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The Idea of a Local Economy

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by Wendell Berry, www.oriononline.org

LET US BEGIN BY ASSUMING what appears to be true: that the so-called “environmental crisis” is now pretty well established as a fact of our age. The problems of pollution, species extinction, loss of wilderness, loss of farmland, loss of topsoil may still be ignored or scoffed at, but they are not denied. Concern for these problems has acquired a certain standing, a measure of discussability, in the media and in some scientific, academic, and religious institutions.
This is good, of course; obviously, we can¹t hope to solve these problems without an increase of public awareness and concern. But in an age burdened with “publicity,” we have to be aware also that as issues rise into popularity they rise also into the danger of oversimplification. To speak of this danger is especially necessary in confronting the destructiveness of our relationship to nature, which is the result, in the Þrst place, of gross oversimplification.
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Into Grim Air (Comment to Author)

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From: Ron Foreman [ron@ronforeman.com]
Sent: August 7, 2005 2:59 PM
To: ‘ibrown@globeandmail.com’
Cc: Barbara Foreman (light.wave@shaw.ca)
Subject: Aug 6 – July 1970 Air Canada crash

Hi Ian,

I enjoyed your article “Into Grim Air” but I think the crash occurred on a Sunday not a Monday.

I was living in Montreal and my sister was flying to British Columbia (where she has been ever since.) At the time a ticket to Vancouver allowed you to embark from either Montreal or Toronto so when she was offered a lift to Toronto a few days before with friends she took it. However she forgot her ticket at home and asked me to go to the airport and make arrangements to replace it. I was at the Air Canada ticket counter in Dorval airport on that beautiful sunny Sunday morning, July 5, 1970. I assume that I was surrounded by the passengers and crew who boarded that flight.
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Into Grim Air

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Despite this week’s close call at the Toronto airport, statistics confirm that flying is the safest form of travel. But try telling that to your irrational mind.

By IAN BROWN
Saturday, August 6, 2005, The Toronto Globe and Mail, Updated at 10:00 AM EDT

No casualties. That was a good breath out, when the news came two hours after the Air France Airbus A-340 slid off the runway in Toronto this week — though it must have been terrifying to be in that plane, the smoke, the fire, the pushing, the non-opening slides under the emergency doors, the slides you seldom think about even during the safety presentation at the beginning of the flight.
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Fossil fuels

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I’ve just finished reading “The Long Emergency” by James Howard Kunstler. Thanks to Tim Schlitzer for recommending it. It has changed the way I view the world. I used to think our very comfortable standard of living (when compared to our ancestors and most of our contemporaries) was based on the efforts and achievements of our predecessors, the result of linear human progress which would continue well into the future barring nuclear war or environmental degradation. This gave me hope that humans would overcome the challenges of war, terrorism, climate change, etc.
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