We often hear that the world is getting smaller. But the environmentalist and writer Bill McKibben says the world is also getting bigger. Too big, in fact, for most of us. Last winter, McKibben ate only food grown within 60 miles of his home in Vermont. His latest book, "Wandering Home," chronicles his travels by foot from Vermont through the Adirondack mountains of New York. Through his books, articles and public appearances, McKibben has emerged as one of the most eloquent voices urging us to reconsider what he calls "the global scale of our lives."
"People everywhere are excited by the treasures of the whole planet," he says in this commentary. "But we crave, too, the security of belonging in some place whose scale makes sense. Anyway, in the end, it’s only those vital local communities that can generate the music, the recipes, the solutions that are worth sharing around the world."
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Piece Description
We often hear that the world is getting smaller. But the environmentalist and writer Bill McKibben says the world is also getting bigger. Too big, in fact, for most of us. Last winter, McKibben ate only food grown within 60 miles of his home in Vermont. His latest book, "Wandering Home," chronicles his travels by foot from Vermont through the Adirondack mountains of New York. Through his books, articles and public appearances, McKibben has emerged as one of the most eloquent voices urging us to reconsider what he calls "the global scale of our lives." "People everywhere are excited by the treasures of the whole planet," he says in this commentary. "But we crave, too, the security of belonging in some place whose scale makes sense. Anyway, in the end, it’s only those vital local communities that can generate the music, the recipes, the solutions that are worth sharing around the world."
5 Comments
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Review of THINK GLOBAL: Bill McKibben commentaryMy favorite pieces on public radio are those that take a just a few minutes yet give me something to think about for the whole day - something to discuss with friends and family. This commentary does just that. The piece is well written and presented well. McKibben touches on why people are excited about new things from distant lands, but still long for the familiarity of their own stomping grounds. In a time when keeping things local is becoming difficult and it seems as if the whole world is turning into a "Tower of Babel," this piece tells about local people making a difference in their communities. |
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Think Local, Act Glob….I Mean Local---I want my world music on my local radio station that also carries the local basketball game and in-depth reporting from the state legislature, not some Clear Channel pipeline of bland designed to appeal to the broadest possible audience.---
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Transcript
The interesting question is always what comes next. And since we live in a fully globalized world—where the beats on my Ipod come from Mali and the apple in the supermarket grew in China—there are only two possibilities. One is Neptune. And the other is a slow turn towards a world where stronger local communities, and economies, balance the planetary scale of our modern lives.
I think the second is more likely. So much of the gloalized economy we now take for granted is built on incredibly cheap fossil energy; as the price of oil flashes steadily up, the bizarre arithmetic that means its always cheaper to get things from afar may stop making sense. And as it does, we may recover some sense of the pleasure that comes from relying on neighbors. Look at what we eat, for instance—in food circles, in recent years, the greatest buzz hasn’t been about new ingredients from distant lands, but i...
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Peter R. Snell
Posted on May 21, 2005 at 07:53 AM | Permalink
Review of THINK GLOBAL: Bill McKibben commentary
This brief commentary is pretty obvious to people who have any concern at all for the enviromnment and both local and international sustainability. Nevertheless, it serves as a lively pep talk for those of us (and that is most of us, I suspect) who have good intentions we fully intend to put into practice -- tomorrow.
McKibbon has interesting examples of local success stories and discusses the balance between what we can reasonable want locally and internationally. He wants, for example, to listen to world music on a local channel along with reports of the local high school basketball team, not some bland market-driven Clear channel.
This is a short, punchy commentary that reminds us of the importance of the "think globally act locally" slogan, without requiring an investment of a half-hour or more of listening.