My good friend Wendell Berry just published a new book of essays entitled What Matters? Economics for a Renewed Commonwealth. He’s not necessarily saying anything new but several of these essays were written since the 2008 financial crisis and the beginning of the current recession, giving his argument for a sustainable, land-based economy a lot of potency.
Wendell has been saying for decades that our industrial economy, which rapes the land and destroys agriculture (the whole culture of land, including agrarian communities and small diversified farms), is not sustainable. It simply is not possible to maintain an “authentic economy” without recognizing the primary value – even pricelessness – of land, water, and air. Our present economy, on the other hand, seems to be based on a doctrine of limitlessness, and any suggestion of living within the limits of nature is treated as heresy. This doctrine is fantasy. “An economy cannot grow forever on limited resources. Energy and food cannot stay cheap forever. We cannot continue as a tax-dependent people who do not wish to pay taxes. Delusion and the future cannot serve forever as collateral” (What Matters, p. 26). Our current economic crisis demonstrates rather plainly that we are up against our limits, but we continue in our delusional state, believing that, with the right government policy, or with faith in free enterprise, “the American way of life” will prove indestructible. “We will keep on consuming, spending, wasting, and driving as before, at any cost to anything and everybody but ourselves” (p. 41).