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Published on Tuesday, December 6, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/12/06-4
by Zoe Weil
The economic localization movement is growing. Locavores have become widespread, with the “100 mile diet” representing the new eco-conscious food trend. Author Helena Norberg-Hodge begins her TEDx talk, The Economics of Happiness, with this impassioned plea: “For all of us around the world the highest priority, the most urgent issue, is fundamental change to the economy,” and goes on to say, “The change that we need to make is shifting away from globalizing to localizing economic activity.” This, she suggests, is the economics of happiness. Even in my own town, a yoga studio has a sign on the wall urging yoga practitioners to shop locally.
As a humane educator who teaches about the interconnected issues of human rights, environmental preservation and animal protection, I am uncomfortable with the fervor surrounding localization. While the farmer’s market and local food movements have certainly been beneficial – helping farmers, communities, and individuals alike – it’s not realistic, desirable, or responsible to reject global trade out of hand or to advocate localization as the urgent answer for our times.
A full commitment to local economies would mean that in Maine, where I live, people would need to give up coffee, citrus, rice, cotton and synthetic fabrics (among many other things) and rely on potatoes, wheat, lobsters and clams, canned food stored from our brief summers, and wear linen clothing and deer hides. It would also mean that medicines discovered and produced by scientists working in New England would no longer be exported to places where they are most needed. Perhaps they wouldn’t be discovered or produced at all, given that many ingredients and processes are derived across the globe.
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