"This is a
remarkable book that should be read by many."
Garden Earth
– from hunter and
gatherers to global capitalism and thereafter
There is no land left
to settle, the last frontier we have left to civilize is ourselves. (Jewel)
Garden Earth stands out from the current flow of books on
climate change, the financial crisis, globalization, the food and agriculture
crisis or peak-oil. It avoids the trap of using just one lens to make sense of
the world. It does, however, put these present day problems in a wide and deep
perspective. The main themes examined by Garden
Earth are ecology; society and its power relations; the market economy and
capitalism; and, technology and energy.
Garden Earth looks at the history of human society, how it
was shaped by ecological and social conditions, and also at how we shaped
nature to serve us. As an example, it shows the importance of trade for our
ecological adaptation; trade allowed us to populate places where some resources
were missing and it allowed us to adapt our production to the conditions of the
location. The development of new energy
sources and their application in various technological forms have had a crucial
impact on development. This includes the first use of fire, how animal energy
was harnessed for traction and transport, and the use of wind for trade and for
new conquests. Up to the mid eighteenth century, wood was the main source of
energy, and that led to intense pressure on the forests. Large tracts of Europe and other developed parts of the world were
deforested. Coal changed all this. In the short run, it saved the forest. In
the long run, it paved the way for an enormous expansion of energy use to a
level where each human uses energy resources corresponding to that of fifty
people. These are our energy slaves, as Gunnar calls them.
In early
societies, it was obvious that more energy had to be produced by farming than was
consumed, otherwise humanity could not have worked and reproduced. With the
introduction of fossil fuel, all this changed. In the modern day, around 15-150
times (figures vary considerably depending on how they are calculated) more
energy is used to produce our food than we get from it. We now have put not
only one, but two earths into our service and our uses are still expanding. We are
thus eroding the capital, the basis of our existence. More than 40 percent of
the land surface is used for food production and for our cities. Because most
of us live in cities and work in offices, shops or factories, we think that we
are less dependent on nature. But in reality, we are as dependent on nature as
our hunting and gathering predecessors or farmers were. And we are dependent on
many more parts of nature than they were.
Garden Earth discusses the reasons for the success – and
failures – of civilizations. A one-sided emphasis on material wealth, growth
and profit was a forceful driver for the development of the modern market
economies and industrial capitalism, powered by fossil fuel. It has created
unprecedented productivity and wealth. It has also contributed to the increase
of human rights and liberation of women and other oppressed groups, compared to
the preceding feudal societies. But it has also come with a price. The price is:
depletion of natural resources; squeezing out other organisms and ecosystems to
such an extent that we are endangering our own survival; causing climate change
and chemical contamination, to mention just a few. There is no evidence that a
continued economic growth delivers better well-being for the human. Should we
not be striving for well-being rather than GDP figures? Should we not be
seeking satisfaction rather than profit?
Capitalism
and market economy have gradually expanded to bigger and bigger parts of our
life: from markets for goods to labour and soil. Later, financial markets –
buying money for money – developed. Lately, there has been a large scale
“marketization” of social capital, when public goods have been transferred to
private ownership and management.
Our society
has no mechanisms to value the services of nature. This has led to large scale
depletion of nature. One way of dealing with this is to “liquidate” these
resources and services, to make them into tradeable commodities, e.g. carbon payments or payment to farmers for
environmental services. There is logic in this, but it also means that we are
using the same system that actually created the problem to fix it. Is that
wise? Gunnar says a resounding no. Even if it can give short term gains, it represents
the final privatization and marketization of human life. To let nature itself –
the air we breathe, the water we drink – be managed by markets seems like a
very risky venture.
Our society
and the capitalist market economy have failed to create wealth for many. Big
parts of humanity are as poor today as they were fifty years ago, despite
unprecedented growth. Gaps between the rich and poor are abnormal and growing.
We have failed to create an equitable society. In addition, the economic
system, supposedly managing itself through the “invisible hand”, is in constant
need of corrections and controls, simply because it doesn’t work as it is
supposed to. The real failures of the industrial capitalist society are not
booms and busts or inflation; they are mere symptoms of underlying conflicts.
The real failure is that it erodes both the natural and social capital that it
needs for its operation. It lacks the regenerative properties which a
successful society and a successful technology need. Finally, it is also based
on flawed assumptions of what motivates human enterprise and what the drivers
for human progress are.
The
capitalist economy and its associated values – such as the vision of constant
growth – were perhaps appropriate for a world bent on expansion and
colonization. But we have now colonized what there is to colonize and spread
ourselves over all parts of the globe. Even if economic growth is still
possible (we can always create new ‘virtual’ globes on the Internet),
biological, physical and geographic growth aren’t.
In the last part of Garden Earth, Gunnar
Rundgren outlines the changes that are needed. Obviously, we need new values
and paradigms. We also need a new economy and new forms of cooperation; we need
to look beyond the market-state (and the left-right) dichotomy. Neither of them
was created to deal with the kind of problems that we are facing today. The
solution can be found in civil society, in the voluntary cooperation of
citizens, and in participatory democracy. Some of the sacred institutions, the
fetishes of the current civilization, need to be dethroned and put into a new
context, in particular money, property and markets. We have changed the globe
so much that Nature can’t make it without us anymore. More and more wild life are
dependent on us for their survival. There is no point in looking back to the
time when we were equal to the elk, the carrot and the sheep. Today, whether we
like it or not, we must act as gardeners for the whole Garden Earth. And we
must manage the planet as a garden, as our garden.
The views
above are from the book, Garden Earth – from
hunter and gatherers to global capitalism and thereafter. It was published
by Gidlunds in Swedish (see photo) April 2010. The book has got good reviews
(see box) and Gunnar has been invited to present his book at universities and
various public fora. It has also got distribution support for
"excellent and high-quality literature" from the Swedish Council of
Culture, which means that the book was freely distributed to 300 public
libraries.
A
few reviews from Sweden
This
is a remarkable book that should be read by many.... It makes his book unique
and actually quite impressive.
The narrative has many references to
environment and political sciences and is a very thoughtful and persistent
argumentation for a radical societal change.
Trädgården Jorden is an important
contribution to the environmental debate. It is full of information, references
and examples and it has no black and white analysis or simple answers. It is
thus as complex and at the same time as simple as a garden can be.
The English
version is now offered to publishers. It is an extensive re-work of the Swedish
version. The analysis is sharper, the narrative clearer. Examples have been
adapted to an international audience. The last part, pointing to the future,
has been expanded. The manuscript is currently being reviewed by prominent
experts from civil society, academia and international organisation in five
continents.
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