Bioregionalism and Civil Society: Democratic Challenges to Corporate Globalism

Graeme S. Mount is a professor of history at Laurentian University. He
is the author of Canada’s Enemies: Spies and Spying in the Peaceable
Kingdom, Chile and the Nazis, and The Diplomacy of War: The Case of
Korea.

Mike Carr argues that in this era of globalization and consumerism,
environmentalists can claim some successes. His examples of the
successes of David (the bioregional environmentalists) versus Goliath
(the corporations) come from Canada, the United States, and Mexico.

Unlimited consumerism, warns Carr, may lead to exhaustion of the
earth’s resources, disruption of the food chain, and the end of the
human race itself. The resources, after all, are finite, and people are
part of nature, dependent on plant life and on other animal species.
Exploitation of distant places may be advantageous for some, but
corporate greed is inimical to the long-term interests of the vast
majority. Carr has a low regard for shopping or consumerism as the
essence of life and as society’s principal form of recreation.
Moreover, he considers saving the environment more than a matter of
unpleasant sacrifices. It can even mean an improved quality of life.
Cars require an expensive support system (highways, parking lots) and
isolate people from each other. Between them, cars and corporations
threaten community life.

In his introduction, Carr says that bioregional movements have
developed in all parts of the world except Africa. Because powerful
corporations control most of the media, bioregionalists have not
received much publicity, and this book fills some of the gaps. Carr
certainly provides some interesting information. “In 1970,” he
writes, “the richest 10 percent of the world’s citizens earned
nineteen times as much as the poorest 10 percent. By 1997, the ratio had
increased to 27:1.” The lifestyles of most residents of developed
countries require 5 to 10 hectares of land to suppport them; in the most
impoverished countries, the requirement is less than 1 percent of that
amount. Nor is enormous size, according to Carr, essential to success.
Small but successful communities include Anguilla, the Cayman Islands,
the Falkland Islands, and Saint Helena. (One might nevertheless question
whether the Caymans would be as successful without the enormous bank
accounts of offshore customers, or the Falkland Islands without the
power of the British Navy.)

Carr’s book is not easy reading: to follow the arguments requires a
well-educated person’s full powers of concentration.