Treading Softly PAT H S T O E C O L O G I C A L O R D E R THOMAS PRINCEN Treading Softly Treading Softly Paths to Ecological Order Thomas Princen The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England © 2010 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. For information about special quantity discounts, please email
[email protected] This book was set in Sabon by MIT Press. Printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Princen, Thomas, 1951– Treading softly : paths to ecological order / Thomas Princen. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-262-01417-5 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Human ecology—Economic aspects. 2. Nature—Effect of human beings on. 3. Consumption (Economics)—Environmental aspects. 4. Sustainable development. 5. Environmental policy. I. Title. GF41.P73 2010 304.2—dc22 2009034032 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents Preface vii Acknowledgments xiii 1 Within Our Means 1 I The Disordered Order 2 From House to Home: A Parable 3 To the Heart of the Beast 4 Only When . . . II A Home Economy 5 Principles 6 The Elm Stand 7 Beyond the Consumer Economy 19 21 29 49 59 61 79 III Tools for an Ecological Order 91 103 8 It Isn’t Easy 105 9 Work, Workers, and Working: Toward an Economy That Works 119 vi Contents 10 Speaking of the Environment: Two Worlds, Two Languages 135 11 To Sustainabilize: The Adaptive Strategy of Worldviews 157 12 The New Normal Notes Index 197 207 179 Preface In an essay on water in his classic book Desert Solitaire, Edward Abbey poses a question: Is there a shortage of water in the desert? No, he says, there’s no shortage of water in the desert. There’s just the right amount.1 For a long time, the wisdom in such an observation could be ignored. A great nation had to be built, an industrial economy created, foes of democracy defeated. Resources—timber, minerals, oil, water, soil—were virtually unlimited, and waste sinks— where the residues and runoff and combustion gases went—an alien concept. That time is over. What was perfectly normal in the past— harvesting a resource until it was depleted, then moving on—is fast becoming abnormal. What were once strictly local environmental problems now quickly bump up against global constraints. Yesterday’s living well is today’s living well beyond our means. Imagine, though, if back then the building of a great nation and the creation of a dynamic, growing economy had to be conducted so as to fit a resource-constrained continent, indeed, a resource-constrained planet. Or imagine that the early settlers actually arrived on a small island, more were coming, and there was no going back. In either situation, the economy viii Preface would have to be supremely sensitive to excess—excess extraction, excess consumption, excess waste. They certainly could strive for a better life, they could experiment and solve problems, but they couldn’t strive for more and more stuff. Rather, they would have to strive to live within their means, including the regenerative means of forests and grasslands and fisheries and water supplies. With a history