The State of the Union Address vs. Helena Norberg-Hodge, the Importance of Localization, and the Death of the Techno-Economic Juggernaut

As for the developed countries from which this corrupting ethos of progress goes out: more and more their “growthmania” distorts their environments and robs the world of its nonrenewable resources for no better end than to increase the output of ballistic missiles, electric hairdryers, and eight-track stereophonic tape recorders.  But in the statistics of the economic index such mad waste measures out as “productivity,” and all looks rosy.

                                                                                                                                -E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful

During the State of Union address last week, President Barack Obama insinuated that Congress should grant him Fast Track authority (trade promotion authority that cannot be blocked by Congress) to make real the embryonic Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TPP) without directly referring to this nascent legislative monstrosity by name.  He promised that, unlike previous trade agreements (such as NAFTA), the TPP would lead to domestic job creation, boost worker protections, and help the United States maintain its economic lead over China.  Obama was speaking to a vegetated Congress comprised largely of sluggish old white men, and upon hearing a reference to a trade deal the pyschostimulants in what is left of their brains kicked-in and they went wild. 

At a time when we should be talking about devising and supporting policies and practices to safeguard the natural world and restore the health of the global forests and seas, the corporate-backed government of the United States, in pushing forward the TPP, is talking about propping-up and perpetuating a money-driven, consumption-obsessed, and self-destructive economic system which sees the all the earth as fecund land that is to be transformed or exploited for private profit and the oceans as expansive aquatic interstates upon which to transport plastics and electronic goods to market. 

In times such as these, it would behoove us to turn away from the opportunistic talking heads that care little about the health of the planet and those that reside upon it, and listen to those people who have for decades advocated a system of economics which respects and supports life.  One such person is Swedish-born author and activist Helena Norberg-Hodge, and here is video footage, accompanied by excerpt highlights, of her Economics of Happiness Speech at the International Forum on Globalization’s October 2014 conference, Techno-Utopianism and the Fate of the Earth:

        I really believe that we need a global movement to deal with a global problem, which is the global economy. 

        We really are now talking about the ninety-nine percent waking up to the immense suffering that is being imposed on them by a blind, giant, techno-economic system.  It’s a juggernaut that we should best understand as a machine that is being pushed by less than one-percent of the global population, pushed, actively pushed…far less than one-percent of the global population because, in increasing the scale of this techno-economic juggernaut, what we’re talking about is the trade treaties that we have been trying to raise awareness about in the IFG.  These trade treaties are the…is the arena where governments are sitting around the table lobbied by big banks and big corporations to give those giant global businesses more freedom.  Free trade is freedom for the giants to move in and now of local, regional, national spaces and economies.   The latest incarnation of this, the TTIP, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership – sounds very friendly – is going to further this situation where corporations can sue governments if they dare to protect the environment or their citizens against the rape and pillage that is happening in the name of free trade…

Bucket Wheel Excavator.  Image from http://cleantechnica.com/files/2009/03/1200px-bagger-garzweiler.jpg

We need to distinguish between collaboration to protect Mother Earth and to protect society, and collaboration to increase the scale of economic activity.  And as we increase the scale of economic activity, we’re talking about increasing the scale of the players, the giants that are merging – Exxon Mobile; it’s not enough to be a giant multinational, to surivive within the globalizing rat race, you have to keep on getting bigger and bigger and bigger – and what we have, as I say, is a system that we should understand as a sort of machine, an empire in the sky that is, it is a tsunami that is about to hit in a much, much more dramatic way than we’ve experienced…

US Army Celebrating its 230th Birthday at the NYSE

            So localizing, as a systematic shift away from this madness, needs the big picture activism to make all those narrow constituencies – all of them very important in value – but to link together, to see that this escalation in the global path above all is a massive increase in energy consumption every step of the way.  Globalizing the economy means the distances are growing by the minute.  We have countries importing and exporting the same food.  Last time we looked the U.S was exporting 900,000 tons of beef and veal while importing, guess what, about 900,000 tons of beef and veal.  The U.K exports roughly as much milk and butter as it imports.  And regularly you will have fish flown across the world, apparently tuna here form the east coast will be flown to Japan to be weighed before it comes back to the sushi bars here.  Shrimp are flown from the UK to Thailand to be peeled, flown back again.  Apples flown to South Africa to be washed and waxed, flown back again.  When we talk about CO2 emissions, let’s link it to corporate-rule and a systematic escalation in CO2 emissions.  Let’s really get away from an Al Gore framing which told you, “go home and change your light bulb to something rather toxic, don’t drive your car, don’t travel.”  In the meanwhile the purveyors of the global narrative are traveling faster and more than ever…

            As I say, localizing, for me and for an increasing number of people, is the clear, opposite matrix to the continuing global monoculture corporate machine.  Localizing is not about just acting local, it’s not about buying local.  If I say to people, “buy local food, only eat local,” in many parts of the world they’ll be eating cotton or coffee.  We’re talking about working to build up the localized structures that not only allow for but that nurture diversified small-scale food production.  As Vandana pointed out, that is the only way to feed the world.  It is far more productive in every sense of the word...

            …the dominant global market which will fly in and deliver things from 10,000 miles away, costing less than local products.  One of the many bits of information we need to look at in our big picture activism is how can it be that food – which is fresh and needs to be fresh, is perishable – how can something from 10,000 miles away be deliver in your local market costing less than a fresh local apple or banana from only a mile away – that what’s happening.  Because, we have not been told by either left or right that we are subsidizing the long distances.  By subsidizing the long distances, by subsidizing export-import, we are subsidizing these giant corporations.  We want to shift those subsidies and with that, we want to shift the regulation that de-regulate the global while over-regulating the local.