SUSTAINING OUR PLANET

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MOTHER: Another problem that you discuss in your book is that big business currently seems to be immune to community today. What do you see as the ideal market right now, in regard to community?

PH: I feel that there should be a healthy proportion of products that are made, generated, and sold locally, as opposed to a large number being exported out and into the region. My guess is a healthy ratio is somewhere in the eighty/twenty range. Maybe it's seventy/thirty.

But I believe that in a healthy society and in a healthy economy, the majority of food, clothing, materials, services, and products is local. At the same time, I think it is important for regions to have an exchange of goods and products, because there are unique things to regions that are valuable to others. I think trade is very healthy. I just don't think it's healthy when everything you buy is from out of the area. Basically, you can live in the richest country in the world and still be in a third-world relationship to a transnational corporation.

MOTHER: And by third world, you mean you're importing finished products and exporting raw materials?

PH: Exactly, and that's happening throughout the United States. There is a great deal of frustration, even anger, in some cases because these people are subject to the same sort of boom-bust cycle as the third world has, in terms of commodity pricing and fluctuations in demand.

Having said that, I have to be honest and say that it's impossible to have healthy local economies as long as energy is so cheap, because cheap energy always leads to mass production, mass distribution, mass marketing, and mass media. I don't think we have any idea of how many aspects of our life result from cheap energy. It is what allows companies to dominate the market, in our country and across international borders.

I'd like to digress back to what an individual's responsibilities are. Despite the scale of modern business, everyone still has a say. I can tell you that businesses are sensitive, despite their apparent callousness.

When you send a complaint to a company, you usually get a letter of response from corporate communications. It's a form letter and you feel objectified like you don't exist. But the fact of the matter is that a small number of people do have an effect on a company if they're complaining or if their concerns are reasonably stated.

MOTHER: Yes. The most effective way to get a magazine to do something is just write to three or four editors, the publisher, and ad director, and somebody will talk to somebody else. It's amazing how efficient a few carbons are.

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