Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
localized future might challenge many of our current habits and expectations, and suggest ways en-
lightened policy makers could help ease the passing of globalism and the re-rooting of communities
in place.
What Has Globalization Done for You Lately?
Broadly defined, globalization can be said to have a long history. The Roman Empire, the post-1492
European age of conquest, the British Empire, and the massive expansion of international trade that
started in the late 20th century each brought more long-distance communication, travel, and trans-
port of goods. All of these projects resulted in an increase of wealth for elites in urban trading cen-
ters, and mounting costs borne mostly by indigenous peoples and nonhuman species.
The last of these four great projects—for which the term
globalization
was coined—was by far
the most intensive and extensive. It was driven by the convergence of key resources, developments,
and inventions: cheap oil, satellite communications, container ships, computerized monitoring of
inventories, the flourishing of multinational corporations, the proliferation of liberal trade treaties,
and the emergence of transnational bodies such as the World Trade Organization.
For economists, globalization made perfect sense. The doctrine of comparative advantage held
that if low-wage workers in Shanghai can make widgets cheaper than unionized factory employees
in Camden, New Jersey, can, then widget manufacturing should move to China. And, to a large ex-
tent, it did.
Economists said everyone would eventually benefit, but casualties quickly mounted. Real
wages for American workers stopped growing in the 1970s. Manufacturing towns throughout the
Northeast and Midwest withered. Meanwhile, China began burning immense amounts of coal to
make mountains of toys, furniture, clothing, tools, appliances, and consumer electronics, cloaking
its cities in a pall of toxic fumes and driving its greenhouse gas emissions to world record-setting
levels. In effect, the United States was importing cheap consumer goods while exporting jobs and
pollution. In both China and the United States, levels of economic inequality soared.
These trends have direct and indirect manifestations in Sonoma County. In the first half of the
20th century my region's economy was diverse and agriculture-based. Farmers and ranchers pro-
duced a variety of foods including wheat, hops, prunes, apples, eggs, milk, and beef. Building ma-
terials were sourced from nearby forests and quarries. Today the county banks on one significant
product: wine. Most of it is exported. Grapes have become an ecological blight on rural areas, where
vineyards extend from horizon to horizon, crowding out ecologically diverse native oak woodlands.
Wine leaves by the truckload, while everything else the people of Sonoma County need and use
arrives on the backs of eighteen-wheelers—much of it from China. The vast majority of food con-
sumed here, once locally grown, is now imported. Processed and packaged edibles available in
downscale supermarkets and fast-food chain outlets in Santa Rosa are identical to what you'd find
anywhere else in America these days, and contribute to rising regional rates of obesity and other
food-related diseases.
California is one of the most trade-dependent states. Silicon Valley (just a couple of hours' drive
south of Sonoma County) generates legendary wealth, purportedly from the groundbreaking ideas
of its engineers and technicians. One of the hottest of these ideas was the smartphone, an invention
that has swept the world. But the
idea
of a smartphone would amount to little without cheap labor in
Asia with which to affordably manufacture hundreds of millions of these little devices, and without
mines around the world churning out raw materials from which to make them.
