The mechanization of agriculture undeniably brought us many benefits; it freed people of the modern world from manual labor, farmers from the land, and granted people a mobility that expanded human horizons. Coal, oil, natural gas allowed all that we consider normal today to take place, from the making steel and electricity to the invention of chemical fertilizer. These in turn fed all subsequent revolutions in agriculture, transportation, chemistry, and electron-based information (KcGibben). In just few decades the standard of living achieved a one hundred percent growth. KcKibben reminds us that the liberations that resulted from the mechanization of agriculture have brought us many benefits but they have also carried costs; for the most part we have surrendered a fixed identity -- a community, extended family, deep and comforting roots. There is a need for individuals to break, what KcKibben calls “The Spell of Privateness” and move away from the ideal of Hyper-individual.
The pace upon which population growth is taking place around the planet adds another hurdle. According to the United Nations Population Division, over the past two centuries the global population has reached one billion. In 1927, it passed two billion. Sixty years later, in 1987, the world population was five billion, and 12 years later, in October 1999; it passed six billion. The 2006 report states that population is ageing and it is on track to surpass 9 billion persons by 2050. United Nations’ projections state that 60 percent of the world population will be living in urban areas by 2030. Most of that growth will occur in developing nations. An eventual world population of 8-12 billion is expected by the end of the 21st century. It is not clear how this population can be adequately fed and nourished? It is not surprising that many are very concerned about what this means for our future (U.N. Report, 2007).
Population growth is clearly a concern, but so is where these people will decide to live. According to urban planners, the prevailing type of land development sometimes referred to, the exurbs, is neither fully suburban nor fully rural. This type of sprawl is characterized by low-density development, two Americans per acre, which rigorously separates residential dwellers that rely entirely on the automobile transportation, from other land uses. Urban planner J. Barnett links low-density sprawl to the current trends of over consumption of resources, risks to the natural environment, and a loss of community resulting from the time demands imposed by the physical separation of commercial, business, residential, and social land uses. The paving over of some of the nation’s highest quality farmland is leading to the loss of biological diversity and open spaces”.
A Nation addicted to Consumption
Increasing population also means increased quantities of food to be distributed, which increases the amount of trucks used to transport the food, in so doing contributing to traffic congestion and air pollution. Besides food, the other most important commodity in our lives is energy. “Americans are the energy-use champions of all times, requiring twice as much fossil fuel to power each of our lives even compared to citizens of other affluent countries in Western Europe” (McKibben). The statistics are alarming Kingsolver charges, “Americans put almost as much fossil fuel into our refrigerators as our car. Each food item in a typical U.S. meal has traveled and average of 1,500 miles”.
The planet is already buckling under the weight of one America. Each of us uses 6 times as much energy as the average Mexican, 38 times as much as the average Indian, 531 times as much as the man in the Ethiopian street. “The Western economic model, fossil fuel based, auto-centered, throwaway economy is not going to work for China or India” (McKibben).
For Americans the standard of living had achieved a 100 percent growth from the previous century, but not without costs: over consumption of resources, risks to the natural environment, and a loss of community. As the new millennium began, American culture has become fixated with economic growth; a culture of consumerism. The ideology of endless growth has become the predominant organizing ideology for individuals and corporations, for American capitalists and Chinese communists, and for Democrats and Republicans. As population continues to grow in many nations and the amount of farmland and water available to each person continues to shrink, a small farm structure may become central to feeding the planet (McKibben).
This fixation with economic growth, coupled with hyper-individualism permeates through most levels of industrial societies. People don’t need each other for anything anymore, and they don’t need to care about one another. For, as long as one has enough money, a person is insulated from depending on those around them. By some surveys, three quarters of Americans confess that they don’t know their next-door neighbor (McKibben).
Mckibben puts in plain words, first-world economies must set a good example; they must lead the way and become less interested in economic growth and more locally rooted. Devolvement should aim first and foremost at durability. For, it is only then that the rest of the world, especially new emerging economic powers such as India and China, will follow.
