Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
smaller and more local governance systems will be more durable than empires and continent-span-
ning nation states. But will surviving regional and local governments end up looking like anarchist
collectives or warlord compounds? Recent democratic innovations pioneered or implemented in the
Arab Spring and the Occupy movement hold out more than a glimmer of hope for the former.
Anthropologist David Graeber argues that the failure of centralized governmental institutions
can open the way for democratic self-organization; as evidence, he cites his own experience doing
doctoral research in Madagascar villages where the state had ceased collecting taxes and providing
police protection. Collecting revenues and enforcing laws are the most basic functions of govern-
ment; thus these communities were effectively left to govern and provide for themselves. Accord-
ing to Graeber, they did surprisingly well. “[T]he people had come up with ingenious expedients of
how to deal with the fact that there was still technically a government, it was just really far away.
Part of the idea was never to put the authorities in a situation where they lost face, or where they
had to prove that they were in charge. They were incredibly nice to [government officials] if they
didn't try to exercise power, and made things as difficult as possible if they did. The course of least
resistance was [for the authorities] to go along with the charade.”
4
Journalism professor Greg Downey, commenting on Graeber's ideas, notes, “I saw something
very similar in camps of the Movimento Sem Terra (the MST or 'Landless Movement') in Brazil.
Roadside shanty camps attracted former sharecroppers, poor farmers whose small plots were
drowned out by hydroelectric projects, and other refugees from severe restructuring in agriculture
toward large-scale corporate farming.” These farmers were victims, but they were by no means
helpless. “Activists and religious leaders were helping these communities to set up their own gov-
ernments, make collective decisions, and eventually occupy sprawling ranches. . . . The MST lever-
aged the land occupations to demand that the Brazilian government adhere to the country's consti-
tution, which called for agrarian reform, especially of large holdings that were the fruits of fraud. . .
. [C]ommunity-based groups, even cooperatives formed by people with very little education, deve-
loped greater and greater ability to run their own lives when the state was not around. They elected
their own officials, held marathon community meetings in which every member voted (even chil-
dren), and, when they eventually gained land, often became thriving, tight-knit communities.”
5
A Theory of Change for a Century of Crisis
If groups seeking to make the post-carbon transition go more smoothly and equitably are to have
much hope of success, they need a sound strategy grounded in a realistic theory of change. Here,
briefly, is a theory that makes sense to me.
For the past four decades, since the release of
Limits to Growth
, there have been many scattered
efforts to develop alternatives to our current fossil-fueled, growth-based industrial paradigm. These
include renewable energy systems; local, organic, and permaculture food systems; urban design
movements seeking to reduce the dominance of the automobile in our built environment; architec-
tural programs with the goal of designing buildings that require no external energy input and that are
constructed using renewable and recycled materials; alternative currencies not attached to interest-
bearing debt, as well as alternative banking models; and alternative economic indicators that take
account of social and environmental factors. While such efforts have achieved some small degree
of implementation, varying significantly from place to place around the globe, they have generally
failed to substantially reduce reliance on fossil fuels, blunt the overall momentum of society toward
