The 2009 Copenhagen climate talks amounted to another waiting game among countries eager to protect their industrial economies or—and this is also appalling—gain financial compensation for ecological crimes committed by others. Perhaps one bright spot came from a contingent of 150 peasant farmers from the “global South.” While endangered by the global economy, they came to communicate that their non-industrial model of farming could save the planet.
They might well be right, but only if that model is also applied to the global North. And yet, in the North, the movement away from industrial farming is too slow, and might remain so unless governments get involved.
Presently that hardly seems possible, but reasons for getting involved are multiplying at a dizzying rate. In the U.S. alone, prisoners and persons on parole or on probation number over 7 million; persons in danger of losing their homes number in the millions; and, the unemployment number is above 15 million. Furthermore, these numbers are growing in most developed countries.
What can a government do with millions of homeless, unemployed people while the biosphere is under assault? What can any government do while desertification and drought begin to take their toll on agriculture, while peak oil is poised to ruin the industrial agricultural model, and while ailing “developed” economies struggle to subsidize agriculture?
Will it occur to governments that in just a few months they could train millions of unemployed people to grow food in desert-like conditions using permaculture or agroforestry techniques? Will it occur to governments that soldiers might be better employed building swales, cob and adobe houses, temporary wells and whatever else is needed to improve our environment and help create local food security?
If not, they have not considered the other likely benefits of such projects, especially if such a project is pursued in the U.S. Though it would be a social-ecological experiment, the outcomes are unknowns, those outcomes could hardly be worse than the current situation. Very likely, if such a resettlement project occurred in the U.S., the national crime rate would plunge, wars would cease, desertification would be stopped and reversed, carbon points would be scored, and participating ‘farmers’ could be taxed in the form of an organic food tax that would feed millions of ‘normal’ workers.
Why not? Why shouldn’t an environmental solution also be a solution to poverty, crime and war? After all, all things are connected.
