Successful relocalization means that you stop growing...

As relocalization efforts blossom globally, the discussions within local volunteer groups range from how to develop local food movements, alternative energy and conservation measures to climate change activities and the establishment of local currencies. Certainly such efforts reflect the need for these groups to maintain positive energies and attitudes by proactively engaging in project oriented activities that result in some visible outcome and are a building block for a positive future. Less common, although an underlying current in the foundational framework of most organizers and initiators, is the understanding that growth as we know it in all forms must cease. This understanding is informed by the works and words of such renown thinkers originating with Thomas Malthus and more recently voiced by people like Paul Ehrlich, Garrett Hardin, Barry Commoner, Edward Abbey, William Catton, Jr., and....(drum roll please) possibly even New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman. Catton, in his classic book Overshoot, refers to a fundamental shift by humanity away "from a self-perpetuating way of life that relied on the circularity of natural biogeochemical processes, to a way of life that was ultimately self-terminating because it relied on linear chemical transformations."

We had begun to power the growth model with a finite substance and developed a society that is now dependant on ever larger amounts of it as growth increases exponentially. Growth in population means, of course, more food required to be grown each year, more bauxite to be mined, more energy to be used, and more plastic happy meal toys to fill our landfills. Even if slash and burn suburban sprawl wasn't so rampant, a larger population and smaller households translates into more housing units needed year after year. Even in Massachusetts where I now live, growth finds a way to seep through the cracks and uncaulked joints of development review processes largely meant to slow it down. A few houses here and there over a few years translates into serious growth. Just take a look at the aerial photographs over time. It's relentless.

The end of growth is a wispy and hard to comprehend concept since everything in our individual and collective experiences, save for events like the Great Depression, is rooted in a growth culture. The momentum that the growth culture possesses makes it a runaway passenger train with the shades pulled down. We all feel the careening, out of control speed but most of us keep the shades drawn, oblivious to our collective, and more interestingly, our personal plight and prospects. Growth is a nested and interconnected concept whereby we each grow, some of us in the waistline, but most of us at the household level by having more children, buying bigger vehicles, and building bigger houses. Our businesses need to grow or perish, at least that's what our peers and the prognosticators and pundits say. Our local communities need to grow as each municipality is in direct competition with the others in the region and the state. Cities each offer a wider array of economic incentives that ultimately do three things: dilute or diminish the actual beneficial impact of any new businesses attracted, bring in businesses that resist collective bargaining and other benefits, and result in a business that within a decade is ready to move again or hold the community hostage for more incentives. That's the traditional model of smokestack chasing economic development.

States and regions are also in competition with each other for corporate cash. They devise programs for municipalities that shorten the development review timeline, encourage the extension of development enabling public utilities, or force ill-fitting affordable housing configurations in admittedly exclusionary towns, often in or near wetlands. Nary a state would deny that encouraging growth is a central part of their economic development strategy. But where is the framework for that growth, what is the ultimate goal, the ultimate ceiling of growth? Well, of course there isn't one and national policies and international market forces are the ultimate influences of growth because their very existences depend on it. Multinational corporations are driven by profit, this is not news, but clearly this perpetual need for a profit margin on a quarterly basis feeds the global growth engine. National governments promise growth and jobs to their citizens and will be replaced by another regime if they fail, often within the shortest of election cycles (the two year congressional cycle in the U.S.).

So growth is nested systemically and few communities seeking to relocalize are immune to these strong pulls. But for relocalization strategies to be ultimately successful, resist them they must. To develop a sustainable community, such a community (maybe your community?) needs to stop growing. Completely. Totally. Finete. No more building permits for Happy Hollow Estates. No more new office buildings in Deer Lane Corporate Center. Everything oriented toward growth must cease and reorient toward a steady-state economic model.

So where is this discussion taking place? In the mainstream media? In the hallowed halls of Congress or in the White House? In corporate boardrooms? In the Elks Club, Kiwanis, or Lions Club or local Chambers of Commerce? Nope. How about in business lunches? professional workshops and seminars? Christmas parties? Not likely. So where might we find the conversations and speeches calling out the growth model as our most likely cause of demise? Some small pockets of academia might have the courage to broach this subject in the classroom--provided they have tenure. Local activists might discuss the concept of growth with like-minded members of their cohort but would want to gain a level of comfort before engaging the subject. There's little question that discussing non-normative issues with normatively embedded people is risky. I recently conducted a survey on the Web aimed at getting a general feel for what specific concerns people had over speaking out about about sensitive issues like growth and population. As expected, a large percentage of respondents were concerned over possible sanctions like social isolation or economic backlash. Other significant reasons for not speaking out included wishing to keep the peace or being in inappropriate settings. So there's no question that self-preserving behavior is a good explanation for keeping silent. But if the growth paradigm is to be successfully retired, alternative norms and values need to be aggressively circulated in the public domain. Concerns over sanctions or preserving the peace are legitimate but strategic thinking could lead to creative ways to engage the subject without creating such intense conflict.

Most essentially, discussions at the local level should consider growth as a key issue to address. If local growth is desired, the questions to entertain are how much and at what point should growth be terminated? What is the community vision for the future and at what level of development should sustainability be achieved? If you can't ask these tentative and basic foundational questions, a steady-state economy isn't possible. Realistically, any residual growth should be a highly strategic and planned endeavor that seeks to fill local gaps that will enable the community to become more resilient. This could include generating more independent local businesses that market essential commodities like hardware, locally grown food, housewares, or dry goods. Seeking traditional "see what sticks to the wall" economic development in the form of office parks, subdivisions, or big box stores selling salad shooters and plastic trinkets made overseas is irresponsible local development and wasteful to the extreme. It moves the community further away from a needed and desired steady-state, locally resilient model.

What, other than fear of judgment or of inciting conflict is responsible for local communities not engaging in the growth discussion? First, obviously growth oriented cultural norms have been embedded into our legal system via case law and legislation and our economic system via success measured by profit and economic growth. These changes have been accelerated by the momentum of culture. The end of growth would have a profound impact on the future of corporations and the system of political patronage and finance that is symbiotically woven together in the same cloth. This astoundingly interdependent system of vested interests stands to lose nearly everything if the growth discussion becomes serious. Again Catton has a great quote for this situation: "Any change of resource use patterns therefore implies interference with people's accustomed activity patterns." Most people do not want their livelihoods to be tinkered with.

If collapse does not undo this structural framework, only two paths seem logical. First, if efforts are made within the existing political economic framework, the process may inch forward glacially as any progressive movement has sought change. Court cases may be won as well as lost, the media may or may not pay attention to the issue (certainly media companies have a stake in the growth culture), and opponents will use guile and varying degrees of treachery to push back in the other direction. Ask union advocates or environmentalists how well this method has worked historically. The pace of change under this method would not nearly be sufficient to adequately address the impacts of climate change nor be able to adapt to peak oil once the economic effects of that situation begin to arise. Alternatively, the other method is embedded in a quote by biology professor David Ehrenfeld on this blog's home page: "Our first task is to create a shadow economic, social, and even technological structure that will be ready to take over as the existing system fails." The only feasible path left beyond status quo or collapse is rapid development of an alternative culture, economy, and local political framework rooted in sustainability. Groups around the globe are beginning this effort through official and unofficial relocalization and transition programs. The astoundingly successful Transition Initiative which originated in the UK and exported beyond offers great promise as a process. The two concerns I have for these efforts relates to focus and speed.

Many groups and their leaders eschew organization and planning in favor of random projects that are not linked within a strategic structural model. Many well-meaning organizers and activists are impatiently ready to begin a variety of projects like community gardens, energy conservation projects, and buy local programs. Valuable as they are, without connecting them to an end goal, they will be less effective than if they were developed within a framed programmatic planning effort. Not every volunteer is a good project initiator just as others are not good organizers. My suggestion is to let project people begin to initiate their projects while a core of organizationally oriented people begin to develop the planning process--perhaps a steering committee. The goals, objectives, and tasks of the effort should be formulated and put in a plan much like the energy descent plans that the Transition Initiative espouses. The reason for this specialization will be apparent once significant progress is made on both fronts in short order. The program itself should have a set of underlying themes linked to local goals and tasks that broadly justifies a relocalization effort such as building community, achieving sustainability, curbing global climate change, building resilience in the face of looming peak oil, or supporting local independent farms and businesses if not all of these.

But in order for any of these programs to be ultimately successful, each will have to acknowledge that growth will need to end and a steady-state economy and culture will have to be created. At some point, we'll all have to admit this....or be privy to how nature solves this problem. Most well-adjusted people will not want that to happen. Thus, as Habermas articulates, developing this understanding is an important enhancement of social learning regarding our predicament, essentially consciousness raising for the purpose of sparking reasoned action.