The End of Suburbia

It struck me the other day how living outside of the US really gives one a unique perspective on it. I have another place now to compare to the American way of life, and this helps fight the tendency we all have to consider our own habits and lifestyles as the "norm" that we should always be entitled to have. This is especially important for those of us who live in developed countries and whose lifestyles are dependent on consuming as if there are no limits. Recently I started a course here in Sweden called "Global Challenges and Sustainable Futures." It has been amazing so far. The class consists of 50 students from probably 20 different countries, down to earth people who all want to learn about important issues facing us today.

We saw a film on Wednesday called The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of The American Dream, and I highly recommend it if you can find a copy at the library. A trailer for it can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHr8OzaloLM. I won't say more about it, just that you should watch it!!

This issue of stewardship, of how we treat this lovingly created world, has been on my mind a lot lately. Since the industrial revolution, we have seen nothing but growth in the direction of bigger, faster, globalized economic growth in Western countries, but I cannot believe that this lifestyle will last forever. For more reasons than the obvious one of limited sources of non-renewable energy, we need to start living on a more local level: in regards to food production, shortening our commutes to work and school, and reviving local industry which has been lost in many places when Walmart moved in. Wendell Berry writes in his essay "An Argument for Diversity:"
In a varied and versatile countryside, fragile in its composition and extremely susceptible to abuse, requiring close human care and elaborate human skills, able to produce and needing to produce a great variety of poducts from its soils, what is needed, obviously, is a highly diversified local economy.

Anyway....more on this later. let me know your thoughts!