Some reasons for Wendall Berry's "Sustainable agriculture and Healthy rural communities"

The idea of growth, that what we need is more of it, won’t work: the pie is not unlimited in size.

We have to get back to local and the reason is not an ideal, or economics, it’s physics! Local ultimately emits less CO2 into the atmosphere; on the retail side, we can walk to the market in many instances, or at the very least, drive fewer miles; on the supply side, the delivery trip from the local farm is also shorter. Sure beats shipping stuff half way around the world, especially for no other reason than to have a larger choice of things at the market.

When it is possible, raise food locally, deliver it locally, and buy it locally—sustainable agriculture.

The World Wide Web made globalization possible but economic globalization won’t work—at least as unregulated capitalism would have it. Same reason as always: unregulated capitalism only works (and then, only partially) when you can have unlimited growth and you can’t have unlimited growth for two reasons, and one of them is not negotiable at all.

The one that is partially negotiable is economics; the social science of deciding how to distribute limited resources, and therein lies the rub, the resources are limited, but so many people don’t seem to understand this.

That so many people don’t understand that the things we all need in our daily lives the world over is in limited supply, has been the backstop for capitalism since its beginning.

But the second reason, the one that will not compromise, is physics. If our carbon based industrial system is allowed to continue unabated, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere will continue to rise in an ever increasing manner until it will “cook” humans from the face of the earth, along with most other species. The planet will still be here, but we won’t.

Our legacy? From William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” :
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle,
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Please join 350.org as a way to fight back—if we act quickly and fully maybe it doesn’t have to be “…[all] sound and fury signifying nothing.”