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| Sunday, December 14, 2003 |
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| Sunday, December 14, 2003 |
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Introducing
Environmental Politics
The book lays down a Commoner’s Law of Ecology: everything is linked to everything else; everything must go somewhere, nature knows best; and "there is no such thing as a free lunch". In other words, the Earth is borrowed; we do not own it. We all have to hand it back. Although agriculture and the beginning of settled life announced the beginning of civilization, it was also the beginning of ecological imbalance. As agricultural surpluses were traded, markets grew. This led to permanent settlements and urbanity. The increasing demand for timber and food led to the abuse of Nature and thus appeared the earliest signs of conflict with it. As primitive societies gave way to the Greek and Roman civilizations, the massive structures all but eroded the topsoil. The brilliant engineering of Roman sewers conveniently dumped the city’s waste into the waterways on the outskirts. Christian rationalism contributed its bit to the demystification of nature by speaking against all forms of pagan worship that had, in fact, enshrined ideas of "animism" and nature worship. Colonialism and conquest led to monoculturalism and deforestation. Examples of colonial havoc range from the substitution of mixed farming by plantation farming of single cash crops to the creation of deserts in Mexico by Spain. The ultimate blow came from the Industrial Revolution in Britain that "switched emphasis from reproductive use of the resource base, which leaves it intact, to extractive use, which reduces the total store". Using up non-renewable sources of energy led to the crisis of the ecosystem. Side by side, it heralded modern capitalism that used up fresh trees and later fossilised trees or coal to turn Britain into the "workshop of the world". Ecological debates largely began when the use of excessive chemical pesticides became rampant, especially in the third world where increasing crop production has high priority. The first world squarely lays the blame on its underdeveloped neighbours even as people are still perishing from the defoliants like Agent Orange used in Vietnam to wipe out complete cultivation that provided cover to the native fighters. Apart from acquainting the readers with ecological disasters such as the Greenhouse Effect, the appearance of the Ozone hole, the breakdown of the food chain, the atrophying of the waters, the early and quick releases of carbon into the environment owing to burning coal, oil and gas, the author, Stephen Croall (with inputs from artist William Rankin) explains our complicity in destroying the ecosystem. The broiler chicken is the supermarket’s answer to food consumption: it is "bred to live just six months in a giant factory, sitting in a cage, scarcely moving, almost always eating, under constant medication, pumped with growth hormones and, if it survives the stress, finally slaughtered by an assembly line". The much-touted Green Revolution in Punjab has also been an ecological disaster resulting in the erosion of the topsoil and leading to shortage of water, contamination of soil, the neglect of small farmers and a greater susceptibility to pests. Its consequences have, paradoxically, benefited the agrochemical industry, the factories producing agricultural equipment and machinery, the builders of dams and the petrochemical companies, all of which contribute in vitiating the environment. Voices warning against ecological disasters were scarcely heard in the 1960s when Rachel Carson cautioned scientists to adopt a "humbler approach" to nature. By the 1970s, huge increases in population and the shrinking of natural reserves virtually created a lobby of environmentalists. By the 1990s, there were green parties almost everywhere. Measures like operating CNG buses can only be a temporary solution, the author argues; one has to target the very source of pollution. This involves a shift "from road to rail traffic, from fossil fuels to renewable energy, from chemical to organic farming and from wasteful to low-waste technologies". The French ecologist Andr`E9 Gorz has suggested means of "redirecting" production rather than increasing it. Producing "informally", that is, working ourselves, "exchanging" with our neighbours, producing and consuming locally might be a means of bringing back the small farmer. The Californian town of Davis is one such eco-village where 25 per cent of local needs are met through local cultivation, where every tree and bush bears edible fruits and berries. More than dismantling technologies, an "ecological perspective" must be in place where people are judged less in terms of "efficiency" or "productivity" and measured more in terms of "health, harmony, beauty, justice and equality". |
IF
the Earth were imagined to have been in existence for a month, the
arrival of the human species would have started only a minute ago. In
this month, each day would have to be equal to 150 million years! The
preservation of this fragile universe and its ecosystem is the
responsibility of the human species that arrived late, but caused
enormous upheavals on the Earth where all species had, thus far,
integrated themselves with nature. Introducing Environmental Politics
attempts to impart education about the biosphere and its inhabitants at
a basic level and about the chain reaction that results from disturbing
even one small item on its vast itinerary. The chief culprit, of course,
is the human species that regards the rest of the ecosystem as
"natural resources" made for its own consumption and
preservation.