Relocalization and Resource Depletion

Is Relocalization of the Economy a Solution to Our Resource Problems?

For many environmentalists relocalizing the economy is a mantra for sustainability. Is economic relocalization an economic cure all for the resource crisis that we are facing? One problem that relocalization is supposed to address is the cost of energy used for transporting freight. Obviously products that are manufactured nearby have a shorter distance to travel and require less energy for transport. Thus relocalization of economic production is a form energy efficiency with which we can attempt to combat rising energy prices. Of course the market is obsessed with cost efficiency, and if energy costs become a major limiting factor of production then market forces will drive innovations in energy efficiency. However, markets are short sighted. Corporations want this year's bottom line to look good, and they may not be sufficiently interested in making infrastructure changes that will make sense in an intermediate or long term future of relative energy poverty compared to today. Thus far sighted individuals and governments can encourage infrastructure changes that will allow us to start preparing for the future now, rather than waiting for strict economic necessity for force such changes upon us. We can start growing food locally in ways that preserve topsoil and recycle nutrients. We can construct energy efficient, long-lived buildings, using locally available materials to the maximum extent practical. We can create walkable neighborhoods, encourage the use of bicycles, and so forth. The market for such products may be relatively limited at present, but as energy becomes more expensive we will be in a better position to provide basic necessities than if we continue our total dependence on a globalized infrastructure.

However, if economic relocalization is pursued only as a means to greater efficiency (that is as means of doing everything that we do now with less expenditure of energy), then I do not think that it represents a solution to the problem of living well in a finite world. For one thing "what we do now" cannot be done entirely with local resources. Relocalization pushed to its logical extreme leads to the lifestyle of neolithic villages. Not every little bioregion has access to high quality metal ores and to various other rare elements which are used in a variety of manufacturing processes. Furthermore many modern production enterprises are extremely capital intensive. You cannot start a semiconductor processing line in your garage using savings from the money you make selling organic vegetables. Not every little bioregion is going to have the resources to build complex medical analysis devices such as MRI machines and x-ray imagers. And so forth.

For another thing, "what we do now" requires, by structural necessity, constantly striving to get materially richer. This kind of striving has to be abandoned if long term stability of human economic systems is to be achieved. In the material realm, at least, we need to reach a state of economic maturity in which we strive to live well with the minimum consumption of resources and the minimum negative impact on the biosphere consistent with such a style of living. In order for eight to nine billion people (barring a huge upsurge in human mortality, stabilization of the earth's human population short of 8 billion people seems highly unlikely) to live well, it seems likely that the OECD countries are going to have to accept simplification of their economic infrastructure compared to its current state. Some people argue that the current economies of the highly developed nations are so wasteful and frivolous that by eliminating unnecessary products and services and increasing the efficiency of production of the remaining products and services we could greatly decrease our resource use with only minimal impact on our quality of life. And in fact many negative impacts on our quality of life such as air, water, soil, light and noise pollution might be improved by decreased economic activity rather than harmed by it. Be that as it may, some form of voluntary simplicity, some development a social conception of 'enough' in the realm of material wealth is absolutely necessary for the creation of a sustainable economic system. Relocalization, in and of itself, does not imply a movement toward voluntary simplicity, although both strategies could be combined together.

Another important aspect of voluntary simplicity, or the shift from a wealth increasing economy to a wealth preserving economy, is mutual support. Private finance capitalism as it currently exists strongly encourages an 'every nuclear family for itself' attitude about economic security. If the future security of individuals and families depends on how much wealth they have stored up, then a growth orientation will inevitably follow, no matter how local the scale of the economy. Even during the most prosperous eras of private finance capitalism the percentage of individuals or families who feel secure about their financial future is quite small, so that salary increases and general economic growth are almost universally desired. The only real source of wealth is the integrated economic community and the infrastructure and resource base which support it. Private financial accumulations are merely claims against the output of the economic community. We need to create a system of universal social security in which people who support the economic community by their work have confidence that the community will support them in sickness and in old age, independently of the amount of wealth which they have stored up. Earning a living should be about earning a living and not about accumulating wealth without limit.

One can argue that this idea of mutual support can be more easily implemented in small communities than in large communities, so that this requirement of a sustainable economic system also points toward relocalization as the future path of human economic systems. Again if this idea is carried to its logical conclusion it leads to neolithic villages as the future basis of human society. And in fact, plenty of people exist who assert that cooperative, mutually supportive economic systems cannot work outside of groups of people much larger than one hundred individuals. Promoting such ideas on any scale in our current society is extremely difficult. One can easily imagine going to one's local city council meeting and pushing for policies which promote local sustainable food production, energy efficient building techniques, bicycle transportation, etc., but anyone promoting mutual economic support would be regarded as an alien being from another spacial dimension even at this relatively local level.

I have tried hard to convince myself that some altered, rescaled version, of the 'every nuclear family for itself' economic paradigm can function effectively as part of a wealth maintaining economic system, but I have been unable to do so. This is not to say that I think that the nuclear family as an economic unit needs to vanish from the face of the earth. But earning your daily bread needs to be about earning your daily bread and not about gaining individual, private security through the accumulation of wealth. If we want our economic technology to include anything above the neolithic level, then these ideas about wealth preservation and mutual support also have to be extended to the larger economic community which will enable the creation and maintenance of more complex technology. Eliminating the growth orientation of our economy is the essential requirement of creating a sustainable future and not relocalization per se.

July 9, 2008