Tuesday 1 September 2015

The Post-Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook: Recipes for Changing Times

Environmental Book Review 
The Post-Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook: Recipes for Changing Times
Albert Bates
2006
New Society Publishers www.newsociety.com

Hilarious and grim at once, Bates indy-survivalist classic, The Post-Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook, is a 236 page collection of cosmic life-road instructions, including an extensive index and links to many mysterious alternative resources. Mr. Bates, a smiling American gent with an austere grey beard who terms peak oil depletion a “crude awakening,” closes each chapter with a recipe. Not merely asides, each of Bates’s recipes are accompanied by a difficulty rating, and Roasted Chestnuts are generously followed by Quintana Chiltomate Salsa and Fresh Tortilla Chips only one page later. So Bates loves to cook, but more than this, he ardently wants to provide you with a user-friendly guide book to rescuing both your planet and your life. Bates has divided the book itself into steps and stages. Early on in this volume, Bates hashes out ethical constraints around money and usury in major religions (including Islam), discusses non-inflationary money such as barter systems, and features at close an exquisite Mushroom Quesadilla recipe with an RDA index. It is only the first few pages of this adept and densely-packed classic, written by Albert Bates, “codirector of the Global Village institute for Appropriate Technology since 1984 and the Ecovillage Training Center at The Farm in Tennessee since 1994, where he has taught sustainable design, natural building, permaculture and restoration ecology to students from more than 50 nations.” Followed by a chapter on water dependency, including how to assess one’s “water-readiness,” Bates then offers a chapter on creating one's own energy. Discussing power outages and solar heating, Bates profiles the modular Solar Village design of Jürgen Kleinwachter (apparently developed for widespread use in Africa) which heats by transporting hot oil through piping to a Stirling engine where it makes electricity. Bates expounds on wood, fireplaces, grills and how to make a cob oven. Solar water heating and wind turbines are included, as well as how to estimate horsepower, hydro photovoltaic and biomass potential, making the chapter indispensable to the right reader. As each chapter sports a recipe, let’s fast forward to a zinger: the ingenious “Cleopatra,” a salad which includes bite-sized romaine and almond dressing! In fact, in Step 5, “Grow Your Own Food,” the pleasures of gardening, the reality of urban agriculture, and the fabulousness of organic food include a number of salad ideas too tasty and fantastic to be missed. This chapter also includes details on extending the season through greenhouses, making soil, (the product of decay) through composting, and an insert “What Non-vegetarians need to Know About Soy Foods.” Vermiculture and mulching, food animals, sprouting and growing mushrooms are all included. Step 6: (How to Begin Storing Food) reminds us we are truly on a trip into the mind of a guy who lives in a Tennessee enclave where Survivalism is at the top of menu for discussion on Saturday night. Pressure canners, making jams and jellies, food drying, “crazing” fruit, solar-electric refrigeration, and planning food to store are all detailed Recipe? Let me guess. Jam, but quality Tennessee jam, rest assured. And so, as we suspected, we arrive at the Step discussing “Fallout Shelters” and, from the rolling green hills of the rifle-toting American wilderness, Bates calls for us to “Be Prepared!” It may actually good for Bates to get this Big Daddy business out of the way at this part of the book. Crash Proofing, (write down every appliance and fixture in your home that is dependent on fossil fuel energy) preparing for anything, being fit, encouraging your neighbours to be prepared, providing support if there is a crisis, anxieties, speaking to children about all of this, (I think he may want to speak to a psychiatrist about all of this) and so on. Finally, just when we thought, even if there was excellent jam, we would do anything not to be trapped in a fallout shelter with Bates, comes “Retooling.” Here we explore the impracticality of the automobile in its current form. A lovely, relaxing chapter describing the need for new conceptual vehicles and commercial vehicles, air travel industry “dinosaurs,” refueling systems and alternative fuels. Sadly, Bates’ presentation as future-thinking takes a dive evocative of Bush’s floundered energy policy while he wastes time discussing the merits of ethanol and several other Biofuels, which, by the time of publication, have been entirely debunked for their negative net (they create more CO2 in production than they ever displace). Other fuels such as Biogas, which Vanadana Shiva considers respect-worthy, are also detailed, while Biodiesel is offered perhaps a naiive degree of praise. DME (Dimethyl Ether) initiatives in China (although it takes 3 litres of water to produce one litre of DME) are also given more credit than they potentially deserve. Arriving at the more promising choice, Hydrogen, (H2) “four times bulkier than kerosene, but 2.8 times lighter” we find Bates, similar to an earlier make-your-own Biofuel moonshine rap, actually discussing homemade hydrogen units “a small reformer in the car’s luggage compartment, (made from a used propane tank or beer keg with electrodes bubbling water) generating enough H2 pressure in the tank to force a steady stream of hydrogen gas into the carburetor or fuel injectors, thereby increasing the combustion and decreasing the amount of gasoline burned by 15 to 30 per cent.” Commercial version available, but trust that this guy would know someone with a beer keg version. After a few chapters of discussion regarding lifestyle changes and commuting options, including, “get a horse” we arrive at “Imagine Sustainability.” Here again, Bates is back in grim mode, remarking in a cold way that sustainability is nothing, because everything falls apart, and so what we really need is “a more or less steady-state economy in which we destroy nothing, reuse and recycle, and try to keep the natural world, which provides our every need, healthy and robust…to sustain our puny existences for their natural span…” The rest of the chapter becomes Macho as Bates presents the Four Horsemen of Bio, Robo, CO2, and Nuke. Here Bates lists the content of an average light bulb and compares it to the mining required for stocking such a product. Moving on to housing, he praises several constructions such as teepees for their resilience, “Mongolian yurts thwart Gobi dust storms using a Bernoulli Effect, channeling wind harmlessly around a cone of enclosed space.” The author also presents the Maya as exceptional survivors, having lived through major drought in the form of “two and perhaps three major climate changes.” Exploring his ideas in design for sustainability, and a list of elements for design, including those that sustain “values” of the society such as individual liberty and family ties, the author comments that “we want to sustain the regenerative ability of natural systems to provide life-supporting service that are rarely counted by economists…” Bates then explores population growth by comparing it to economic “growth” and citing a bacteria theory, a little over-simplified if you ask me, as he concludes his chapter with economists Kenneth Boulding’s 1971 Misery Theorem.” If the only thing that can check population growth is misery, then it will keep growing until misery makes it stop.” Bates hopes perhaps there is a more cheerful solution, but if that is so, why supply the most disturbing one? Macho. Chapter (Step 11) “Quit your Job” is precious, as are the chapters that follow it. An ode to the “Slow Movement” with headings such as “creative loafing,” “glossary of surf speak” and “dismantling useless things” for inspiration, Bates strongly advocates achieving a quality of existence on the basis of the idea that material wealth will never produce happiness, and that to increase happiness and comfort, we must scale back. Advocating ecological agriculture and the way that “permaculture undertakes the harmonious joining of humans in their agriculture” the chapter wraps up with a perceptably apologetic spicy orange pumpkin mousse. Step 12 “Utopia by Morning” is surely one of my favorite discussions in this book, because here Bates is happy again, revelling in something he not only knows well, but something he hinges his own macho hippy dude hope upon seeing thrive. Because more people now live within cities than outside them, the redesign of cities has become more urgent. Bates refers to New Urbanists as ”those in the city-building business who just won’t give up.” To our delight, Bates is a Jane Jacobs fan. “Jane Jacobs epitomized the old guard. The author of Death and Life of American Great cities, The Economics of Cities, Systems of Survival, and The Nature of Economies, she wrote in Dark Age Ahead an obituary for contemporary city streets: Not all roads are community killers like those that have become so common in North America and in countries influenced by North American highway planning. Some roads are famous for fostering community-life, as they bring people into casual, pleasant and frequent face-to-face contact with one another. Many an ordinary Main Street used to do these services, but Main Streets have proved easily transformable into bleak, standardized community killers...” A Jane-inspired Bates writes that, “versatile boulevards are little-known in North America, and those that do exist are seldom more than a ghost of what they could be.” Curious, for a guy who spends so much rural time on The Farm, but indeed an insight. “Elsewhere in the world, especially in places with Mediterranean cultures, boulevards are places to which people flock for a stroll when the day’s work is done, to see neighbours, get word of strangers, pick up other news, and enjoy a coffee or a beer and chat while they take in the passing scene, including sidewalk play of children. People in cities and neighbourhoods in much of the world understand their boulevard to be at the heart of their communities. A well-designed boulevard is always well provided with trees along its margins and medians, because a major concern of serous boulevard designers is to create environments welcoming to pedestrians.” Nice, and a fresh aspect to the author, who suddenly shines as a bit of a poet trapped into canning fruit. In his new metropolitan tone, Yet more captivating, Bates now turns to a discussion of “Ecocity.” “The Ecocity movement turns new urbanism up a notch. Ecocityists are dedicated to reshaping urban landscape…they want to return biodiversity- including fish, frogs and dragonflies-to the innermost hearts of cities by reopening paved-over creeks and wetlands, returning nature to back lots and planters, and giving nature a longer leash. Ecocity is about growing food in de-paved streets and producing electricity from solar alleys. It is about adding greenhouses to rooftops, terraces, and window boxes for heat and kitchen gardens. It is less about rerouting cars and trucks within cities, and more about eliminating them altogether.” So should Bates not take a break from The Farm and spend some time living in such places? It seems, in fact, that Bates does tour, and that he has developed a special admiration for activists in several. To Bates, China is a land “which will add another 2 billion people in the next 30 years – 18,265 additional people every per day, a small city twice a week, a city the size of Vancouver or Sydney twice each year. With the natural systems that nourished their ancient civilizations now threadbare and seriously imperiled, it is not hard to imagine why the Chinese are interested in Ecocities.” “If one thinks of an Ecocity as a collection of self-sustaining Ecovillages, Bates declares it possible that China can accomplish an Ecocity transition more easily than in the West. There follows a description of wonderful international communities and populist communes throughout history. Ecovillage: Bates has a fondness for the Ecovillage, having spent the past 35 years of his life living on The Farm, a proto-ecovillage in Tennessee. He spent the years from 1992 to 2004 travelling as an emissary for the Ecovillage movement to hundreds of experiments of six different continents. He saw many success stories and many failures. Remarkably, he feels that many Ecovillages fail simply because they don’t have enough members. “Sustainable community is not about dominance, it is about listening.” Bates then addresses developing consensus and solution-oriented behaviour, and how to honestly express yourself without blaming or criticizing, as well as how to clearly request what you need without demanding. Again he provides resource links on this topic. Afterword, the final chapter, Bates reminds us that we have had many stories and myths since antiquity regarding the Earth as our mother, our changing nurturer, our Goddess. He cites the myth of Khali as particularly appropriate for our times, “mad dancing, dishevelled hair, and eerie howl…The world is created and destroyed in Khali’s wild dancing; redemption comes only when we realize that we are invited to take part in her dance, to yield to the frenzied beat, to find her rhythm.” Bates comments, “Peak Oil may be a trigger for a global economic depression that lasts many decades. Or it may not…But if Peak Oil doesn’t wake us up to the precariousness of our condition…annihilating the evolutionary systems that sustain us…what will?” So, “let’s not squander this moment. This will be the Great Change.” Dessert is Candylion Frogurt.
Bates, A. K. (2006). The post-petroleum survival guide and cookbook: Recipes for changing times. New Society Publishers.



Tuesday 25 August 2015

George Soros On Globalization

Environmental Book Review
George Soros

On Globalization 
Perseus Books 
2002



This book actually invites some interesting reflection on the changes and discussions wrought around the subject of Globalization in the past decade. The prolific George Soros is, of course, a billionaire investor, Number 7 on the Forbes list of America's most wealthy, and is the world's richest hedge-funds manager, with a net worth estimated in 2012 to be approximately 20 billion dollars. He is the founder of the philanthropic think tank, The Open Society Institute, which has given billions to various projects. The OSI was named in reference to the book, Open Society and its Enemies, by philosopher Karl Popper. Soros was a student of Popper at The London School of Economics, and is a supporter of progressive-liberal causes. His selective philanthropy has been credited, among other things, with playing a significant role in the peaceful transition of Hungary from Communism to Capitalism. Soros is also controversial for investing and removing his money from various nations in ways that have destabilized their economies, including his role in creating the economic crash in East Asia in 1997, and he won his reputation as “the man who broke the Bank of England,” after he profited 1 billion GBP during the 1992 Black Wednesday UK currency crisis. His 2002 book “On Globalization” was followed the next year by a book titled “Supremacy; Correcting the Misuse of American Power,” and in 2006 by “The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror.” He has also published innumerable articles on his ideas, can be frequently read in magazines such as The Guardian, and is a lecturer with a number of other books of similar tone.

His first point is that the domination of international finance markets we see today occurred during similar conditions prior to WW1. “Clearly,” comments Soros, “the process is not irreversible.”

“Globalization is an overused term that has been given a wide variety of meanings,” Soros remarks in his opening chapter. Concerned by protests and “widespread resentment,” Soros raises the alarm, stating that “unwitting coalitions between the far Left and the far Right have succeeded in weakening the few international institutions we have.” Soros asserts, “The two propositions that underpin this book have a common denominator: Both the provision of public goods and the improvement of internal conditions require some resource transfers from the rich countries to the poor. This goes against the grain of market fundamentalism, which claims that markets, left on their own, will ensure the optimum allocation of resources.” Soros does not agree. Soros beleives that capitalism left on its own to provide for the populace will fail. He also believes that financial institutions have a duty to fulfil, and that they are failing in many important ways. Proposing SDR's (Special Drawing Rights) at the IMF as a method of creating fair international assistance for applicant nations, assistance would be offered to nations chosen by a board of “eminent persons,” and the assistance would then be audited by a commission. This intriguing plan is only one of many ideas that make Soros truly readable. Refreshingly, Soros remarks that public protest against the mechanisms of Globalization should be heeded, and, as an international finacier interested in supporting progressive policies, he agrees that the market in its present form does not enhance the wealth of the poor in an equitable way. However, while he heeds protest, he objects to protests which attack, in particular, the WTO, and “IFTI's,” (international trade and financial institutions). These he believes “need to be strengthened,” as the resource transfers offered by the existing IFTI’s are inadequate. Most of the IMF’s money is used to rescue countries after a crisis had erupted. The main business of the World Bank is lending, its grant-making capacity is largely limited to the profits generated by its lending activity. The WTO is not concerned with resource transfers at all. The IFTI’s could play a more constructive role than they do at present…but there is a need for a new form of international resource transfer.” Soros reminds us that he has been engaged in providing foreign aid to the amount of $425 million in the last 5 years. Despite, or perhaps because of this, he sees foreign aid as considerably flawed, and outlines five specific reasons for this. His first reason, “it serves the interest of the donors rather than the recipients.” His second reason, “recipients rarely have control over development projects, which are designed and implemented by outsiders. When experts leave, not much remains.” Good point, and were he merely a despicable billionaire, he would not have made it. Soros further points out that, “foreign aid is usually intergovernmental. In some cases aid becomes the main form of support for otherwise unpopular governments,” a rather elegant way of stating the painful truth, that foreign aid supports antidemocratic regimes. His fourth point to me somewhat reiterates his first, in that “donors insist on maintaining national control over the aid they provide, resulting in a lack of coordination,” is basically a somewhat more detailed remark on his opinion that donors do not give up control. Finally, Soros comments, “it is not acknowledged that international assistance is a high-risk enterprise. It is much harder to do good than to run an enterprise for profit.” Honest words from an international businessman and investor. Here at last, Soros introduces his own fresh take, based on his wish to foster the development of open societies. This approach, Soros claims, is intended to serve the interests of the recipient, and be managed by nationals rather than donors, who decide on priorities. In explaining Karl Popper's ideas, he remarks, “open society is often confused with civil society,” clarifying, ”it is one of the components.” Soros defends the WTO as “a very valuable organization,” he considers both misunderstood and misused. “Conventions established through the WTO are under-enforced,” Soros remarks. From this vantage point, there are several issues that concern him for reform within the WTO, and these are labour rights, environmental protection, and intellectual property rights. As well, he calls for reform to “TRIPS, or trade relation investment measures,” as well as “competition, anti-corruption, and tax policies.” Soros proposes international reserve assets that are issued by the IMF, tagged to implement international assistance and sees this as an important missing component. He also supports structural reformation through multilateral development and suggests low interest, long maturity loans to the poorest, educational spending and micro-lending. In his concluding section of the book, the author states that since 911 that the US is the dominant hegemony, and “greater than ever,” but Soros objects strongly to individuals such as Kissinger, and ideas involving US hegemony as having a “practical” aspect requiring the control over resistance movements in smaller nations and the militarism that followed 911. Soros offers “two alternative visions of the US role in the world” that of ”Geopolitical realism” based on the interests of the state, and “open society idealism” based on the interests of humanity. Describing various governments which embody one or the other in their leanings, he explains that Theodore Roosevelt “can be taken as the protagonist of American hegemony,” while Woodrow Wilson might represent the idealist approach. Interestingly, Soros defines the Cold War as an era when the US “successfully combined the two roles of being one of the two superpowers and the leader of the free world.” Because of this, other democratic countries “voluntarily submitted” to US leadership in face of a common danger, and the United States emerged victorious. “Following the collapse of communism… the choice between the two presented itself more starkly.” Both history lesson and optimistic proposal, the book explains past events in a way that is neither rhetorical nor apologist in tone. Soros writes that the general public did not see “under the influence of market fundamentalism” the need for the US to consider reaching out to former communist countries in the way The Marshall Plan reached out to Europe after WW2. Soros calls this a moment where “an historic opportunity was lost.” Speaking further on 911, he points out that ”relations with China and Russia have undergone a remarkable transformation. This is one of several positive by-products of one of the most devastating tragedies in American history.” Regardless, “although no state can challenge American supremacy, we are at risk if we fail to live up to the responsibilities that our leadership position imposes...The responsibilities I am talking about are moral responsibilities. That is the missing ingredient in US policy. It is of course not entirely missing; it is only shunted to the sidelines by the prevailing doctrines of market fundamentalism and geopolitical realism.” Soros defends the vision of an open society as counter to present policy in the United States. “The principles of open society find expression in a democratic form of government and a market economy...One way to foster open societies without running afoul of the sovereignty of states is to offer... incentives for voluntary compliance with international rules and standards.” In his closing statement, an invitation to build a society his ideas, Soros claims, “the difference between global capitalism and global open society is not so great.” Insightful perspective by an international financier, one who counsels us to listen to protestors and to learn from the lost opportunities of the past, Soros is a man with an eye to transforming policies and progressively, even radically improving (rather than dismantling) existing international organizations seen by so many as cause rather than cure.
Soros, G. (2004). George Soros on globalization. PublicAffairs.



























Thursday 20 August 2015

Consumptionomics: Asia’s Role in Reshaping Capitalism and Saving the Planet by Chandra Nair.

Environmental Book Review

Consumptionomics: Asia’s Role in Reshaping Capitalism and Saving the Planet
by Chandra Nair
Wiley, 2011

While in favour of nothing more than economic vigour for Asia, Nair is in favour of a future, and if indeed Asia is to have any future, it is a future that requires appropriate resource planning against massive environmental collapse. A reputed economist, Chandra Nair opens the files on the lie that Asia is poised to reap the rewards of unsustainable, consumption-driven growth. 
“Given the failure of Western countries to take a responsibility for the future of the planet,” comments Nair, “it is now time for Asia to step up to the block. This is not to suggest Asia has all the answers. But it is to say that Asia has a central responsibility for determining the world’s fate.” 
Nair explains clearly that growth will occur more quickly than many have projected, and that water resources will be extremely hard hit throughout India and China if planning does not respect this dire limitation. 
In Chapter One, “Asia arrives- And wants it all” Nair presents the actual numbers -“Today, the average American uses 250 kilowatt hours of power a day. In China, the average is 40 kilowatt hours, and in India it is 20 kilowatt hours. If Asia’s population were to use as much energy per person as Americans, then they would consume 14 times as much energy as the United States does now. Even if Asia were to restrict itself to European energy levels- around 150 kilowatt hours per person per day- it would still use eight to nine times as much energy as America." While, as Nair remarks, this may seem exciting for business, “be they car makers or coal miners, in insurance or IT, it would seem that Asia’s huge market potential is finally materializing, ” while in reality, imposing American values on Asia represents a deadly endeavour. “If we push the world’s economy towards being six or seven times bigger than now… we can be sure that more and more of those resources will be driven to the point of collapse. The region where these collapses will have the most immediate and greatest impact will be Asia.” 
Nair discusses water. “Water is its most pressing resource issue. Almost without exception, countries across Asia are seeing the amount of water available to each of their citizens fall sharply.” Most extreme is Pakistan’s situation, where agriculture accounting for 96 percent of all water withdrawals, causing per capita water resources to fall by “more than half in the first five years of this century.”
 Not one to deviate to emotional writing, Nair, in creating a solutions-based blueprint for an economically-healthy Asia, leaves perhaps the most important note of the book obvious but unspoken. The act of emulating the Western lifestyle represents treason against the nations impacted, and is an act of war against the people of India, China, and surrounding Asian nations. Most curious about those investors who focus their energies on a “fast-buck” Western-lifestyle approach to the Asian market, is the offensive attitude that suggests appropriate growth cannot be developed upon the pre-existing Asian world when the societies there have been functioning sustainably for thousands of years. The notion that growth requires a model life-destroying to Asia and, by association, the rest of the planet, speaks volumes about the lack of awareness regarding current models of sustainable economic restructuring. Nair comments, “if the countries of the region press forward with turbo-charged, consumption-fuelled growth, always looking to expand their economies at the maximum possible rate, then the environment will be overwhelmed. There is not the water, the land or the air to support such an economic programme. If it were attempted, billions of people would be badly affected. Many would die – tens of millions? Hundreds of millions? It is impossible to say…And regardless of whether they die or not, billions of people across Asia can only be condemned to live in horrendously depleted environments…Asia, because of the scale of its populations, will run into the question of how to maintain the productivity of these systems in ways that nowhere else will.”
 The negative effects of this process have already provided ample demonstration of their force in recent water conflicts, enough to sound a warning everywhere. While the governments of Asian nations and corporations invested in Asian trade may appear to be acting too slowly around resource sustainability, “governments are, however, finding it difficult to ignore the almost inevitable conflicts that will arise over resources." Reminding us that for two centuries Asia did little choosing, and was a subject of Western colonial power and exploitation of people and resources, Nair comments that a “choice” of capitalism or communism was thrust upon them after the Second World War. “In the 1980s and 1990s, it seemed that finally countries could choose whether to embrace free markets. Except this was not really a choice; it was accepting orthodoxy.” Nair states that already policy arising from the “urging of growth on the one hand and restraint on the other” are pushing Asia to delineate real sustainability. As well, where such markets emerge, intense competition between domestic and multinational interests causes business to disregard their responsibility to the Asian environment in order to ensure short-term advantages. 
Presenting the idea of “Risk Minimization” as a “useful precautionary principal,” Nair cites examples regarding fisheries as a particularly helpful template, based on evolving policy that already exists. Asia would “identify the biggest threats to fisheries” while embracing “smaller steps that might lead to greater goals” including “the setting up of marine reserves, the funding of local eco-tourism projects, the use of quotas or the imposing of bans for part of the year, as China now does. Where economic returns (are) already low, it might offer compensation and proposals for alternative jobs.” Nair comments that China already “has been promoting the idea of a “harmonious society” rather than “the pursuit of growth at all costs” and that “through its take-off, Japan successfully shared its wealth equitably, avoiding the huge disparities in the United States.” Another hopeful example moving away from a dire water crisis is that of India, “far better positioned to continue with labour-intensive farming than to push hundreds of millions of people from the countryside into the cities.” Furthermore, “in Indonesia, relatively small revaluations of rainforest would be enormous incentive for their communities to develop businesses centered around caring for trees and their products rather than felling them.” Nair comments that while governments in Asia identify “those parts of Western economic and political orthodoxy that do not work for them, they should also be drawing strength from the fact that despite the relentless onslaught…they have all, albeit to varying degrees, resisted market capitalism’s consumption-driven model.” Asian planners have maintained significant trade barriers, China has the economy under state control, and “many Indians, especially among the poor and tribal people...view globalization largely as a source of intrusion, dispossession and pollution.” 
Speaking further on the economic policies which must be implemented to address the specific nature of the challenges facing Asia, and the Asian incentive to develop “their own distinctive forms of the state,” the author explores the way that the countries of Asia, despite their exposure to global ideas and economics, have not seen their political forms converge with those of the West. Outlining three tenets: “that resources are constrained, that use must be shared equitably between current and future generations and that re-pricing them would be the key to producing change, leading to sustainable societies and economies,” Nair constructs a framework to these tenets. “Fiscal measures: This calls for stiff tax on greenhouse gas emissions and all uses of natural resources. “ However, it is “crucial that these taxes be applied across the board—from agriculture and mining to manufacturing, and, where appropriate, service industries.” Citing some of Al Gore's tax ideas, the author emphasizes that “all payroll taxes be eliminated and replaced with pollution taxes aimed at collecting the same amount of revenue.” If there is a technofix, a myopic idea which annoys Nair, the economist believes it will arrive in the form, of ’Dematerializing’ production –making things with far less or even no material,” such as digital products-books or music, as well as advances such as “‘coldzymes’ in detergents, allowing clothes to be washed in cold instead of hot water.” He praises China’s ‘Circular Economy Law’ as “part of the measures aimed at lowering its resource usage per unit of economic output.” In terms of Land Management Practices, “With total demand for food and animal feed expected to double in the region by 2050…at the top of the agenda are investments to protect soil, water resources and biodiversity, and their continued protection through establishment of land-use practices that have the least ecological impact.” More simply, “the industrialization of agriculture needs to be reversed.” Consistent with the pragmatic ideas of writers such as Vandana Shiva, Nair expands on the idea that “agriculture must move towards a regime of low chemical fertilizer, herbicide and pesticide use, replaced where possible with value-adding, labour-intensive techniques,” advising that Asian governments raise the tax on agro-business, reform land-ownership rights, and provide better jobs to prevent the migration of rural people to the cities. Chandra Nair also advises access loans for farmers and the availability of insurance to transform rural economies. As climate change affects weather and food prices inevitably rise, GE crops must necessarily be subject to strict controls, “to ensure that reserves of traditional crops are maintained and countries do not become beholden to agri-business.” While overfishing, illegal trawling and blast-fishing with explosives has severely depleted fisheries, Nair recommends moratoriums, strict monitoring, and “quotas, regional agreements on no-fish zones,” especially “in the productive waters of south-east Asia.” Social resource practices, where “government must rework the rules” requires “sustainable urban and rural environments where people can flourish.” Social management systems with “a particular emphasis on transport, energy and education,” are advised, while “in transport, it is vital to escape the grip of the automotive industry and its interest in having privately owned cars as people’s principal means of mobility.” Elegantly put, but in the context of the rest of the book, sublimely understated. 
It is Nair's view that Asian countries must stop waiting for the West to lead, or to allow the West to define them, “as ‘emerging markets’ or ‘investment destinations,’ as ‘export-oriented’ or as ‘pent-up’ source of enormous consumer demand. Now they must identify and pursue their own long-term sustainable development strategies.” Nair suggests that all countries will be hurt by climate change, and that international negotiations may have little prospect of progress. “It is incumbent, therefor, for countries to act unilaterally and to do so sooner rather than later, in order to strengthen themselves.” Here Nair echoes the optimism of writers such as George Soros, who remind us that nations are unilaterally pursuing inspiring change regardless of climate change conferences. Nair finds calls for the West to take responsibility for greenhouse emissions, such as that at the Copenhagen climate change conference in 2009, by Brazil’s president, indicate a “disturbing” tendency to constantly look to the West for answers, “something the West is all too happy to go along with.” In the aftermath of Copenhagen conference, China was widely held responsible for failing to meet a binding agreement. Nair sees some irony in this, as “resistance to change is more deeply rooted in the West than in Asia.”

In his final chapter, titled, How Might Societies Looks? Nair states, “efficiency will be defined by how little material and how few resources are used in the manufacture of a product or the delivery of a service, not how quickly it is made or its cost reduced. Productivity will be measured by resource conservation instead of output volume.” Further detailing the necessary coming shift in terms of conservation in “soil, water and forests” and 'dematerialization' of manufacturing, his closing chapter is the synthesis of a keen economic thinker with a frank social visionary and policy-designer. In his final remarks Nair concludes, “Asians can engage the world on these issues. They have the means. They have the tools. And increasingly, they have the ideas. They have an opportunity to harness development in ways that can meet their needs and desires and produce a global environment that is worth living in.” Tackling what other economists have acknowledged but with an unparalleled scope, this important work represents a direct line-of-sight on the future of an unfolding Asia.
Nair, C. (2011). Consumptionomics: Asia's role in reshaping capitalism and saving the planet. Wiley.