But there I was at Terra Madre last fall, standing in the lunch line with Peruvian beekeepers, Russian herb farmers, African gourd-growers, Italian gastronomists, Scottish students, Indian seed-savers, American cooks, Mexican activists, and Chinese academics. Above my head in the cavernous hall – a former Winter Olympics venue – I could hear the steady beat of global music. On either side of me was a buzz of conversation in the sing-song of many languages.
But most amazing of all, everyone was happy.
Now, I'm generally an upbeat guy, but this was a new sensation for me professionally. That's because as the director of a nonprofit organization, I get a daily dose of sober headlines: global warming, rising energy costs, population pressures, food riots, wars, the biodiversity crisis, and most recently (bad news for nonprofits) the financial meltdown on Wall Street. Crisis management, it seems, had become part of my job description. That can make for long days and long faces. Some days, even the word "sustainability" sounded depressing.
That's why Terra Madre was such a pleasant surprise. Smiles were everywhere. At one point, I stood in the middle of the giant hall and turned circles in silence; every person I saw radiated positive energy. Many had journeyed thousands of miles to get there, at their own expense, often tracing a personal odyssey. But hardship meant nothing. They were all smiles.
The reason, I realized, was simple: they were here to celebrate food. And in that moment, the curious twists in my life journey suddenly made sense.
Environmentalism has evolved dramatically over time, walking a long and eventful road in America from Henry Thoreau to John Muir to Aldo Leopold to David Brower and beyond. For most of the first half of the 20th century it went by the appellation of 'conservation' and focused on resource scarcity and nature preservation. Then with the publication of Rachel Carson's expose Silent Spring in 1963 it was replaced by environmentalism, which expanded the movement's work to include human as well as animal welfare, tackling important issues such as industrial pollution, urban sprawl, nuclear power, and, now, global warming.
But unlike the evolving labor movement, environmentalism must be judged today, despite its valiant and energetic efforts, to have come up short.
Take just two important metrics. The first is the condition of the planet. I won't go into a litany of distressing news here, but it is safe to say that the consensus among scientists, researchers and activists is that our global environment is deteriorating to the point where human and non-human well-being is in serious jeopardy. All important trend lines point downward for the good stuff, and sharply upward for the bad; and with climate change now underway, these trend lines will likely steepen.
Of course, environmentalism is not the cause of this situation, far from it. Furthermore, from the start it had to struggle uphill against mighty adversaries. But if the goal of the movement was the prevention of these global trends, then it has proven to be largely ineffectual.
In his most recent book, The Bridge at the End of the World,
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