Hope:
Human and Wild
True Stories of Living Lightly on the Earth
Bill McKibben
Hungry Mind Press: Saint Paul, Minnesota 1995
227 pages.
ISBN 1-886913-13-7 paper
In this unpretentious but surprisingly relevant book Bill McKibben confronts
one of the most morally troubling issues of our time. Can the desperate
economic condition of poor countries improve without severe damage to the
planet? McKibben has come to a change of heart and a mood of cautious optimism
differing from his earlier, more pessimistic The
End of Nature.
Key to Hope, Human and Wild is the belief that human ingenuity, working
in tandem with the persistence of nature, can produce what even the
disillusioned would call miracles. "Nature's grace in the American East
offers hope for a world in need of models." Since agriculture moved to the
Middle West, forest is replacing pasture, and beaver dams are returning to
state-owned wilderness. Perhaps, McKibben speculates, the East may became an
expanding frontier of recovery.
Can nature's bounty make growth possible without destruction in the world's
poorest places? As journalist and environmental advocate, he presents two Third
World case studies that illustrate the ways in which stubborn poverty can be
improved within a humane and livable environment that protects the planet. In
1993, McKibben moved with his wife and small child from his home in the rural
Adirondacks into an apartment in Curitiba, a city in the State of Parana, in
Brazil, with a per capital income of $2500 per year. His goal was to explore
"livability", a concept of pleasure in community, and drawbacks
avoided.
Thanks to a lucky political chance, Jaime Lerner, architect and town planner
became the new mayor. He recast a previously planned overpass, well known in
American cities as a destroyer of neighborhoods, into South America's first
pedestrian mall. Money originally intended for flood control was used to dam up
rivers into lakes that became the heart of small parks. When floods came, the
ducks swam a little higher! Green space increased land values and tax revenues
making the town attractive to international companies.
Newly designed speedy buses running on arteries that reflect the major
directions of traffic flow carry 300 passengers at top speed in one load, four
times as many people as in Rio de Janeiro, with far less cost per kilometer and
the bonus of cleaner air.
Lerner, now governor of Parana, has started a system of exchange ingenious in
its simplicity. Every dweller of the formerly dangerous rat-infested favela
slums receives a bag of food in exchange for a bag of garbage, a down-to-earth
method of improving public health, sanitation and public involvement in the
life of the city. Lerner believes that local governments can move more quickly,
and cities will be more important than nations in solving environmental
problems.
Across the world is Kerala, one of India's poorest states. Citizens of Kerala
enjoy an impressive life expectancy of about 70, and 100% literacy. On his
visit McKibben saw enough to prevent him from romanticizing poverty. Rural
villages had tiny dwellings with no beds, only a few stools and cooking
utensils.
Yet Kerala, with a stagnant economy and chronic unemployment, has no beggars,
no girl children left out to die, a birth rate of two children per family, and
the highest newspaper consumption in India. Streets are filled with neatly
dressed children going to school. Religious reform of the caste system,
redistribution of land, and subsidized food, have produced the elimination of
misery in spite of extreme poverty. McKibben points out that a low-level
economy can create a decent life, abundant in the things-- health, education,
community--that are most necessary for us all. We can opt for the health of the
planet and still create a humane society that permits growth.
In these two extreme cases, problems intractable elsewhere have been resolved
by ingenuity and human will. The answer is, as expressed in his title, hopeful
for both humanity and nature.
Phyllis Ehrenfeld is a
playwright, editor and book reviewer. Five of her plays have been seen in the
Bergen County area. She holds the Arnold Gingrich Award in fiction from the New
Jersey State Council on the Arts. Formerly editor of the American Anorexia
Bulimia Association Newsletter, she is cited in Who's Who in America and
the Northeast.
Hope:
Human and Wild
True Stories of Living Lightly on the Earth
Bill McKibben
Hungry Mind Press: Saint Paul, Minnesota 1995
227 pages.
ISBN 1-886913-13-7 paper