallery. “For me,
the experience of walking in Europe
in the mountains and finding little
things that people have made like little
wayside shrines or little gods of place
is a very positive experience. There is
something about that reciprocal rela-
tionship between place and humanity
that is incredibly optimistic. It gives a
sense that it is possible for human be-
ings to have a sympathetic relationship
with our environment and one that
celebrates it.
“These are objects that people have
taken trouble to make and that aren’t
necessarily functional. They’re to do
with people’s feelings about their
place and their role in that place. Obvi-
ously Seed is different; it isn’t a wayside
shrine, but a much larger object within
a building. But it has that same sort of
impact. I’d hate there to be any signs
or anything interpretive within the
Seed chamber. The world is full of in-
terpretation boards and signage these
days and I think it’s really, really im-
portant to come across things that are
slightly enigmatic and that don’t have a
great big explanation about who made
them and what it means and when it
was done and what it’s made of. That
makes for a much more intimate and
personal encounter.”
Peter Randall-Page’s website is at
www.peterrandall-page.com
With thanks to Jo Oland for help with this
article.
Lorna Howarth is Co-editor of Resurgence.
 C R A F T • S A N DY B R O W N
MARBLING
A fluid, unpredictable process.
E
VERY SO OFTEN someone says to me that I should
write a book about my work and I must admit that
apart from the challenge of sorting out my life
and times, one of the attractions is that I would
love to design some marbled end-papers for it.
There is the whole culture of marbled end-papers in
books; Galileo’s books had marbled end-papers. Marbled
paper itself goes back nearly a thousand years, and is
thought to have originated in Japan, where one family
has been continuously marbling paper for fifty-five gen-
erations. It can be done with clay too; there are several
potters worldwide who make their life’s work marbling
clay.
Ancient diaries of my childhood had simple endpapers
with lines which look like those on medieval slipware
platters; looking at one now it strikes me that one of the
main attractions is the fluidity of the patterns. The col-
ours blend and merge yet still remain separate, swirling
and whirling and circling. It draws you into its pool; you
could disappear into another universe.
I have often wondered how it is done; and now that I
know, I can let you into the secret. You fill a sink with wa-
ter, and drop paint into it so that globules of colour float
on the top. If you wish you can take a feather or a thin
needle or a multi-toothed comb and gently swirl it about
the surface so that the colours fold into each other. That’s
it, really; when you have a pattern you like you gently lay
some paper down on top and it picks the colours up. You
can do only one: it is a monoprint.
The whole process was a secret for over a thousand
years and was in danger of dying out until an English-
man in the 1890s wrote a book about it, which made the
process more widely known and thus encouraged more
people to make marbled papers.
Now that abstract painting is in vogue, suddenly old
marbled papers look modern. There are examples in the
British Museum from two and three hundred years ago
which anticipated our understanding of the formal devel-
opment of an abstract visual language; there is the sense
of balance of a mass of colour against drips; of the rhythm
of lines; of the shape of colours and how they relate to
each other. It really is an inherent means of expression
which humans have.
There are today many practitioners of paper mar-
bling including one artist who throws black sumi ink
into a river and then lays huge sheets of paper on top
of it to pick up the moving patterns. Another is Grizel
Luttman-Johnson who did the colours in the image on
this page; she is a floating-water artist who says she works
“with blobs”; she drops oil and watercolours into water
and loves watching the reactions. Sometimes paints re-
act against each other and split into many tiny droplets;
Marbling by Grizel Luttman-Johnson
one colour can repel or attract another. She spends hours
playing in this way and gently laying the paper on top of
the coloured water to pick up the patterns. She usually
discards the first three-quarters in each session; it takes
time to fully connect with the possibilities and under-
stand the reactions and so it is only near the end that she
gets into her stride and is happy with the marbled papers
produced.
And now she says she sees marbled patterns in every-
thing: while she is cooking, it’s there in the way butter
and oil mix; it is in the bark of trees, in stone walls and
in the beautiful mother-of-pearl shells she uses to make
the buttons for her books. Her books are exquisite. They
have marbled paper covers, handmade paper pages, and
mother-of-pearl buttons, and are bound with plaited red
thread.
POTTERS HAVE ALWAYS loved the way that you can play
with the colours of different clays. Dorothy Feibleman is
especially known for her soft folded forms in which she
prepares several layers of coloured clays: laminating, re-
ally. Then, by cutting and slicing to reveal the coloured
layers, she uses those slices to build up gentle simple
dishes which have deep rhythmic folds in them.
Feibleman has developed some striking colours in her
clay; she has spent years experimenting adding different
materials to various clays to see what happens. The thing
potters love is that only natural materials that occur in the
ground can be used to make clays and glazes: all modern
technology and plastics and chemicals are no use. It is only
naturally occuring oxides, minerals, rocks and stones that
will withstand the heat of the fire. So you have to connect
with the Earth and sometimes have to go out foraging and
digging, looking for curiously coloured dust.
In Japanese there is a word for folding marbled clays:
neri-komi, which is what Feibleman does. Potters add co-
balt oxide to a white clay to give a grey-blue colour, iron
oxide makes a rich rusty brown, and copper rust can give
a deep, rich green. They build up laminated layers of these
coloured clays; the layers can then be folded over onto
each other and sliced like bread to show the colours in-
side. The coloured slices can then be set into a mould to
form the vessel. The characteristic of this way of making
pots is that the colour of course is there on the inside and
the outside; the colour is the pot. No glaze is needed; the
glaze and body are one. The inside is the outside.
Grizel Luttman-Johnson can be contacted on 01237
441761; Dorothy Feibleman’s work can be seen at
www.mobilia-gallery.com
Sandy Brown is a ceramicist who lives in North Devon.
PHOTOGRAPH: SANDY BROWN
Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007 47

S L O W T R AV E L • B A R B A R A H A D D R I L L
JOURNEYING AFAR
It is possible to travel from Europe to Australia without flying – an adventure that
values the journey as much as the destination.
I T WAS SATURDAY 9th September
2006 and after only three hours’
sleep I awoke to see the early morn-
ing sun rising over the lake through
salmon-pink skies. The light was clear
and the water still and calm. I noticed
a few fishing boats as silhouettes on
the canvas and began to wonder what
sort of life it was to be an artisan fish-
erman here in the heart of Siberia on
the world’s deepest lake, Baikal. I was
beginning to feel quite hungry as my
supply of food bought in Moscow was
dwindling, so I hoped to buy some
fish from the lake.
Soon enough we were stopping at
48 Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007
R E G U L A R S
another station. We weren’t allowed
off the train but could buy from sellers
through the window. Everyone enjoyed
the spectacle of three inept and half-
asleep Europeans trying to buy from
three babushkas all shouting together
in Russian and waving their strings of
smoked fish around. The fish tasted de-
licious, if a bit salty. We had our fill and
I decided to take the rest of the fish to
offer to some of my new friends two
carriages down.
Here there was a buzzing atmos-
phere too, as everyone was busily
snapping photos and talking about the
lake. I shared the fish, first with a beau-
ILLUSTRATION: AXEL SCHEFFLER
tiful man who was partially sighted.
He had wanted to travel on the icon-
ic Trans-Siberian railway all his life
and was finally, in old age, managing
to achieve his dream with the aid of
a nurse. He was so happy to be alive
and was having a fantastic time even
though he was missing out on some
of the views.
I also shared my fish with Michal
from Poland and Joel from France,
who were travelling together. Michal
had also been saving for this adventure
for a long time and seemed to share
something of my philosophy on life.
We discussed our feelings about the
journey and he commented, “I like
the space: it’s so empty”. I smiled to
myself because all around me people
were happy and I was happy – really
and truly happy. There is something
special about having time to talk to
people and share life stories. I believe
coming together to share food like this
is important, too.
My journey was only eight days old
and I had come so far. My initial nerves
had gone now. Somehow I had made
it half-way across Europe on a coach
to Moscow and now I had travelled
across a lot of Russia and was heading
towards Mongolia. Over 2,000 miles
covered already, but 8,000 to go. This
trip that was so much about the desti-
nation was increasingly becoming just
as much about the journey.
A YEAR AND a half ago my friend Helen
asked me to be one of her bridesmaids.
Helen had been an important part of
my life when we lived and shared four
years at university in Leeds.
Since then we had both gone out
into the world and found our separate
paths. I had moved to Wales and had
been living remotely and simply in a
small caravan on a farm. I was working
at the Centre for Alternative Technol-
ogy, trying to grow vegetables and take
time to spend with friends playing mu-
sic and exploring the great outdoors.
Helen had travelled abroad and met
an Australian named Steve. Their lives
were now entwined and they were
getting married at their new home in
Brisbane. This was where my adventure
began. I was well aware of the terrible
impact aeroplanes have on the envi-
ronment. By taking a plane to Australia
I would be contradicting all my efforts
to reduce my carbon footprint and live
in harmony with Nature.
I worked out the carbon emissions
for a return flight to Brisbane and
compared it to an equivalent journey
made over land and sea. The difference
was massive. All legs of the slow jour-
ney produced much less carbon.
The hard part was to find the trans-
port to take me on this epic adventure.
Slowly I pieced it together and became
increasingly excited about my plan. I
had seven weeks instead of a twenty-
four hour flight. Instead of landing
straight down in Australia, I was going
to travel through fifteen countries and
use buses, trains and boats.
AT 9PM ON Sunday 17th September
I was travelling on a different train,
through Vietnam. We had left Hanoi
station late the previous night and en-
joyed another relaxing night asleep, contact with the world outside the ves-
rocking to the lull of the train. I spent sel. I felt slightly bewildered and very
the day watching the magnificently excited. I jumped as the phone rang,
stunning Vietnamese countryside but I grabbed it on the first ring and
pass by. Lush mountainsides dropped heard the familiar and friendly voice
down to small idyllic bays lipped by of one of my new officer friends. In
turquoise seas. There were only a few his deep Russian accent he told me we
other foreigners on the train: a Scottish were close to land. I leapt out of bed.
man who had been studying in Singa- The curtain was so thick that it was
pore but didn’t really seem to want to still pitch black in the room. I slowly
chat, and two Koreans who were very opened the curtain, and what a sight
smiley but spoke little English. met my eyes! It was the most beautiful
We had been provided with two sunrise I have ever seen. The horizon
meals courtesy of the train operator. was so red, as the sun was starting
The food was tasty enough and it gave to push up over the edge of this vast
our cabin a chance to get to know each continent. I was here: I had made it;
other. The three men in my cabin were I could see land, and it was Australia.
all well-dressed businessmen who were After forty days my journey was nearly
fascinated that I was travelling alone. I over and I had succeeded in the chal-
suppose our cultures were very differ- lenge where many thought I would
ent, and maybe I was naive but I hadn’t fail. I had travelled from my home in
felt scared and I had been safe on the Wales to Australia without using an
journey so far. Of course I had been aeroplane.
sensible about what I wore and where
I went, but overall my philosophy was THE WEDDING WAS a beautiful day: a
to approach everyone and everything simple ceremony on the beach. There
positively and openly. So far I
had been rewarded with a lot
of kindness, genuine friend- All legs of the slow journey produced
ship and support.
The evening slowly pro-
much less carbon when compared to the
gressed. My three new friends equivalent plane journey.
kept hopping out at stations
to buy more delicacies: grape-
fruit-like fruit which we ate dipped in was a lot of love and smiling. I was glad
salt. Finally I made my way to the top to have made the trip and to have stuck
bunk which was my bed and caught a to my ideals against many odds. This
few hours’ sleep while the party car- journey has changed my life in many
ried on. ways. Ironically it has actually made
me more interested in travelling as I
AT 4.30AM ON Tuesday 10th October know now it is possible to do it whilst
I was lying in bed but could not sleep. limiting my environmental impact and
I will remember this moment forever. widening my view of the world.
It is one that brings a smile to my face There was always the worry
and a tear to my eye. throughout the journey that I wouldn’t
I was wondering how I would have make it; that something would go
felt if I had been here 40,000 years wrong and I would have to make the
ago, when humans first discovered the awful decision and either take a plane
dry and dusty continent now known as or miss the big day. It wasn’t until I saw
Australia, and settled it as home. What Australia and landed on her soil that I
would people have travelled on? A raft knew this journey was possible.
made of timber and coconut leaves? I have seen a lot that has made me
Maybe a canoe hollowed from tree afraid for the future of the planet and I
bark? How did they steer? Did they am even more determined to play my
have paddles? Did they know where part in mitigating climate change and
they were going? protecting the beautiful Earth which I
Things were very different for me. have had the privilege to see so much
I was travelling on a huge cargo ship, of.
the MV Theodor Storm. We were carrying
18,559 tonnes of containers and had For more details about the journey
nine officers and sixteen crew plus lit- or to contact Barbara visit www.
tle old me. I had a smart cabin with a babs2brisbane.blogspot.com
double bed, an en suite bathroom, and
a large desk to sit at and ponder. Barbara Haddrill currently lives and works in
On this early morning, I hadn’t Machynlleth and is writing a book about her
seen land for six days and I had had no travels.
Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007 49

I T SEEMS LIKE a good idea to run
our cars and other vehicles on ‘bio-
fuels’– that is, fuels derived from
plant or even animal matter. This is
presumably what Gordon Brown was
thinking when he declared that from
2008, all UK fuel suppliers must get
2.5% of their fuel from plants, rising
to 5% in 2010. In the EU as a whole,
biofuels are to provide 5.75% of trans-
port fuel by 2010, and 10% by 2020.
The governments of the USA, Brazil
and many other countries are aiming
for similar targets.
Biofuels seem like a good idea
because they are apparently ‘carbon
neutral’. That is to say, the carbon di-
oxide emitted when they are burnt is
only carbon dioxide that has already
been absorbed by the growing crop.
Consequently, the argument goes, they
do not add to global warming. So, is
Brown’s drive for biofuels as good as
it looks? The answer is a regretful but
resounding “No!”
As a small country with a lot of
cars, the UK cannot satisfy more than a
tiny fraction of its biofuel from home-
grown crops. So we will have to import
most of it, and under current market
conditions this will mean buying palm
oil from Indonesia and Malaysia, palm
and soya oil from South America, and
ethanol fermented and distilled from
sugar cane, corn, wheat and other
grains from various sources.
Each of these has its problems. In
the Far East, oil palm is a major cause
of deforestation. Thousands of square
kilometres of rainforest are burnt to
make way for plantations every year,
driving countless wildlife species into
extinction. Growing palm oil to put into
our fuel tanks is now the major driver
of this environmental tragedy. It is also
singularly unhelpful as regards global
warming: to save one tonne of fossil
CO2 emissions with oil-palm biodiesel
means emitting as much as eleven times
more from forest and peatland destruc-
tion. Similar figures apply to soya oil
from South American forests.
Bioethanol has different but equally
severe downsides. As David Pimentel of
Cornell University demonstrates in his
article ‘Corn Ethanol and the Disadvan-
tages of Biofuel Production’, bioethanol
demands an energy input representing
149% of its energy content, when the
50 Resurgence No. 244 September/October 2007
R E G U L A R S
SENSIBLE SOLUTIONS • OLIVER TICKELL
BIOFUELS
Biofuels have advantages and disadvantages. We need
to halt the headlong rush towards biofuels at any
cost, and evaluate what really works for humanity
energy cost of fertilisers, tractor fuel,
fermentation, distillation and indus-
trial plant is included. Even if 100%
of the US’s corn crop were devoted to
bioethanol production, Pimentel cal-
culates, it would still only satisfy 6%
of the US’s demand for gasoline. To
paraphrase, corn-based bioethanol is
completely barmy.
And that is before counting the
social cost of biofuel production. The
demand for biofuels is already creat-
Palm oil plantation in Malaysia PHOTOGRAPH: OSCAR P. SIAGIAN
ing global food shortages and price
rises – price rises which have a dis-
proportionate impact on poor people.
The speculative gains to be made from
biofuel have also encouraged powerful
agribusiness operators to drive subsist-
ence farmers with insecure land title
and indigenous people off their lands
to make way for plantations, creating
untold human suffering. One such hot-
spot is Colombia, where murderous
paramilitary groups operating with
the support of government and biofuel
companies are displacing tens of thou-
sands of people from their lands.
SO WHAT CAN we do? First we must
postpone the UK/EU measures to
promote biofuels until their social, en-
vironmental and climate implications
have been fully explored. This will also
give time for companies to develop the
promised ‘second generation’ biofuels
made from wood and cellulosic crop
wastes rather than foodstuffs. And we
need to define binding sustainability
criteria to apply to biofuels under the
UK/EU regulations.
The key criteria are that the biofu-
els should, over their entire life cycle,
contribute positively to cli-
mate, to biodiversity and to
human needs. They should
provide livelihoods for poor
people and respect their land
rights. They should be grown
on land that has been de-
graded or abandoned, or that
is unsuitable for food crops
– or else be derived from
wastes. And their cultivation
should sequester CO2 from
the atmosphere in soils and
biomass, rather than releas-
ing it.
It certainly should be
possible for biofuels to be
sustainable. There are millions of hec-
tares of degraded land in the tropics on
which palm oil could be established,
the present problem being that it is
cheaper to plant oil palm in virgin for-
est, using the income from timber sales
to finance the operation. A discrimi-
nating biofuel market would direct the
plantations onto degraded lands.
We also need to use novel plants
such as Jatropha – a shrub capable of
growing on arid, infertile soils across
the tropics without fertilisers or pesti-
cides, producing inedible but oily seeds
ideal for biofuel production. Planta-
tions have already been established on
the fringes of the Sahara in Mali, and
in Andhra Pradesh, India. These will
Palm nuts harvested and ready for processing PHOTOGRAPH: OSCAR P. SIAGIAN

come into production in the next few
years, and jatropha enthusiasts hope
that the product will be able to com-
pete with palm oil on price alone.
Others are pinning their hopes on
‘seawater farms’ established along arid
tropical coastlines (of which the world
has some 40,000km) growing a mix
of ‘halophyte’ (salt tolerant) species
from shrimp to mangrove timber and
To save one tonne of fossil CO2 emissions that can be used for biofuel,
with oil-palm biodiesel means emitting
as much as eleven times more from forest almost anything biodegrad-
and peatland destruction.
samphire. Some species of samphire
(Salicornia) produce fatty seeds from
which an oil suitable for both food and
biodiesel can be extracted. Plantations
of Salicornia biglovii, a samphire native waste biomass to replace 20% of its
to Baja California, are currently be-
ing established at Bahía Kino, Mexico,
within a mixed seawater farm that may
ultimately grow to 30,000 hectares.
Within the UK one promising
source of environmentally friendly
biodiesel is waste cooking oil. For ex-
ample McDonald’s has begun to use
the waste oil from its 1,200 UK outlets
to fuel its fleet of 155 vehicles, and es-
timates that it will save over 6 million
litres of waste cooking oil from landfill
every year. Ordinary drivers can also
buy biodiesel processed from waste
cooking oil from small companies
such as Golden Fuels, which collects
used oil from Oxford college kitchens.
This resource is relatively small but it
deserves to be fully utilised.
And it’s not just waste oil
but all food waste, not to
mention sewage – indeed,
able. Richard Lilleystone
of Gasrec, a company spe-
cialising in composting for
methane production, esti-
mates that every tonne of food waste
can produce 50kg of methane which
can then be compressed for automotive
use. Thus the UK generates sufficient
diesel requirement. Of course, this
would mean that many vehicles cur-
rently running on diesel would have
to be converted to run on methane
– something which could make good
sense for heavily used commercial ve-
hicles.
For lower mileage vehicles, anoth-
er approach suggests itself: a move to
electric propulsion, combined with an
increased role for plant biomass – such
as forestry waste, purpose-grown wil-
low and poplar, and Miscanthus grass
– for electricity generation.
But there is another priority that
should come before all of these: mak-
ing our vehicles more efficient in the
first place. Almost all the technologi-
cal advances in engine design of the
last twenty years have gone into mak-
ing cars heavier and capable of more
thrusting acceleration, while efficiency
has stagnated. Manufacturers must
therefore be compelled to double – or
better – the efficiency of their cars over
the coming decade. This will produce
far greater benefits, far faster, than any
conceivable biofuel programme, and
with none of the collateral human and
environmental impacts.
ABOVE ALL, OF course, we need to use
cars less and to walk more, cycle more
and use more buses and trains.
For more information please visit:
www.biofuelwatch.org.uk and www.
wetlands.org/news
Oliver Tickell writes and campaigns on health and
environmental issues.

Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007 51


TURNING POINT
C A RO L E B A M F O R D
The products we make
and buy reflect our
deepest values.
In this, our occasional ‘Turning
Point’ column, we tell the stories of
individuals working in the
‘mainstream’ of life who experience
a moment of epiphany and change
their lives; who
embrace a more holistic, organic
and human-scale approach
to their work. Here we introduce
Carole Bamford, founder of
Daylesford Organic.
Kneading bread made with organic flour from
Daylesford farm
COURTESY: DAYLESFORD ORGANIC
52 Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007
R E G U L A R S
ARTISAN
ECONOMY
T
WENTY YEARS AGO, I walked
into one of England’s most
prestigious agricultural shows
and discovered some stands
occupied by organic farmers. It was
like an unexpected but overwhelming
homecoming: I experienced a sense
of intense recognition. Here were in-
dividuals striving against industrial
farming who paid real respect to the
land and wanted to grow food in har-
mony with it. Here was the answer to
what I had felt myself over many years
– the urgent need to be sure that we
safeguard our children’s futures, by
feeding them real, wholesome, organic
food. It was my moment of epiphany
– an inspiration that has informed my
work ever since.
My two linked businesses, Bam-
ford and Daylesford Organic, are twin
boughs of the same tree. They are
physical manifestations of what I be-
lieve: that we are all guardians of the
soil itself, and that we break the link
between the health of the soil, and
the lives and health of those who live
upon it, at our peril. At Bamford and
at Daylesford Organic, we search for
original artisans who promote these
values and who are dedicated to pre-
serving traditional techniques; we try
to produce food and other products
that embody this integrity.
After my moment of revelation,
it took some effort to persuade those
who worked on our convention-
ally run farms in Staffordshire, and at
Daylesford in Gloucestershire, that it
was right to go organic. That was over
twenty years ago. Now we connect with
those who have a passionate aspiration
towards joined-up thinking about food
and farming, and who make informed
decisions about sustainable lifestyles.
At Daylesford, the bread you eat may
have been made from flour that has
been grown in our organic fields, the
cheese and milk come from our dairy
herd, and the vegetables and fruit are
from our organic kitchen garden.
First and foremost we acknowledge
that these businesses are sustained by
artisans: people with special skills
who have come together because they
share our commitment to promot-
ing better ways of living and working.
On the farm, we make a stand against
degraded, nutritionally starved food;
against depleting the soil. In our Bam-
ford ranges, we stand against the loss
of originality and individuality that
comes with the industrialisation of the
once precious traditional way of life.
As a businesswoman, I believe that the
products we make reflect not only our
aesthetics, but our deepest values.
THIS SENSE OF holistic responsibility
is at the heart of my businesses, but
there is another strand of inspiration –
another bough of the tree – that I draw
on which initially taught me to value
the important work of the artisan:
whether this be the tailor, the baker,
the farmer or the vintner. Early on in
my life I travelled extensively in India
and was introduced to the practices of
yoga and meditation – as well as to the
human-scale, craft-oriented ‘village
economy’ that is practised there.
India has been of enormous im-
portance in my life and my businesses.
It has been my visual stimulation and
spiritual inspiration – and has been my
teacher, providing me with an end-
less series of lessons about life. As a
passionate nomad, I return as often as
I can and I have made it a particular
point of our company business that
we seek out artisans wherever they are,
and help them to preserve and pro-
mote their precious skills by trading
fairly and justly with them. This in turn
helps the wider rural communities.
We aim to work with the individual,
and not the mass-produced market; it
means we are able to give something
back to India for all her inspiration.
For example, we adopted the gov-
ernment school in Jharsaintli, where
the basics – teachers, desks, chairs,
hygiene – were needed; we sponsor
literacy projects, language learning,
computer skills, and the marvellous
craftworks that are so much part of
Indian life, thereby offering people a
means of making a living with pride
 Daylesford Organic shop interior
and self-expression. In Ambi village
near Pune, the school now boasts a
range of classes and skills, a library
and kindergarten. With health, hy-
giene and drainage programmes and
income-generating skill development,
it’s all exciting work in progress and
something that my customers partici-
pate in indirectly.
I have also established a trust which
has adopted the village of Ladiapur
– embracing schooling, health, and in-
frastructure – and a school for women.
We work with them to produce stitch-
ing and embroidery for items they can
sell, and we work together on the mar-
keting and distribution. In Lucknow,
we are working with a charity that sup-
ports women to relearn the fascinating
skills of traditional embroidery.We have
designed a series of baby clothes, kurtis
and dresses using their exquisite white
COURTESY: DAYLESFORD ORGANIC
stitch on white cloth, and our organic
khãdi cotton. The women come from
all castes and religions; many are wid-
owed, socially outcast, and powerless.
Having these skills gives them dignity,
independence, a better quality of life,
and the freedom to interpret and ex-
press themselves in their own work.
THE TURNING POINT in my life has led
me to work with wonderful communi-
ties of people who recognise real wealth:
that Nature and human relationships are
the things of true value. Through our
businesses we try to support the under-
lying networks that protect and nurture
these relationships. To that end, we are
in the process of creating the Daylesford
Foundation, which will be dedicated to
supporting the precious skills of the ar-
tisan, down to its very roots – the soil.
The people I most admire – such as
Carlo Petrini of Slow Food, Patrick Hold-
en of the Soil Association, the marvellous
pioneer of bio-dynamics Giulia Maria
Crespi, and of course, Vandana Shiva
– have all shown the way.
At the Daylesford Foundation,
we aspire to support those who pro-
mote sustainability in agriculture, in
manufacture, in individual commu-
nities – and who need help to create
things of real value and permanence
in a transient and industrialised world.
However ambitious we might be, we
shall remain firmly human-scale and
family-oriented. We don’t wish to grow
so big that we lose the core values in-
spired and sustained by India.
Carole Bamford is a wife, a mother of three, a
farmer and an award-winning businesswoman;
she practises her holistic philosophy at home, on
the land, and in the boardroom.
Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007 53
 R E G U L A R S
The first hoar frost on Dipsacus inermis at Holbrook Garden
GARDENING • BRIGITTE NORLAND
LIVING LIBRARY
Allowing plants themselves to be advocates of an ecological understanding.
A WONDERFUL GARDEN can be
created in any environment, but
a good aspect, soil and climate
are a great start. Devon provides these
in good measure, and one marvel lies
close to us, created over the last twen-
ty years by Martin Hughes-Jones and
his partner, artist Susan Proud. While I
struggled with an old, full-blown gar-
den Martin and Sue’s field was being
transformed into a magical space, beau-
tiful and enlightening.
Martin is no ordinary enthusi-
ast. He has long been committed to
a greener way of life, and his nursery
and garden campaign not just for en-
vironmental gardening, but also for a
deepening ecological awareness. A har-
dy plant himself, Martin lives in shorts
for ten months of the year, savouring
the whole experience of the outdoors,
weather, wildlife and the myriad tran-
sitory beauties of shifting seasons.
Martin sees his own skills now as
grower and gardener developing nat-
urally from his experiences to date.
Short-term jobs in farming led him to
try the same further afield; he hitched
from Egypt down the Nile and then
across East Africa, walking along part
of Lake Nyasa to take up a post in Ma-
lawi. When that job fell through, a post
54 Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007
in neighbouring Zimbabwe came up,
where Martin discovered an under-
standing of good ecological practice in
marginal farming of the dry grasslands.
The experience of diversity in growing
environments and their relationship to
soil and climate in Africa and, later, the
Martin’s skill is founded on
his readiness to observe and
remember.
Caribbean, has inspired Martin’s gar-
dening: planting to create and sustain
habitats for plant communities.
The garden lies in a small trian-
gular field bounded on one side by a
deeply cut lane and on the other by
a stream. Once the nursery proved it-
self as a going concern Sue and Martin
were able to build a house which nes-
tles discreetly to one side of the plot.
A reedbed for sewage treatment was
also set up, but beyond that the gar-
den took its shape from the lie of the
land, not the lines of the house, which
is now disappearing beneath the large-
leaved Vitis coignetiae and climbers of
Himalayan origin, Stauntonia hexophylla
and Clematis armandii.
PHOTOGRAPH: MARTIN HUGHES-JONES
Just below the house Martin has
imported stones of different sizes, re-
jects from a local quarry, to create paths
and a thick mulch over the heavy clay
soil, improving drainage and creating
a habitat for herbaceous perennials,
many growing to head height. Without
excess moisture and shelter they grow
with firm stems, even in the wet sum-
mer of 2007, removing the need for
staking. Walking among them gives a
sense of their structure as well as the
pleasure of scents, flowers and the in-
sects and birds that feed on them.
Here Martin grows Salvia uliginosa, a
marshy sage from Uruguay, and an ele-
gant Solidago variety, ‘Fireworks’. He allows
biennials to self-seed here: Oenothera biennis
(evening primrose), Verbascum olympicum
and Verbena bonariensis, and even the oc-
casional thistle, witness to his vigilant
weeding. All the herbaceous planting is
left to stand until the very end of Feb-
ruary for wildlife habitat: many species
provide seed for small birds.
Below the stone garden Martin has
planted Paulownia tomentosa, kept cop-
piced. Each year it throws up strong
stems twelve feet high with enormous
palmate leaves, creating a tropical ef-
fect, and it is suitably accompanied by
banana palms and cannas. Martin keeps
climate records in more than one spot
in the garden, noting the temperature
fluctuations, which are greatest in the
stone garden and smallest where there
is cover of vegetation; gathering infor-
mation while planting intuitively. The
garden’s southerly aspect is significant
even in a semi-maritime climate: frost
rolls off the hill, whereas in the dips
angled into the north and east – my
own garden included – it hangs about,
damaging emerging shoots.
Along the lane a native hedge is kept
loosely pruned; whole branches are
thinned out and laid in as dry cover
at the base. This eventually rots down,
creating a humus-rich soil. Towards the
bottom of the garden, Martin has de-
veloped woodland planting, including
a handsome Kashmiri cypress grown
from seed.
Many tree seeds need repeated, alter-
nating exposure to chilling and warming
and these Martin keeps in small plastic
bags by the door of his shed where he
will see the first signs of sprouting. Un-
der the cypress, now sporting a splendid
girth, he is establishing colonies of
our native Deschampsia caespitosa (tufted
hair-grass) and Anemone nemorosa (wood
anemone), still in leaf in the wet July of
2007. Here he keeps brambles, nettles
and docks at bay, as well as the seem-
ingly innocuous hybrid of herb robert
which creates cover for other colonisers;
the real herb robert, Geranium robertianum,
flourishes elsewhere as does wood avens
(Geranium urbanum), growing along the
base of a low beech hedge.
Snakeshead fritillaries in a wet meadow area
Further up the garden a path dips
towards the stream, where native
planting under tall ash and alder gives
stillness and a view into the shade of
the stream. Beyond is a spring meadow,
managed to create colonies of fritillary
and Primula species. On the way back to
the house is a pink garden, no saccha-
rine fantasy but dominated by glorious
stands of Filipendula rubra ‘Venusta’, a giant
rosy meadowsweet, accompanied by
Achillea and Astrantia. The run-off from
watering the nursery is usefully col-
lected into one area, now planted up as
a wet garden, adjacent to the reedbed.
MARTIN ALSO KEEPS the national col-
lection of Heleniums, part of the initiative
of the National Society for the Protec-
tion of Plants and Gardens to ensure
that garden plants are kept going in
a living library. Heleniums, a little like a
perennial sunflower, bring flowers in all
shades of red and gold from late June
to October, and, vigorous and easy, are
perfect for Holbrook’s good clay soil.
Most herbaceous plants benefit from
lifting and splitting at regular intervals,
creating plenty of stock to pass on.
Garden and nursery work together:
visitors see plants growing in their pre-
ferred conditions and stand a better
chance of growing them successfully
themselves. The nursery offers hun-
dreds of herbaceous plants and shrubs,
all individually known; Martin’s skill
is founded on his readiness to observe
and remember.
In the centre of the garden a warm
and sunny spot provides Martin and Sue
with a vegetable plot and the polytun-
nel for those crops that need protection
from wildlife or weather, such as straw-
berries, tomatoes and brassicas.
Martin makes his own compost but
also makes good use of the village com-
post scheme; he finds that most people
use it more to deposit their prunings
and mowings than to collect the valu-
able mulch created, perhaps because
blackbirds enjoy foraging in it, scatter-
ing it about. Here Martin and I found
ourselves discussing the at-home feel-
ing of a vegetable garden, the process
of sustaining life and livelihood fully
evident, as opposed to a garden that
is simply an extension of the house as
dining room and dormitory, of con-
sumer style as a poor substitute for
living and working connected to your
place on the Earth.
Growing for his market, Martin
allows the plants themselves to be the ad-
vocates of an ecological understanding.
A visit to Holbrook will enable you to
take stock of your own garden in terms
of light and shade, exposure or shelter,
soil condition, drainage and moisture
levels, and how you can work with all
those elements. At Holbrook the assets
of the garden are skilfully enhanced to
create a radiant diversity, in which the
human happily participates.
For more information please vis-
it www.holbrookgarden.com and
www.samshrub.co.uk
Brigitte Norland lives and gardens in Devon.
PHOTOGRAPH: MARTIN HUGHES-JONES
Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007 55

L E T T E R S TO T H E E D I TO R S
DECONSTRUCTING
THE DELUSION
Dear Editors
IT SEEMS TO me that Deepak
Chopra’s attack on Richard
Dawkins in your last two is-
sues (Resurgence 243 and 244)
is very weak, and misleading
to those readers who have not
read The God Delusion.
In the middle of the second
of his two long pieces, Chopra
suddenly states that “Dawkins
is absolutely right to declare a
requiem service over the God
of organised religion and to
warn us about the dangers
of superstition, dogma, and
pseudo-science.” Since this
covers about 90% of Dawkins’
purpose in the book, why is
everything else Chopra says
entirely hostile?
The God Chopra is defend-
ing is a sanitised God with so
few attributes that, as Chopra
admits, one might just as well
speak of the ‘All’ or of ‘Nature’:
“I don’t mean a personal God,
or a mythic one, or any God
with a human face. Set aside
all images of God.” He might
just as well say, “Set aside the
God Dawkins is writing about,
the God actually believed in by
the vast majority of believers.”
This approach allows Chopra
to set aside also the entire his-
torical record of God as the
main cause of unnecessary
suffering, as the prime motive
for conflict and atrocity.
Chopra announces that
he intends to argue against
Dawkins “point by point”.
This he conspicuously fails to
do, ignoring most of Dawkins’
reasoning, and making his own
points as if they were points
Dawkins had overlooked or
evaded, when they are all in
fact dealt with at length in The
God Delusion. For example, Cho-
pra accuses Dawkins of entire-
ly dismissing Einstein, where-
as in fact Dawkins has several
pages with lengthy quotations
in support of Einstein’s posi-
tion on God.
Chopra claims that, for
Dawkins, “God is at worst
a superstition that blocks
56 Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007
R E G U L A R S
progress,” and that religion
is a “reactionary resistance to
progress”. In fact Dawkins has
much more weighty charges
than this to bring against God.
And by not defining the word
‘progress’ Chopra encourages
his readers to assume, given
the anti-scientific context,
that he means by it the accu-
mulation of scientific knowl-
edge and development of
technological skills. But what
Dawkins is actually discuss-
ing is moral progress, progress
towards a more peaceful, co-
operative and compassionate
world, and a world more rev-
erential towards nature.
Since Chopra admits that
he can make his case for God
only by dissociating himself
from all specific creeds and
religious practices; since he
says “whether we call it God
or something else is irrel-
evant” and “It’s not necessary
to use that word”, what does
he think is to be gained by
retaining the discredited and
divisive word “God” (or its
equivalent in other languages)
at all? We already have a per-
fectly adequate word: ‘Nature’.
By extending our understand-
ing of Nature to include All
(everything that exists outside
us and within us) we can abol-
ish the supernatural altogether.
As Lucretius wrote over 2,000
years ago, “Nature does all
things spontaneously, by her-
self, without the meddling of
the gods.”
Keith Sagar
Clitheroe, Lancashire
GROWING FAITH
Dear Editors
RECEIVING RESURGENCE 242
in the post from my mother in
Devon and opening straight at
Deepak Chopra’s article (‘De-
constructing Dawkins’) was
yet further confirmation that
science is far from being able
to explain all.
I studied science at uni-
versity and had no interest in
religion until I realised I had
unanswered questions. Read-
ing the New Testament had
me in tears due to the way hu-
mankind treated Jesus, some-
one to whom science was not
relevant.
The fact that I came across
a carrier bag on the train two
months ago which contained
Dawkins’ novel was one in a
long list of events that opened
my eyes and heart to what
has actually created life and
watches over it. I still have a
passion for science but one
that now runs alongside my
growing faith.
Dawkins obviously has a lot
to offer science and religion
and I would say he is here to
test people’s faith, at a time
when science struggles to ex-
plain all.
Lee White
Southend-on-Sea, Essex
Editors’ Note: We are still
receiving many letters from
readers about Deepak Cho-
pra’s articles. Sadly, we don’t
have room to print them all.
Readers who would like to
continue this debate are in-
vited to do so via our Gaia’s
Café Readers’ Forum at www.
resurgence.org/gaiascafe
SPINNING OVER THE
EDGE
Dear Editors
YOUR HEROIC ATTEMPT to
spin the end of the world, by
rebranding the point of no re-
turn as “the point of return”,
was worthy of New Labour
(Resurgence 243). Realistically,
there is not the slightest chance
that any of the measures you
espouse might be happening
soon on a global scale. Least of
all the “profound introspec-
tion” into the human psyche.
Have you not noticed that
every new symptom of the
impending collapse is met
with more scapegoating and
displacement activity? The
deckchairs on the Titanic just
get rearranged faster and in
more elaborate patterns. We
are like the cartoon character
that wanders off the edge of
the cliff: the only reason we
stay suspended in mid-air is
that we haven’t yet realised
that we must fall.
The late Kurt Vonnegut
believed that humanity’s evo-
lutionary flaw was that it had
become too intelligent, but I
think he got it slightly wrong.
As a species we have become
dependent on intelligence, but
we have not been able to devel-
op it quickly enough. Intelli-
gent beings do not wreck their
own life-support systems.
There is one last thing that
people who have been activ-
ists could try. We should all
announce, together, that we
are stopping, because it is too
late to make any appreciable
difference. If we withdraw our
reassuring clamour for change,
and instead maybe organise a
‘Wake for the Planet’, that just
might make people in general
sit up and start to think and
feel for themselves.
Dave Bradney
Ceredigion, Wales
INDUSTRIALISED
ILLNESS
Dear Editors
OLIVER JAMES’ ‘AFFLUENZA’
(Resurgence 242) beautifully
exposes the illness currently
afflicting the industrialised
world. James describes this
as mental illness, with 26.4%
of the United States suffer-
ing in the last twelve months.
It is terrifying, but it will not
stop there. Consider other na-
tions currently ‘developing’ at
frightening speed: China and
India.
These two countries, with
enormously rich and colourful
cultures, are doomed to suffer
the same fate as the West, and
in the process have set in train
suffering on a colossal scale
within their own countries
and their neighbours’.
Tibet’s religion and beau-
tifully colourful and peaceful
people are suffering dreadful-

ly because of China’s so-called
progress. Hundreds of thou-
sands of Indian farmers have
been forced from their land as
India builds more and more
dams to fuel its industrial base
– a fact that is rarely reported in
mainstream media. But people
continue to suffer, all because
of mass consumerism.
James’ splendid article
should be made essential read-
ing in all national and local
government offices. It is time
this worldwide scandal was
exposed.
David Harvey
Chippenham, Wiltshire
FALSE ECONOMY
Dear Editors
I AM NOT certain I have a spe-
cific comment or request, but
I am choosing to let you know
that I share your philosophy
and belief that money does
not represent true economy.
Money is a tool used to take
a sense of true economy away
from individuals. It is symbol-
ic and in and of itself has no
value. It cannot be eaten, does
not keep people warm, is not
nice to snuggle up with, is not
beautiful, does not keep the
rain or bugs out, is not very
entertaining to watch, and has
no value as medicine. Worst of
all, the absence of money gen-
erates fear: people experience
fear in the absence of some-
thing that in itself has no true
value! How horrifying!
I believe that consciousness
and a return to true economy
can heal the planet.
Ivy Michelle Berg
USA, by email
GRAND GESTURE
Dear Editors
IN RESPONSE TO Brigitte Nor-
land’s article on pruning, may
I offer the following: with all
the talk of awakening aware-
ness of nature it seems sad that
people still walk into the gar-
den, secateurs in hand, asking,
“What do I want?” Brigitte
begins by speaking of look-
ing at a plant’s “innate shape
and beauty” but within a few
ILLUSTRATION: LINDA SCOTT
paragraphs she is happily cut- the different plants that make
ting here and there from a up the Bach flower remedies,
completely anthropocentric with great attention placed on
viewpoint. Plants flower and each plant’s natural (i.e. un-
fruit “outrageously” due to pruned) form – its “gesture”.
stress (from pruning) because I work in a garden where
they feel they are going to die. the owner had never seen the
If your fig tree doesn’t fruit, fruit or flower of her straw-
wouldn’t it be better to plant berry tree due to the handy-
a native greengage, quince or man’s hedge-trimmer. Nor-
medlar instead? land is far from that, yet I feel
Masanobu Fukuoka has an we still need more reluctance
excellent chapter on pruning to impose our will on a plant.
in one of his books: he makes What is our motivation? Can
the point that you cannot we start to ask what the plant
prune a tree unless you know needs instead? Then, dare I say,
its natural shape. All our culti- we will be on the path to be-
vated apple trees are pruned in coming true gardeners.
the nursery.
Another good book to read Sarah Lane
is Julian Barnard’s Form and Bolventor
Function in which he describes Cornwall
The Editors welcome concise letters from readers
commenting on articles published in Resurgence.
Send your letters to The Editors, Resurgence, Ford House,
Hartland, Bideford, Devon, EX39 6EE.
editorial@resurgence.org
Letters may be edited for reasons of space or clarity.
Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007 57

I N M Y OW N WO R D S • WO L F G A N G S AC H S
ECOLOGY IS JUSTICE IS SECURITY
It will not be possible to develop successful economics in the 21st century,
based on the 19th century model.
T HE RISE OF Europe to
world dominance in the
19th century has aroused
the curiosity of historians for
a long time. Why was Europe
able to leap ahead of the rest of
the world? Kenneth Pomeranz
of the University of California
at Los Angeles has advanced an
‘environmental’ hypothesis. He
wondered how England had
suceeded in moving ahead of
China, notwithstanding the fact
that China had been on a level
jfkdjfkdjfkkdk
of development comparable to
England as recently as around
1750.
According to his studies, at the
end of the 18th century both China
and England were constrained in their
economic development by the scarcity
of land available to grow food, sup-
ply fuel, and provide material. But it
was only England that succeeded in
overcoming this limitation. For Eng-
land was able to tap into new stocks
of resources: it began to massively
import agricultural goods from North
America, and, above all, set out to sys-
tematically utilise coal for industrial
processes. As foreign land replaced do-
mestic land, and carbon substituted for
wood, the constraints were left behind
and the English economy was able to
take off.
Put more generally, access to fossil
resources from the crust of the Earth
and to biotic resources from (ex-)col-
onies was essential to the rise of the
Euro-Atlantic civilisation. Industrial
society would not exist in today’s shape
had not resources been mobilised from
both the depth of geological time and
the expanse of geographical space.
In hindsight, Europe’s development
path turns out to be a special case; it
cannot be repeated everywhere and
at any time, for the wealth of fossil
and renewable raw materials at Eu-
rope’s disposal in the 19th and 20th
centuries is no longer available. Fossil
resources, apart from destabilising the
Earth’s climate, are gradually running
short, just as there are no colonies left
58 Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007
B O O K S
Wal-Mart prepares to open its first outlet in Shanghai
PHOTOGRAPH: EPA/CORBIS
to take biotic resources from.
At any rate, raw materials have to
be purchased at considerable prices,
or the inner parts of a country have
to be turned into colonies – as can
be observed in today’s Brazil or India.
Resources, now and in the foreseeable
future, are neither easily accessible nor
cheaply available. It will, therefore, be
a hopeless endeavour to bring pros-
perity and wellbeing to the majority
of the world’s peoples by imitating the
Euro-Atlantic example. It will barely
be possible to have success in the 21st
century on the basis of the utopias of
the 19th century.
However, far from being just a
bio-physical fact, ecological limits are
often the cause of social explosions.
To whom do oil reserves, rivers, for-
ests and the atmosphere belong? How
much is a nation – or a social class –
entitled to take for its own wellbeing,
without restricting the rights of oth-
ers? The more the carrying capacity of
ecosystems approaches its limits, the
greater is the threat to weaker nations
and groups to lose out in the competi-
tion with more powerful ones.
Resource conflicts are fuel for mi-
nor and major confrontations, which
may set villages or whole countries
ablaze. Petrol in the pumps becomes
more expensive, regions become arid
as water reserves dry up, the price of
imported grain skyrockets, and fish-
ermen return home with empty nets.
Social peace often breaks down even
before environmental peace
is seriously disturbed. As the
resource crunch intensifies,
conflicts will flare up in many
places and make the world as a
whole more inflammable.
Against this backdrop, it is
unwise to look at the industri-
al patterns of production and
consumption as the standard
for equity and wellbeing. It
is difficult to see how, for in-
stance, the automobile society,
high-rise housing, chemical
agriculture or a meat-based
food system could be spread
across the globe. The resources re-
quired for democratising these models
of wealth globally would be too vast,
too expensive, and too damaging for
local ecosystems and the biosphere.
Since the Euro-Atlantic model of
wealth has grown out of historically
exceptional conditions, it cannot be
transferred to the world at large; in
other words, it is structurally incapa-
ble of justice. Development, therefore,
is moving into a dilemma. Either well-
being remains confined to a minority
because the prevailing styles of pro-
duction and consumption cannot be
generalised, or sustainable models of
wellbeing take hold, opening the op-
portunity for sufficient prosperity for
all. Since both affluence and equity
cannot be attained, one can either opt
for affluence and oligarchy or for suf-
ficiency and equity. Seen from this
angle, the choice between destructive
and sustainable models of wealth is
not so much a choice which separates
the exploiter of Nature from the lover
of Nature as it is a choice which sepa-
rates the elitist from the democrat. In
any case, production and consumption
patterns will not be capable of jus-
tice unless they are resource-light and
compatible with living systems. In the
21st century, there will be no equity
without ecology.
Wolfgang Sachs is co-author of Fair Future: Re-
source Conflicts, Security and Global Justice,
published by Zed Books.
 MONOPOLISING ADVANTAGE
An endless row of shopping carts
I DON’T POSSESS a Tesco Clubcard.
I’m not exactly unusual in this, but
there are 25 million of them in
wallets and purses out there across the
UK, which is getting on for half the
population.
One reason I don’t have one is that
I never shop there. When I discern that
the organisation I am giving my cus-
tom to aspires to world domination,
I feel less enthusiastic about spending
money with them. Now, having read
Andrew Simms’ scintillating critique
of the mega-chain store, I will cer-
tainly not be adding a Clubcard to my
collection.
One of the fascinating revelations
in the book is just how much data they
keep on the 10 million people who
are actively using their cards. Their
names, addresses and mobile phone
numbers, of course, but also their
socio-economic profiles, where they
shop and when, which magazines they
buy, which brands they are particularly
loyal to, whether they have pets, and a
range of other details about purchases
and habits. Even more disturbing is the
prospect of the government’s plans to
link biometric data on their ID cards
with the supermarket data on all of us.
Privacy this isn’t. Nor is it much
benefit, either. Simms reveals that, to
earn enough points to get one of the
much-heralded computers for your
PHOTOGRAPH: MILAN KLUSACEK/istockphoto.com
David Boyle worries that
soon we will have little or
no choice about where we
shop.
Tescopoly: How One Shop Came Out
on Top and Why it Matters
Andrew Simms
Constable & Robinson, UK, 2007, £7.99
school, you have to spend a quarter of
a million pounds with Tesco.
I have to declare an interest review-
ing the book. I worked with the author
at the New Economics Foundation on
the Clone Town campaign, and a fas-
cinating experience it was. The report
Clone Town Britain may not have rescued
our high streets from homogenisation,
but it did introduce into the language
a potent phrase that has a momentum
of its own.
The mere expression ‘clone town’
seems to carry within it the determi-
nation that something should be done.
But what the Tescopoly book reveals is
the dangers beyond that of our lax
competition regulation.
It isn’t just that everywhere looks
the same, but the devastating effect on
the diversity of so many other areas
of life. Community pharmacies, local
bookshops, any kind of agriculture but
massive agri-business, the diversity
of landscape, all suffer from allowing
supermarket chains to take too great a
control over our lives.
Nor is the book just about Tesco.
Simms manages to combine control-
led anger at the rise of supermarket
monopolies with a personal approach
to confronting the monster. He has a
talent for the pert and provocative met-
aphor. A riposte in The Guardian shows
that Tesco is still squirming about his
metaphor of an invasive species like
Japanese knotweed.
The result is a witty, revealing and
thought-provoking book. It is also a
tremendously important one. What it
taught me was partly that supermarket
homogenisation leads to human ho-
mogenisation if we let it. It taught me
also to think a little differently about
the original purpose of free trade – and
how we face a situation soon, if we are
not careful, where we will have little or
no choice about where we shop.
But what I most took from the book
was how the trick has been played. It’s
strange, because supermarkets are so
much part of modern life – rather like
banks – that we rarely if ever think to
look at their inner workings, the com-
bination of land banks, road haulage
and fearsome technocratic and virtual
just-in-time systems.
When I did look, one fact rose
rather horrifyingly to the top. Tesco’s
semi-monopolistic position allows it
to dictate terms to its suppliers, to in-
sist on contracts that require payment
in ninety days – rather than the nor-
mal thirty-day periods normal for its
smaller competitors.
The result is that Tesco funds its
expansion with what is in effect a £2
billion interest-free loan equal to its
entire stock. So if anyone tells you Tes-
co’s massive expansion is just about
supply and demand, remind them of
this – how monopoly gives staggering
economic advantages over anyone who
dares compete.
For that reason, I can think of no
higher praise for Tescopoly than saying
that it is a supremely dangerous book.
Its evident success must be making the
Tesco board quake in their technocrat-
ic boots.
David Boyle is a fellow of the New Economics
Foundation and author of Blondel’s Song and
Authenticity. www.david-boyle.co.uk
Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007 59

LESSONS FROM THE PAST
T HIS BOOK OPENS with the par-
able of Easter Island. It is the tale
of a society with limited resourc-
es to supply all of its demands and of
a population that ultimately had no
practical means of escape when times
became hard. It is the story of a people
who, as a result of environmental con-
ditions allowing only certain crops to
be grown, were left with a great deal
of leisure time, leading to the devel-
opment of one of the most complex
of Polynesian societies. This society
took its most visible form in the con-
struction of massive stone heads. The
erection of these sculptures, combined
with other more mundane reasons
such as clearance for agriculture and
building materials, led to large-scale
deforestation. On an island one could
circumnavigate in a day it seems in ret-
rospect that it should have been easy to
link the destruction of the forest with
the inhabitants’ survival. But this was
not the case. By 1600, approximately
1,000 years after the island was first
settled, the damage was irreversible.
Total deforestation caused massive
environmental degradation, leading
ultimately to the downfall of that so-
ciety, which must have seen that it had
limited resources, and must have real-
ised that it had no means of escape, yet
continued to use up what was available
– to the point of collapse. It all feels
worrying familiar.
In this reissued and substantially
rewritten book, the reader is treated
to a panoramic view of the history of
humanity’s interaction with the envi-
ronment. Along the way, Clive Ponting
signposts major social, political, eco-
nomic and environmental shifts in our
history, demonstrating how they have
laid the foundation for our current
problems. The “First Great Transition”
in human living patterns towards
agriculture was, Ponting says, “the
foundation for all later social and po-
litical change”. This opening of “the
way to seeing land, resources and
food as ‘property’” marked humani-
ty’s shift from hunting and gathering
to a sedentary way of life. Ponting also
introduces another key theme here:
inequality. For the first time there was
a surplus of food, and so some mem-
bers of the human community were
not directly involved in providing for
themselves; this enabled the develop-
ment of hierarchy. Ponting asks exactly
60 Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007
R E V I E W S
Dan Grace explores the
history of our interaction
with the environment, and
the lessons to be learned.
A New Green History of the World:
The Environment and the Collapse
of Great Civilisations
Clive Ponting
Vintage Books, UK, 2007, £8.99
why this transition occurred; in addi-
tion to producing the conditions for
inequality, agriculture meant more
work, often for a worse diet. He con-
cludes that it was a very gradual shift
that once made was impossible to re-
verse, and that became a political and
economic necessity.
With the advent of agriculture we
enter humanity’s “Long Struggle”, a
period dominated by famine and dis-
ease. Examining the roots of economic
globalisation, Ponting describes how
the ability of certain nations to control
an increasing share of the world’s re-
sources, spurred on by economic and
political pressures, has resulted in the
end of the Long Struggle – but, sadly,
only for a privileged few. Bringing us
right up to date, Ponting explains how
the advent of modern agriculture and
massive energy use has only resulted in
a change in the scale of the problem.
Although more are fed and live a life of
comfort than ever before, this is only
achieved on a highly unequal basis.
Stone heads on Easter Island, South Pacific
The final third of the book docu-
ments these last 200 years of human
history. Ponting’s “Second Great Transi-
tion” concerns our shift to the modern
industrial world built on massive use
of fossil fuels, the rise of the city, free-
market economics and increasing levels
of pollution. The most important con-
sequence of this is the “threat to global
systems”, Ponting’s phrase to describe
the biggest crisis facing us now: glo-
bal warming. His stark warning is that
the breakdown of our civilisation is
entirely possible. Historical collapses
of large-scale complex societies came
about as the agricultural base could
not support the superstructure built
on it. Increasing temperatures will put
even greater stress on an already over-
stretched agricultural system.
A comprehensive account of hu-
manity’s devastating effect on the
environment, this book also catalogues
the economic and political underpin-
nings of this destruction. It is shot
through with the urgency of our need
to reject anthropocentric ideas of
progress. Ponting quotes Chief Seat-
tle of the Squamish tribe, who is said
to have written to the President of
the United States in 1854 to protest
the treatment of Native Americans by
white settlers: “Man does not weave
the web of life; he is merely a strand
in it. Whatever he does to the web, he
does to himself.” They didn’t listen
then; will we listen now?
Dan Grace is a freelance writer and researcher.
PHOTOGRAPH: JOHN SNELGROVE
 AGRICULTURE OF NONSENSE
T HE WORLD IS in such a mess for
all kinds of reason, but largely
because the people with the most
power do not understand agriculture.
They do not perceive that it is at the
core of all human life, and that it is and
must be a craft. They see traditional,
craft-based farming as an anachronism
to be swept aside as soon as modernity
can gain a foothold; and modernity,
they perceive, is qualitatively different
from all that went before, marching
not to the crude rules of wild Nature
and of bumbling tradition, but to the
precise and rational directives of sci-
ence and the global free market.
Marcel Mazoyer and Laurence Rou-
dart show the nonsense of these ideas
– though they are the ideas that run the
modern world. Traditional practice on
the whole is sound, precisely because
it must march, perforce, to the drum
of biology. Of course we can improve
on traditional practice with science-
based technology but we sweep the
craft aside at our peril. It is the greatest
folly to suppose that we can conquer
Nature and impose our own rules on
the fabric of the world.
The very first slash-and-burn
farmers, who pre-dated the Neolithic
Revolution of 10,000 years ago by a
very long stretch, grew crops in forest
clearings and then, when the residu-
al fertility was exhausted, moved on.
Slash-and-burn became bona fide ag-
riculture when the farmers stayed to
maintain the spaces they had cleared
as permanent, arable fields for crops
– fields known as the ager (hence ‘ag-
riculture’).
Such maintenance required two
kinds of input. First, the farmers had
to cultivate the soil to make it recep-
tive to seeds, and this they did first
with spades and hoes, and then with
primitive ploughs. Then in the 7th
century BCE the Chinese developed
true ploughs, or turn-ploughs, and the
Europeans followed – perhaps inde-
pendently – in the 1st century CE.
Secondly, ancient farmers (like
modern farmers) needed to main-
tain the fertility of the ploughed ager.
This they did by raising livestock in
the semi-cultivated land all around
– pastures – and then importing their
dung; this they did mainly in periods
of fallow between the arable cultiva-
tions. The big advances here were the
wheeled cart, which enabled them to
Colin Tudge explains why
the world is in such a mess.
A History of World Agriculture
Marcel Mazoyer and Laurence Roudart
Earthscan, UK, 2006, £22.95
bring in the manure in large quantities
– invented at least 5,000 years ago, it
was not cheap enough for agriculture
until the Middle Ages; then the stable,
which enabled them to keep all the
animals and their dung in one place;
and then the scythe (developed first in
Gaul, around the 1st century CE, and in
wide use in the 11th century), which
enabled farmers to cut hay for win-
ter feed and so keep more livestock,
which in turn enabled them to grow
more crops – balancing one against the
other. Three-year rotations – two years’
crops to one of fallow – were practised
by the 13th century.
That’s it. That is what all farm-
ing is about: cultivating special fields
with whatever power is available and
bringing fertility in from outside. The
greatest agricultural revolution, in
short, was not in the 17th and 18th
centuries, as we learnt in school, or in
the Green Revolution of the 1960s and
1970s, as has become the modern po-
litical-commercial-scientific myth, but
between the 11th and 13th centuries.
If we had built conscientiously on
that medieval achievement, enhanc-
ing the craft and then adding science
appropriately, then by now humanity
could be set fair. Food just wouldn’t be
a problem. We could feed the present
6 billion, and the 9 billion of 2050,
and so on for the next million years
– for the United Nations tells us that 9
billion is as big as the population will
get.
Science has sometimes been used
appropriately to enhance the craft.
Thus the modern organic movement
has helped to develop nitrogen fixation
and biological pest control. Probably
we should not reject any technology a
priori. But on the whole we have not
built on our heritage. We have allowed
ILLUSTRATION: CLIFFORD HARPER
7 pt7 pt7 pt
the nonsense to creep in: the idea, as
Henry Ford put it, that history is bunk;
that the world began in 1980, as a
bright-eyed,terrifying young MBA once
said to me; that everything, including
farming, should be a game of money;
that the maximisation of disposable
wealth is necessary and sufficient; that
high tech, with enough money behind
it, can achieve everything; that farm-
ing should be conceived as a high-tech
industry like everything else – indus-
trial chemistry, heavy engineering, and
biotech, with labour stripped to the
bone and then stripped again; that the
role of science is to sweep traditional
practice aside; that the whole show
is best left in the hands of men and
women in striped suits and lab coats,
who don’t know any history at all, and
precious little real biology, but none-
theless are deemed to know best.
No wonder the world is in a mess.
Colin Tudge’s latest book, Feeding People is Easy,
is now available from Pari Publishing at £9.99.
Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007 61

B EING AN OPTIMIST, I picked
up this book because of its title,
hoping to find out what the “up-
side of down” could be and expecting
to find solutions to our global predica-
ment. Alas, three-quarters of the way
through, I began to wonder where the
‘Upside’ was. I flicked through the final
quarter of the book to find it mostly
taken up with footnotes!
Despite this focus on ‘Down’, the
book is a fascinating read. Accord-
ing to Thomas Homer-Dixon, five
tectonic stresses are accumulating
beneath the surface of our socie-
ties. They are population stress,
energy stress, environmental stress,
climate stress and economic stress.
There are also two ‘multipliers’ that
give extra force to these stresses:
speed, and global connectivity,
whereby damage or shock in one
part of the system can cascade to all
other parts of the system. It is the
convergence of these stresses that’s
especially treacherous and makes
synchronous failure of global sys-
tems a real possibility.
We don’t usually think in terms
of convergence, as we tend to see
our problems in isolation, but
what happens when several stresses
come together at the same time? What
happens if the world has to deal with
a sudden shift in climate that sharply
cuts food production in Europe and
Asia, a severe oil price increase that
sends economies tumbling around the
world, and a string of major terrorist
attacks on several Western capital cit-
ies? It would be a body-blow to world
order. Social breakdown will become
steadily more likely as our world’s ac-
cumulating tectonic stresses combine
simultaneously and their synergistic
impact is magnified.
Homer-Dixon examines in concise
detail each one of these tectonic stresses
and how it is likely that simultaneous
breakdown will actually happen. He
draws on the collapse of ancient Rome
to clarify many of his points, but as a
global society we haven’t learned the
lessons of the Roman empire. When
we’re in denial, as Homer-Dixon be-
lieves we are about our parlous state,
we can’t think about the various paths
that we might take into the future.
He discusses how forests have
long been an indicator of the health
of society. When forests are destroyed,
civilisations are destroyed, as in ancient
62 Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007
R E V I E W S
UNDER STRESS
Lorna Howarth concurs
that through destruction
comes creation.
The Upside of Down: Catastrophe,
Creativity and the Renewal
of Civilisation
Thomas Homer-Dixon
Souvenir Press, UK, 2007, £15.00
“Only after destruction comes creation.” - Alice Bailey.
Forest fire, Spain
PHOTOGRAPH: IVAN QUINTERO/EPA/CORBIS
Rome. Yet forests have another trait we
could learn from: all healthy forests
have an adaptive cycle of growth, col-
lapse, regeneration and, again, growth.
Collapse liberates the ecosystem’s
enormous potential for creativity and
allows for novel and unpredictable re-
combination, and because the system
is less interconnected and rigid, it’s far
more resilient to sudden shock. A sa-
lient point for economists is that the
longer we sustain a social, economic or
ecological system in its growth phase,
the sharper, harder and more destruc-
tive its ultimate breakdown will be.
The immense destruction that col-
lapse triggers is both frightening and
creative. Homer-Dixon argues that we
need to develop a “prospective mind”
where we are comfortable with con-
stant change, radical surprise and even
breakdown. We have to achieve what
he calls “catagenesis”: the creative re-
newal of our technologies, institutions,
and societies. As imaginative as we are
asked to be in envisioning the future,
Homer-Dixon has been with his pos-
sible breakdown scenarios, should we
stick with the ‘business-as-usual’ para-
digm. But he is adamant that events
don’t have to turn out as he envisages.
If we’re going to have the best chance
of following a different and positive
path, we must take four actions: we
must reduce the force of the underly-
ing tectonic stresses to lower the risk
of synchronous failure; we need to
cultivate a prospective mind to cope
better with change; we must boost
the resilience of critical systems like
energy and food supply networks
and prepare to turn breakdown to
our advantage.
The author believes our one
big saviour is the World Wide Web.
Just when humanity faces some of
the biggest challenges in its his-
tory, it has developed a technology
that could be the foundation for
extremely rapid problem-solving
on a planetary scale, for radically
new forms of democratic decision-
making and, most fundamentally,
for the conversation we must have
to prepare for breakdown. So far,
we’ve barely tapped this poten-
tial, but recently we’ve seen an
explosion of distributed and col-
laborative problem-solving on the web
using various ‘open-source’ approach-
es. Most importantly, the media in all
its forms needs to focus on imagining
positive change.
Homer-Dixon suggests that human-
kind is on the cusp of a new ‘Axial Age’
– a transformation, simultaneously
around the world, of the deepest prin-
ciples guiding humankind’s diverse
civilisations – but our values must be
compatible with the exigencies of the
natural world we live in and depend
on. They must implicitly recognise the
laws of thermodynamics, energy’s role
in our survival, the dangers of certain
kinds of connectivity, and the non-
linear behaviour of natural systems
like the climate. The endless material
growth of our economies is fundamen-
tally inconsistent with these physical
facts of life.
It is our imagination that has cre-
ated the world we live in and it is only
by thinking imaginatively that we
will resolve our critical situation; but
Homer-Dixon ultimately leaves it up to
us to re-imagine our world.
Lorna Howarth is Co-editor of Resurgence.
 WHOLE PLANET RE-THINK
A S RECENTLY AS 2005, John
Mead reminds us in an essay
collected here, the mainstream
debate had still not accepted climate
change as a reality. And the accept-
ance of that reality now is in one sense
hardly reassuring. Our behaviour in
the mass remains largely unaffected.
Any journalist or politician worth his
or her salt can dash off a declaration
of noble Gaian intent before breakfast.
The question remains: and?
Or: how do we translate these ever-
more alarming data into a new register
of thinking and feeling, and do it fast
enough to make a difference? “The
Gaian worldview will not spread far
under current conditions” is the bleak
opening sentence of John Turnbull’s
analysis here, of how vested interests
and economic ideology interact at the
personal as well as at the corporate lev-
el. His theme is our complicity in the
public sphere through the assumptions
we don’t question in the private one.
And it is a theme of ‘only connect’
which holds these essays together.
Given the urgency of the situation,
this book opts for cutting out the jour-
nalistic middleman. It goes direct to
experienced specialists from the wid-
est possible range of disciplines, to see
if light from whatever angle can be
shed on how Gaia Theory might find a
wider, and deeper, acceptance.
So any lingering doubters on hu-
man agency in climate change will
find, not yet another summary of a
summary of the fourth IPCC report,
but a thoughtful piece by Richard Betts,
one of its lead authors. Instead of this
White daisies inspired the Gaian ‘Daisyworld’ theory
Horatio Morpurgo looks
past the rhetoric on global
warming.
Earthy Realism: The Meaning of Gaia
Mary Midgley (ed.)
Imprint Academic, UK & USA, 2007, £8.95/$17.90
week’s shock story about the degrada-
tion of ecosystems, there is an essay
by biologist David Wilkinson about
micro-organisms, about all the invis-
ible creatures which become extinct as
their environments are destroyed. DNA
finger-printing techniques recently in-
vestigated “bacteria on the leaves of
three species of trees in a Brazilian
tropical forest”. The results “implied
that there were several hundred bacte-
rial species on these leaves, almost all
of which were unknown to science”.
True, bacteria don’t exactly invite the
‘flagship species’ treatment, but then
neither, the bacteria might say, do we,
with our staggering ignorance of what
we are wrecking in the name of ma-
hogany garden benches.
Elsewhere, again most un-news-
worthily, solutions to an intractable
problem on an East African reserve
are teased out by conservationist
Susan Canney. Competing imperatives
– population growth, modern tour-
ism, pastoralism – within parameters
such as soil type, rainfall levels, history
and local politics, threaten an impasse.
Here they are painstakingly re-exam-
PHOTOGRAPH: ANDREA KRAUSE/istockphoto.com
ined as related elements in a system, to
which the slogans of competing fac-
tions are worse than unhelpful.
Gaian thought seems here to imply
grounding live problems in their im-
mediate physical and cultural context,
rather than reducing them to bones of
academic or political contention. As
Mary Midgley puts it in her introduc-
tion, modern physics has long dealt in
“various kinds of forces and fields and
in webs of connection rather than in
separate items to be connected”. Biol-
ogy is now following suit. And if the
scientific and visionary aspects of Gaia
have tended to give Westerners “a ter-
rible squint”, this book is meant to
help fix it.
“We have thought of ourselves”, since
the scientific revolution, “as…active be-
ings detached from the rest of nature and
licensed to use it as we please… Now,
as we start to see the damage we have
unconsciously been doing to the world,
our whole image of ourselves has been
thrown into confusion.”
This ‘confusion’ will be resolved
as much by looking within spiritu-
ally as by scientific observation. Anne
Primavesi examines Jewish insight
into solidarity with the other and the
Christian meanings of forgiveness.
What application might either or both
of these have in the abusive relation-
ship modern humanity has established
with the biosphere? David Midgley
explores Buddhist ideas of how new
beginnings, personal or historical, are
brought about by that kind of prayer-
fulness which is at one with the will to
live. Stephan Harding meanwhile looks
at Jung’s “four ways of knowing” in a
new context.
Genuine science goes to the mi-
crobe on the leaf as to the elephant on
the savannah. Humbly. And so in mat-
ters of self-knowledge we go to our
contemporary experience and the best
of modern psychiatry as to insights ar-
rived at centuries ago by the mystics.
To do all these together is what we are
now called to – a Gaian catholicity by
which our civilisation might estab-
lish a kind of covenant, to replace the
current state of war, between modern
human consciousness and the planet
which gave it birth.
Horatio Morpurgo writes for New Internation-
alist and Le Monde Diplomatique among others
– about how a culturally and politically joined-
up version of environmentalism might work.
Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007 63

GIVING NATURE ITS DUE
F OR WELL OVER three centuries
we have been, as humans, at-
tempting to separate ourselves
from the organic processes of the nat-
ural world. By separating the human
self from a larger inclusion in Nature
and the universe we have proceeded to
deepen the chasm of alienation of the
human from the natural world. In the
broader cultural and historical context
we are involved in deeply dysfunc-
tional endeavours. We are now
encountering a host of critical
thinking that views the enterprise
of modern technological science
as deeply problematic. In Brian
Goodwin’s recent work Nature’s
Due: Healing Our Fragmented Culture we
find a contemporary scientist who
brings a deeply critical perspec-
tive to the outcomes of modern
technological interventions.
Goodwin’s critical eye covers
a vast range of outcomes of ob-
jective technological science. Our
deeply disordered technological
interventions are experienced as a
global crisis in health, in commu-
nity relations, in habitat, species A ‘biomorphic’ extension to a house in Sweden, from Architecture: living on this Earth. He outlines
and cultural destruction and in
changing the very climate of the
planet. All of this and more aris-
es from our separation of Nature and
culture, of quantity and quality, and
of control and participation. Speaking
as both scientist and educator, Good-
win maintains that the direction of
the modern scientific enterprise raises
deep foundational issues on how we
are educating ourselves in the con-
temporary world. Nature’s Due shares
his personal learning journey over a
period of five years as both a teacher
and a learner in the holistic science
Master’s programme at Schumacher
College. The reader of this book gets to
look at the process thinking of a dis-
tinguished biologist who is forging a
learning journey toward a transformed
vision of science that goes beyond the
constraints of the mechanistic reduc-
tionism of modern science.
In Nature’s Due we see an eminent
scientific scholar and mentor who
forges a different attitude towards the
natural world that fosters a ‘feeling’ of
the organicity within all aspects of the
‘web of life’. He is attempting a shift in
the emphasis of science away from the
dichotomies of the modern Cartesian
system to a postmodern science based
on a dynamic open systems framework
64 Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007
R E V I E W S
Edmund O’Sullivan
enjoys the excitement of
new beginnings.
Nature’s Due: Healing Our
Fragmented Culture
Brian Goodwin
Floris Books, UK, 2007, £14.99
Nature by Philip Jodidio, published by Prestel, UK, 2006,
ISBN 3-7913-3527-8
that is organic and holistic and in the
more inclusive Earth context.
In opposition to a framework that
separates values and facts, Goodwin
presents a more holistic interpretation
bringing facts and values together in
dynamic interaction. The natural world
must be known and revealed in all
our relations with it, in the sense of a
participant-observer relationship rath-
er than a detached viewpoint separated
from the natural world. The tacit un-
conscious dimensions of the mind
(intuition) must be valued, and descrip-
tions of the world must be a mixture
of the abstract and the concrete, with
qualitative description being valued on
an equal plane as quantitative descrip-
tion. The mind must be considered to
be part of the natural world, and the
mind/body, subject/object relation-
ships must be aspects of the same
integrative process.
Finally, logic must be both/and
rather than either/or. Organicity must
be reintroduced within a postmodern
system where life processes are not
reducible to components and where
Nature is considered to be alive. Good-
win does not use the word ‘sacred’ but
he locates the human world as a par-
ticipant in the deep creative unfolding
processes of the universe. For humans,
this opens our horizons to the revela-
tory mysteries of Nature. In moving
into the participatory processes of the
universe, we experience a deeper ap-
preciation of all aspects of reality. As
humans, we will be able to experience
our place in Nature as part of a com-
plex web of life.
Goodwin’s book holds in it
the excitement of new begin-
nings. It reads like a primer for
the Great Work. It has a breath-
taking range of scholarship that
takes the reader on a journey of
discovery through cultural his-
tory, scientific history, paradigm
change, modern systems the-
ory, chaos theory, evolutionary
biology and a new field called bi-
ological hermeneutics. In his final
chapter, ‘Living the Great Work’,
he explores the pathways of
transformation in which we may
participate to bring a radical shift
in focus leading to sustainable
the scope and magnitude of this
venture toward sustainability. It
involves the work of forging a
holistic science, a new art, and a move-
ment towards natural design. This also
means revisioning our legal institu-
tions of jurisprudence, economics and
our educational systems. The range of
these concerns constitutes the ‘Great
Work’ of the 21st century.
Envision the beginnings of holistic
ecological design; of art that transforms
communities toward sustainable living.
A recent example might be the artists’
initiative that led to the shutting down
of all public lighting including historic
monuments in London, Rome and Paris
for an hour. Imagine new technologies
based on holistic science that are more
fully ecological within the web of life.
While Goodwin is one of a distin-
guished and diverse group of scholars
supporting this complex paradigmatic
shift, what he brings particularly to this
emerging literature is an ethos of care
for the natural world that offers, and
practises, love in all our relations.
Edmund O’Sullivan is Professor Emeritus and
Associate Director of the Transformative Learn-
ing Centre at the Ontario Institute for Studies
in Education. He is the author of many books,
including Transformative Learning.

THINKING DIFFERENTLY
T O ENCAPSULATE IN one vol-
ume the lives and ideas of
100 ‘movers and shakers’ of
the 20th century and present them
free of sound bite and superficial-
ity is a remarkable achievement. This
visually beautiful book, published by
Green Books, has been compiled by
Satish Kumar – himself a visionary
– and Freddie Whitefield, and each
double-page article has been written
by a regular contributor to Resurgence.
The visionaries – categorised as eco-
logical, social and spiritual – who have
been chosen are men and women who
have profoundly influenced the ethos
of Resurgence and have kept alive the
message of nonviolence, sustainability
and hope during a war-torn century.
The range of thinkers and activists
is hugely eclectic and diverse, embrac-
ing visionaries from both East and
West and from Africa. Visionaries of
the order of Gandhi and Martin Luther
King are side by side with Bob Dylan
and D. H. Lawrence. Ecological vision-
aries include Ted Hughes and Wangari
Maathai, David Bohm and Vandana Shi-
va. What unite this diversity and bring
the whole volume together into a co-
herent whole are the shared themes
of systems thinking, sustainable liv-
ing, small, human-scale communities,
non-anthropocentrism, anti-consum-
erism and anti-globalisation. A holistic
worldview is fundamental. As we read
in the article by Noel Charlton on Gre-
gory Bateson, the ‘systemic wisdom’
that enables human beings to live sus-
Mary Tasker wonders how
far the insights and achieve-
ments of the 20th-century
visionaries will resonate
with the new century.
Visionaries of the 20th Century:
A Resurgence Anthology
Edited by Satish Kumar and Freddie
Whitefield
Green Books, UK, 2006, £14. 95
tainably within the living community
of Earth is the outcome of the total in-
tegration of thought.
Such a transformation in the way
we think is tantamount to a paradigm
shift and it is impossible to be a regu-
lar reader of Resurgence and not grasp
that this is what the magazine consist-
ently calls for. We have been talking
about paradigm shifts for forty years,
since Thomas Kuhn’s concept became
known. But the current crisis in West-
ern society cries out for new ways of
thinking and of doing – in fact, for vi-
sionaries – now. Joseph Campbell, the
radical US psychoanalyst who is one of
this book’s social visionaries, is quoted
as saying, “What all myths have to deal
with is a transformation of conscious-
ness. You have been thinking one way,
now you have to think in a different
way.”
But how can this come about?
PHOTOGRAPH: COURTESY GREEN BOOKS
Campbell says, through “trials and
revelations”. This may be so. The trials
to the human condition that climate
change and social collapse may bring
during this century will necessarily
force new ways of thinking and doing.
More positively and more hopefully
we need to turn to education. Not just
‘schooling’ but education in its wid-
est sense of enabling everyone to live
responsibly and co-operatively in the
natural world.
Surprisingly, not one of the 100
men and women included in Visionaries
is described as an educator – although
it could be argued that all have educa-
tion at the heart of their work in the
sense of preserving the future of hu-
manity – and the work of a visionary
environmental educator such as David
Orr is omitted. Where, however, edu-
cation is referred to as, for example, in
the ideas of Peter Kropotkin, Maurice
Ash and Patrick Geddes, the message
is that learning by doing, learning
through Nature and learning with
hand, heart and brain should be at the
heart of all educational experience.
The task of an educational visionary
of today is to translate these ideas to
meet the changed realities of the 21st
century.
The visionaries of the 21st century
may have to grapple with a different
set of ground rules – as has always
been the case!
Mary Tasker is a teacher and chairperson of
Human Scale Education.
Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007 65
 R E V I E W S

FOOD AT ITS FULLEST

I N 2003 Carlo Petrini stunned a

meeting of the Commission on the
Future of Food, who were preparing
to lobby the World Trade Organization
(WTO). He said that pleasure “is a hu-
Peter Kindersley agrees that
food is part of our cultural
identity and must not be
Where we once all took care of our-
selves, we now pay others to do it – we
are becoming skill-less, completely de-
pendent on the technocratic machine
to supply our needs. Apparently, hous-
man right” and that food is a basic
reduced by industrialised es are now being built without proper
physiological pleasure – every time we processes. kitchens!
eat we experience pleasure! Why has the last fifty years given
And this is what is unique about rise to such pollution, distressing
this book. Yes, it does deal with all the Slow Food Nation: Why Our Food poverty, loss of biodiversity, and ever-
terrible ecological, environmental, po- Should Be Good, Clean, and Fair increasing levels of obesity and cancer
litical and industrial threats that face Carlo Petrini at a time of the greatest wealth and
the production of good sustainable Rizzoli, USA, 2007, $22.50 technological innovation that the world
food, but it also touches something has ever known? I feel great shame that
much more fundamental to us all – the we live in a ‘bubble’ where any type of
experience of food in its fullest sense. we need to realise, as Wendell Berry public good is shunned, socialism has
The Slow Food Movement is the says, that “Eating is an agricultural been completely marginalised and care
only organisation that talks about food act.” Or, as Brillat-Savarin says, “Tell of our fellow human is dwarfed by
first. My concern with the organic me what you eat and I’ll tell you who greed. We must campaign against this
movement is its focus on farming you are” – probably not good news for perversion of our real human nature.
and processing rather than the result most of us! So I am with Petrini one hundred
– food. Unfortunately organics is be- Petrini develops many themes in per cent and will continue to actively
ing industrialised – fast becoming big this book – it is comprehensive in its support his movement while looking
business; certification is about money coverage of the issues. What sets it apart forward to the day when this mental
and more regulation. This produces a is his emphasis on the pleasure of food. ‘bubble’ humanity has got itself into
‘tyranny’ that excludes small growers Food has become a commodity will finally burst. Petrini has subtitled
who cannot afford it, not just in this business ruled by a technocratic dic- his book ‘Why Our Food Should Be
country but worldwide. tatorship sponsored by governments Good, Clean, and Fair’; some people
There is a small Kenyan grower and big business, which collude to may find this too simplistic a state-
situated close to a large international monetise every activity in the name of ment, but to my mind it goes straight
hotel. The grower is organic but cannot greater efficiency and so-called liber- to the heart of the matter.
afford certification. So the hotel sourc- alised trade through the WTO, while
es from South Africa. This goes on the denying any form of public good. Peter Kindersley owns, with his family, Sheep-
world over – organics is a ‘barrier to Progress relies on our de-skilling, lead- drove Organic Farm and Neal’s Yard Remedies.
trade’, as the WTO would say. And yet ing to a world in which we no longer He founded Dorling Kindersley, publisher of non-
the WTO will do nothing to help – its have to cook, mend or make anything. fiction books for adults and children.
interest is with large-scale, ‘efficient’
farmers who export and often leave
their own communities short of food
or, worse still, starving.
So Slow Food has a real and in-
creasingly pressing mission to protect
our food culture and the small produc-
ers who have created and brought such
riches to us over the centuries. Petrini
writes eloquently about this and its
importance today – it is not just the
extinction of wild species, but the ex-
tinction of our diverse food cultures
that is at stake.
In the end it is only our love of
food that will defend biodiversity and
our traditional vegetables, fruits and
livestock. In this book Petrini stresses
the importance of gastronomy – being
a ‘gastronome’– a follower of the ‘laws
of the stomach’– as a way forward.
He believes that food forms part of
our cultural identity and must not be
reduced to an industrial process that
threatens our very existence. We must
become ‘co-producers’ with farmers; Giant puffball – Langermannia gigantea PHOTOGRAPH: TESSA TRAEGER

66 Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007

 WE ARE ARCHITECTS OF AN EMPTY HOUSE
W E ARE IN the middle of an
aesthetic revolution. It con-
cerns the relationship of
the arts to the biosphere. It is a revolu-
tion that would have us heed – and as
a matter of the greatest urgency – the
connections and continuities between
human life and natural life and to grasp
their radical interdependence. As with
all revolutions, this one is rooted in past
movements – especially Romanticism
– and such towering historic figures
as Goethe, Wordsworth and Ruskin
who, in their own distinctive ways,
were committed to re-affirming an
essential communion between the
spirit of human life and the innate
tendency towards form in Nature. The
current revolution, now making its way
through all the arts, is conspicuously a
response to the cataclysmic prospects
we face before the unholy trinity of
global warming, over-population and
the grim depletion of natural resources.
Against the emerging catastrophe, the
new eco-aesthetics cries out for a new
covenant with Nature.
There can be no doubt that Lynne
Wycherley’s new volume of poems is
written out of this impending sense
of ecological disaster. The dedication
reads as follows: “I dedicate this book
to the biota of the north isles – lichens,
moss, insects, grasses, blue hare, geese,
whimbrels, terns … all the minutiae
such lives stand on – and above all,
the whales.” The orientation is as un-
ambiguous as it is marvellous. In a
memorable stanza she writes:
I touch history: taste loss.
Sandwhales extinct. We
are architects of an empty house.
The flight north promised by the
title is a flight into “the arctic abso-
lutes”, into “a place of hard purity”,
into a night sky of sharply edged stars,
into a day landscape of arctic flora, of
gleaming ice and dark magma. During
the day objects stand out with a gleam-
ing blade-like intensity, while at night
they possess a saga-like mystery and
are often lit up by the primitive power
of flame. In ‘Ship Burning’ the energy
of fire is expressed like this:
The carved head cuts the night,
lappets streaming.
The wind crackles gold flags,
Thiassi’s wings, Sleipnir’s mane,
flames’ mutations
flung against the black.
Peter Abbs welcomes
an inspiring volume of
eco-poetry.
North Flight
Lynne Wycherley
Shoestring Press, UK, 2006, £8.95
Here energy and myth come to-
gether, as they do later, when the sparks
climbing the air enter “Heimdall or a
quantum god”.
The journey north is not confined,
however, to the literal geographical north
– to Orkney, Shetland and Iceland.
There is, also, a literary cartography
in operation. The poems, with great
economic imagination, explore the
lives of other eco-poets: John Clare
(particularly in relationship to his late
journey north out of London),George
Mackay Brown, Edwin Muir and Wil-
liam Morris. There is a short narrative
poem about Morris’ journey north in
1871 where the poet, escaping the
emotional pain of his life at Kelmscott,
has to confront the lashing austerities
of Iceland:
Hail draws white lines across
my spirit. Shattered, numb,
I wait for Baldur to stir in the sun.
Of Wycherley’s eco-retellings the
most resonant is ‘Darwin Waits for his
Wife’. In this subtle poem the plight
of Darwin – unable to believe in God,
suffering the death of his most loved
daughter, believing in the beauty of
evolution, respecting his wife’s Chris-
tian piety – is caught with considerable
pathos:
Dear God, mute ghost: I would not
Give Him up, but events orphan me.
I see Annie: her face is closed.
Emma, I am lonelier than you know.
Darwin’s predicament here seems
to have become ours.
And there is a third level to the
journey north.This level is deeply auto-
biographical. It is the voyage of the
author’s spirit, not only out from the
Fenlands, where she was born, into the
wider world of Orkney, Shetland and
Iceland but, also, and more significant-
ly, into a broader poetic commitment
– into a sensitive engagement both
with the living minutiae of Nature
and with the primordial forces un-
derlying their articulation. The book
records with eloquence an ecological
way of being within the encompassing
biosphere.
The poem that expresses this in-
volvement most memorably is ‘Fire
Child’. It plots the life of the volcano
Surtsey alongside the life of the poet,
stage by stage, to secure a sense of fu-
sion between the passing personal and
the deep impersonal, between tem-
poral identity and primordial Nature.
Concentrated into five sparse lyrical
stanzas, it is one of the most striking
eco-autobiographies I have read.
The three criss-crossing threads of
the geographic, the literary-historic
and the intimate autobiographical
make this volume a complex achieve-
ment, and what is so satisfying is that
Lone whimbrel on rocky outcrop, Galle, Sri Lanka
PHOTOGRAPH: ROB SWAN
the large ecological concerns are not
stated in a abstract conceptual man-
ner for the mind to reason with, but
are made to soar in the incomparable
manner of good poetry: through the
vibrations of honed cadence and the
unexpected meetings of deep meta-
phor. In this way the poems bypass
casual speculation and penetrate deep
into the imagination.
North Flight is a compelling contri-
bution to eco-poetry. It deserves to be
widely read.
Peter Abbs is Poetry Editor of Resurgence and
Research Professor of Creative Writing at the
University of Sussex. His selected poems, The
Flowering of Flint, has recently been published
by Salt.
Resurgence No. 245 November/December 2007 67