All language subtitles for The Economics of Happiness (2011) 720p

We look around and what do we see?
We see businesses going on as usual,

we see governments - at best -
thinking four years down the road

when they really need to be thinking
seven generations down the road.

We need positive visions for humanity and the planet.

Around the world I actually see
more hope than hopelessness.

The future with less oil could be preferable
to the present with lots of oil.

Ladakh, or "Little Tibet", in the Western Himalayas,

one of the highest inhabited places on Earth.

This is a remote land, and was for
centuries isolated from the outside world.

Until recently, the Ladakhis sustained themselves
through farming and regional trade.

It was a way of life that was finely
tuned to the local environment.

Economic analyst and author Helena Norberg-Hodge
knows Ladakh from the inside.

She believes that the Ladakhis' story can shed light

on the root causes of the crises
nowfacing the planet.

I have spent much of the last 35 years in Ladakh,
working with the people to find

ways of strengthening their culture
as it confronts the modern world.

Over the years, Ladakh became a second
home to me - almost like a first home.

It was a huge source of inspiration.

I learned about social, ecological, and personal
well-being, about the roots ofhappiness.

I was also forced to reconsider
many of the basic assumptions

that I had always taken for granted, and to
look at my own Western culture in a different light.

There was this sort of radiance and vitality
that I had never experienced anywhere else.

Even the material standard of living was high.

They had large, spacious houses,
plenty of leisure time.

There was no unemployment - it had never existed.

And no one went hungry.

Of course they didn't have our comforts and luxuries,

but what they did have was a way of life that
was vastly more sustainable than ours,

and that was also far more joyous and rich.

In the mid-1970s Ladakh was suddenly
thrown open to the outside world.

Cheap subsidized food, trucked in on subsidized
roads, by vehicles running on subsidized fuel

undermined Ladakh's local economy.

At the same time, the Ladakhis were
bombarded with advertising and media images

that romanticized western-style consumerism,

and made their own culture
seem pitiful by comparison.

As the area was increasingly
exposed to the consumer culture,

I sawhow people started to think of themselves
as backward, primitive, and poor.

In the early years I went to this beautiful village,

and just out of curiosity I asked a young man
from the village to showme the poorest house.

He thought for a bit and then said,
"We don't have any poor houses here."

The same young man I heard
ten years later saying to a tourist,

"Oh, if you could only help
us Ladakhis, we're so poor."

Today, Ladakh faces a wide range of problems
that were unknown in the traditional culture.

The changes in Ladakh were so clear-cut,
and I saw with my own eyes cause and effect.

One minute you've got vital people
and a really sustainable culture.

The next you've got pollution, both air and water,
you've got unemployment,

a widening gap between rich and poor,

and perhaps most shockingly of all, in a
people who had been so spiritually grounded,

divisiveness and depression.

These changes weren't the result of innate human
greed or some sort of evolutionary force;

they happened far too suddenly for that.

They were clearly the direct result of
exposure to outside economic pressures.

And I witnessed howthese pressures
created intense competition,

breaking down community and the connection
to nature that had been the cornerstone

of Ladakhi culture for centuries.

This was Ladakh's introduction to globalization.

Globalization is the most powerful force
for change in the world today,

affecting not only remote populations like Ladakhis,
but societies across the planet.

For some people, globalizing economic
activity is our biggest hope for the future -

the solution to world poverty in particular.

For others, it's a fundamental cause of many of the
problems we face today, and an ongoing threat.

People often think of globalization as
something that brings us all closer together

through faster communication,
easiertravel, and so on.

But at it's core it's an economic process.
It's about deregulation,

and that means freeing up big banks and
big businesses to enter local markets worldwide.

The focus in on profit, not people.
That doesn't bring us together.

On the contrary, it's leading to
increased competition and division.

Globalization is the rapid expansion of a
process that started about 500 years ago.

At that time Europeans conquered and
colonized much of the world.

They dismantled self-reliant economies
and enslaved their populations -

forcing them to work in mines,
cotton fields and tea planations.

In the mid-twentieth century colonialism gave way
to a more subtle form of enslavement: Debt.

Shackled by so-called 'aid'
packages and crippling loans,

nation after nation fell deeper into poverty, making it
easier for corporations and financial institutions,

the successors of the colonial merchants, to
extract money, resources and cheap labor.

Today those transnational businesses have grown so
large and powerful that they effectively

control governments, dictate economic policy,
and shape people's opinions and worldviews.

Yet the push for growth, through global trade
in both goods and finance, continues.

In orderto compete, the big corporations are
demanding ever more deregulation,

still further globalization.

It's an agenda that has major implications for both
ecosystems and people around the world.

It's hard to get your head around globalization.

It's tempting to ignore it, to leave it to the experts.
But we simply can't afford to.

Even though it's something that happens 'out there',

it has a profound effect on every aspect
of our lives, even our sense of self.

What we're seeing is rising levels
of depression in the West.

Some studies show rises as doubling,
other studies show rising as much as tenfold.

The stresses on the average household
have increased enormously.

Theirjobs are much more demanding.
More travel, more work at home.

More access at any time.
Longer commutes for many people.

And all the time we're exposed to images
of a certain level of material success,

a certain level oflooks, a certain lifestyle
that we are measuring ourselves up to

and seeing ourselves not as good as.

There is a constant pressure on people
to have bigger, better, more.

But, of course, in the end what does that
bring us? It doesn't bring us happiness.

Material reward has never brought us happiness.

Every year since the end of World War II one of
the big polling firms has asked Americans,

"Are you happy with your life?"

The number of Americans who say,
"Yes, I'm very happy with my life"

the percentage peaks in 1956, and goes
slowly but steadily downhill ever since.

That's interesting because in that same 50 years
we have gotten immeasurably richer.

We have three times as much stuff.

Somehowit hasn't worked, because that same
affluence tends to undermine community.

I think the only people who are happy, deeply happy,
and deeply secure are people who know

they can rely on someone else in life, people
who knowthey are not alone in this world.

Lonely people have never been happy people.
Globalization is creating a very lonely planet.

It's corporations who are raising our children.

Who's driving the food choices of childern?
Who's driving the entertainment choices of children,

who's driving what they want to buy
and what they care about?

More and more it's a set of
corporations that sell to kids.

Human greed is very easy to exploit.

The method of exploiting greed is also very cruel -

Comparison and competition.

People lose their own identity right from childhood.

Our children don't want to speak
their languages anymore,

they no longer want to be
associated with their own culture.

It's cool to wear designerjeans.
It's cool to eat at McDonald's.

Our children learn to reject
their own culture in school.

Why? Because the teacher tells them,

"If you don't learn multiplication,
you'll go to feed the pigs."

"If you don't learn multiplication,
you'll go to farm like your father."

As if to farm would be an offense
or a crime or something bad.

Young people are looking for
acceptance; they want to belong.

And they're nowbeing told that if they
want the respect of their peer group,

they've got to have the latest running shoes,
the latest gadgets, the latest clothing.

And, of course, as they go down that consumer path

it leads to separation and envy,

not to the sense of connection -to the love -
that at a deep level they're really looking for.

In a previous era, before the modern era of
consumer capitalism, people's sense of self,

their personal identities, were shaped largely
through their communities, their neighborhoods.

Nowadays, where all those
supports have fallen away,

the gap that was left has been filled by
the marketers, who came in and said:

"Don't worry if you don't knowwho you are.
We will provide you with a packaged identity

which you can use - by buying
our products, of course -

to create a sense of self, which you can
then project onto the world."

The role models that are beamed
across the world today

look very different from people in
Africa, South America, or Asia.

They marginalize the majority
of the global population.

And even if you are blonde, blue-eyed and beautiful,
you're never quite beautiful enough.

Around the world sales of blue contact lenses are
escalating and more and more people are

using chemicals to lighten their skin and hair.

If you look at what's currently motivating
industrial growth, not only in the US but in the

so-called emerging, developing nations
- China, India, South Korea, and others -

it has a great deal to do with the desire
to emulate the American way of life.

I think Americans are very interesting.

I admire them.

They are so different from
Chinese people in every way.

They are tasteful and fashionable.

Encouraging consumerism threatens
the ecological fabric of the entire planet.

Natural resources are already stretched to
breaking point by population pressures.

And yet we have an economic system
that encourages each and every one of us

to consume more and more and more.

It's a terrific onslaught of marketing,
merchandising, advertising, brainwashing.

So we are on a big consumptive splurge.

But we have four times the population of the US

and if we start consuming, and all the
consumption levels reach like America,

then we'll be consuming all the
resources of the planet right in India.

The consumer culture that globalization
promotes is increasingly urban.

At first glance, high density urban living might appear
to reduce per capita use of resources.

But this is only true when compared
with life in the suburbs.

Compared to more genuinely
decentralized living patterns,

urbanization is extremely resource intensive.

This is particularly clear in the global South.

The moment a person moves into the city,

the energy use shoots up, the water use shoots up.

The infrastructure to run a city per capita
is much bigger than the infrastructure to

produce a high quality of life in a village.

When hundreds of millions of
rural people are pulled into cities,

the food they once grewthemselves
must nowbe grown for them,

typically on giant, chemical-intensive farms.

All this food must then be brought into the cities

on roads purpose-built to accommodate
larger and larger trucks.

Providing water involves enormous
dams and man-made reservoirs.

Energy production means huge, centralized
power plants, coal and uranium mines,

and thousands of miles of transmission lines.

Meanwhile, much of the waste that is produced,

including countless tons of
potentially valuable compost,

must be trucked out of the city to be treated,
buried, incinerated, or dumped at sea.

The end result is that urban
dwellers typically consume

significantly more non-renewable resources
than their land-based relatives.

We've gotten to the end of the
supply chain, and there is no more.

If we decide in the name of fairness
to try to industrialize the entire world,

the result will be universal starvation,
universal famine.

Ecosystems will collapse and we'll
ultimately see the end of our species.

The globalization of the economy is having an
ever-increasing impact on the earth's climate,

not only through the waste and excesses
inherent in the consumer culture

and the escalation in resource use
that results from urbanization,

but because the very logic of globalization

requires that goods travel ever longer
distances from producer to consumer.

Because ofhidden subsidies and skewed
regulations, food from the other side of the world

tends to cost less than food from a mile away.

In the UK, butter from New Zealand

costs significantly less than butter
from the farm down the road.

And in Ladakh, buttertrucked in over the Himalayas
for several days costs half as much as local butter.

We often hear about efficiencies of scale,
but actually the truth is

what we've developed today is a system
that could not be more wasteful.

We have tuna fish caught on the east coast of
America, flown to Japan, processed,

flown back to America and sold to consumers.

We have English apples flown to
South Africa to be waxed,

flown back again to be sold to consumers.

The whole process involves
incredible quanitities of waste.

A series of treaties, new ones almost every year,

promote economic growth
through international trade.

As a consequence, countries today
routinely import and export

nearly identical quantities of identical products.

Every day of the year, grain, meat,
live animals, canned goods,

and a whole range of manufactured products,
not to mention waste - even used batteries -

crisscross the planet.

All of this at a time when rising CO2 emissions
are threatening our very survival.

The global economy has become a casino, and we're
all potential losers. One major casualty is ourjobs.

Corporate mergers, takeovers,
relocation to lower wage countries

threaten the livelihood of virtually all of us:

Accountants, assembly line workers, even CEOs.

And when we retire it gets no better;
as we've seen recently,

pension funds are at the mercy
of uncontrolled speculation.

It's notjust in the West that
livelihoods are underthreat.

In the less industrialized parts of the world,

finding and holding onto ajob is
becoming increasingly difficult.

The first victims are small farmers.

The present development model
encourages urbanization

and intentionally works to
reduce the number of farmers.

All those displaced farmers
have nowhere to go but the city

where they become cheap laborfor
industry, for investment from abroad.

All we want is our land!

Give us some land and we'll work hard
to make something, to make a life.

Removing people from the land
is the root of all unemployment.

It is the root of the creation of slums
and the rural-urban migration.

I don't want to be a beggar!

Lfl could have my land back, I'd go
back to my main business, farming.

Making people disposable in
terms of working with the land

is creating probably the biggest human crisis.

No human rights community is noticing it,
no Amnesty has noticed it,

but 100,000 Indian farmers
have been driven to suicide.

When people are pushed off
the land into crowded cities,

members of diverse ethnic and religious groups

are forced into intense competition
for the few available jobs.

Differences that were once accepted become
a source of fear, fundamentalism, and conflict.

Globalization, which is creating
the gap between the rich and poor,

is directly affecting the survival
of certain people - a lot of people -

and this gives them only few options.

And people will have to take options
when it is a life and death situation.

It will create terrorism. It will
create a lot of disharmony.

You destroy language, you destroy the roots
of who you are, you destroy the history,

and you become nobody in the world.

Globalization with its homogenous
way oflooking at the world

and that we must have one
worldviewis extremely dangerous.

It is dangerous for diversity.
This is not healthy for harmonizing our societies.

In Ladakh, Buddhists and Muslims had lived
side by side for 500 years without any conflict.

But with the advent of the neweconomy,
unemployment increased exponentially,

and so did competition forthe
narrowrange of new commodities,

like kerosene and coal, cement and plastic.

The end result was friction,
conflict, and ultimately violence.

After only about a decade, Buddhists and
Muslims were literally killing each other.

It's widely believed that whatever the social and
environmental costs, globalization is unstoppable.

It's seen as an inevitable, almost natural
process driven by 'free markets'

and the so-called 'efficiencies of scale'
enjoyed by bigger businesses.

If there's one thing that political parties from
the left to the right seem to agree on today,

it's the power and value of the free market.

But the irony is that the majority of really
polluting things that are happening today

would not exist within a genuine free market.

Nuclear power couldn't exist, for example,
without massive state support.

There are billions and billions of dollars being
poured into continuing business as usual,

whether that's subsidizing fossil fuels,
whether it's subsidizing huge monocultures,

whether it's giving corporate welfare to some of the
largest and most powerful corporations around.

It would be impossible to maintain the current
global economy as it is today without enormous

support from governments around the world.

We're about as far away from a
free market as it is possible to be.

Support for big business comes not only in the
form of subsidies but through the increasing

deregulation of trade and finance under
the auspices of such bodies as the WTO.

At the global level regulations are
being increasingly stripped away

with the effect that transnational corporations and
banks are free to operate across the entire planet.

Meanwhile, at the national level there's
ever more red tape and bureaucracy.

This places an unfair, disproportionate burden
on small and medium sized businesses,

and every year hundreds of thousands
of them are going out ofbusiness.

It's basically a system which criminalizes
the small producer and processor

and deregulates the giant business.

The leverage ofinternational financial
agreements and the world trade agreements

levers people, often against their will,
into a beggar-thy-neighbor, dog-eat-dog,

global commodity market
in which speculation is king,

and real people and local
communities are an afterthought.

If the global economy is such a destructive force,
why do policymakers continue to promote it?

More than anything, perhaps, it's because
they believe that the world needs

what globalization is supposed to deliver:
Economic growth.

Economic growth means strength and vitality.

Not only our economies, but our societies,
our political systems, the entire culture

is focused on making sure that
our GDP grows as fast as possible.

And I stand for programs that
will mean growth and progress.

It's as if every problem we have
can be solved by increasing GDP.

Economic growth is the key
to the future of this country.

Poverty is the problem -
more economic growth is the answer.

Unemployment is the problem -
more economic growth is the answer.

Environmental decline is the problem -
more economic growth is the answer.

Afiscal stimulus plan that will jump-start
economic growth is long overdue.

Using GDP as a measure of
societal progress is little short of madness.

If there's an oil spill, GDP goes up.

If the water is so polluted we have
to buy it in bottles, GDP goes up.

War, cancer, epidemic illnesses -
all of these things involve an exchange of money

and that means that they end up on the
positive side of the balance sheet.

It's not only the measure of growth
that is coming under scrutiny;

it's whole concept of growth itself.

You cannot have infinite growth on a finite planet.

No matter how you dress it up
the whole thing stares you in the face.

There isn't enough resources for growth.

The evidence is clear that we as a species are now
beyond the carrying capacity of the planet.

And this shift has happened within the last 20 years.

I mean, this hasn't happened in the four-and-a-half
billion year history of the planet Earth.

Concerns over climate change, coupled with the near
meltdown of the global financial system,

have ensured that alarm bells
are finally beginning to ring.

The response of governments, however,
has been essentially more of the same.

Whether it's bailouts to big banks, stimulus
packages to encourage consumer spending,

or carbon trading schemes -

all these supposed solutions
actually reinforce the system

that created the problems in the first place.

In the meanwhile Big Business is
spending hundreds of millions of dollars

to convince us that they are
leading the way to a green economy.

"Industry is ready for the green revolution."

Superficial solutions extend
to the general public as well.

The emphasis is on changing
individual consumer behavior.

We should drive less, screw in
more efficient light bulbs,

consume more environmentally-friendly products.

There are things that we can do as individuals,
but I worry a great deal that all of those,

including enlightened well-meaning environmental
groups, who urge us to take individual action,

try to persuade us that we
personally can solve the problem.

You can turn off the television in your house;
you can say no to McDonalds and Nike.

You can decide not to work in ajob
that doesn't have meaning foryou

or isn't making the world a
better place, and live on less.

But there's a limit to howfar we can
go with those solutions as a society.

We have to do something about the institutions
that are at the root of the problem.

And those are primarily the large
corporations which drive our system.

They have enormous political power.
It's a system run amok.

In the end, the only power

that any of these institutions of empire

or plutocracy or whatever have are the
power that we as citizens yield to them.

And they remain in power because
we accept their legitimacy.

And if we withdrawthat legitimacy,
they lose their power over us.

We shall have to raise our voice and unite ourselves

and help those people who are telling the truth.

We're here to support folks who are
trying to fight against the world's largest,

richest, and probably meanest corporation.

I think we need to start imagining an economy
that isn't obsessed with economic growth -

one whose purpose is not to maximize profits,
but to provide high quality, satisfyingjobs,

producing goods and services
that people really do need.

In 1972 the then King of Bhutan coined
the term "Gross National Happiness"

and embedded the concept in the
country's development policy.

Following his lead, economists across the world
have begun to develop more meaningful ways

of measuring well-being and prosperity.

One such measure is the GPI,
or Genuine Progress Index.

The purpose of the Genuine Progress Indexis to count
things more accurately, more comprehensively,

to take into account our human,
social, community, natural wealth

in addition to our produced and material wealth

and actually count full social, environmental
and economic benefits and costs.

Only with a full cost accounting system will we
begin to understand that goods that are shipped

from 10,000 miles away are actually far more
expensive than goods produced locally.

If you look at the current system,

we're seeing the distance between production
and consumption continue to increase.

We're seeing the distance between
people and power continue to increase.

I think economic globalization is responsible
for that - it's increasing those trends.

And the obvious answer for me is the opposite -
and that is economic localization.

We've got to begin localizing our politics,
localizing our economies, localizing our cultures

localizing our spirits, you know,
even our spiritual natures.

There is only one economics that will make sense.

That is local economics.

Everywhere.

Localization is a systemic, far-reaching
alternative to corporate capitalism.

Fundamentally, it's about reducing
the scale of economic activity.

That doesn't mean eliminating international trade
or striving for some kind of absolute self reliance.

It's simply about creating more accountable
and more sustainable economies

by producing what we need closer to home.

No-one's saying there's going to be a
complete end to international trade.

But at the very least we should be saying,
"local needs should come first."

At a policy level the first step is
to start the process of bringing

transnational corporations
under democratic control.

We need to focus on three key mechanisms that
governments use to shape the economy:

What they choose to regulate, both at the national
level, and internationally through trade treaties;

what they choose to tax; and
what they choose to subsidize.

At the moment governments of every
political color are using these mechanisms

to favorthe big and the global.

If there is to be any chance of averting further
social and environmental breakdown,

we need to level the playing field.

In the United States right nowlocal
governments are giving 50 billion dollars a year

to attract and retain non-local businesses

and we've calculated that the federal
government is giving another 63 billion dollars.

That is 113 billion dollars a year that is
making local businesses less competitive.

Lf, for example, a fraction of the subsidies that
have gone into nuclear power or fossil fuels

were to go into renewable energies,

if a fraction of the subsidies that have
gone into the whole infrastructure

that supports the private car was
to go into mass transit systems,

it's incredible what we could achieve.

One of the initiatives I'm involved in is the Business
Alliance for Local Living Economies,

and it's about bringing together
local independent businesses

to withdrawtheir dependence on
the corporate global economy

and begin to weave together the
relationships of a neweconomy

that is really grounded in community
and works by community values.

In the global economy it's as though
our arms have become so long

that we can't see what our hands are doing.

But when the economy is operating
on a more human scale,

it becomes easier for us to see
the impact of our choices.

We can see if the environment has been polluted with
chemicals or if workers have been exploited.

And so business becomes
much more accountable.

Across the United States communities
thought that their pathway to prosperity

was to attract and retain non-local business.

And they've come to realize that
this is a fundamental dead end.

So instead they are now working with their
local businesses to nurture local jobs

and helping those businesses
connect with local markets.

By redefining their economic problem as a local one,

they have been able to take control over forces
that previously seemed overwhelming.

Global business creates enormous wealth for the few,
but leaves the great majority worse off.

Small businesses and local economies, on the
other hand, can generate wealth in ways that

are both more equitable and sustainable.

One of the most important studies that
we have on the effects oflocal business

compared the impacts of $100 spent at a
local bookstore versus $100 spent at a chain.

$100 spent at the local bookstore left $45 in the local
economy. $100 spent at the chain left $13.

So you get three times the income effects,
three times the jobs,

three times the tax proceeds for local governments.

The principal difference was that the local bookstore
had a local, high-level management team,

it used local lawyers and accountants,
it advertised on local radio and TV.

None of those things were true of the chain store.

There are movements to localize not only
business, but banking and finance as well.

One of the things we have to do
is put finance back into its box.

So the re-regulation of the banking sector is vital.

Breaking up banks that are too big to fail -
or were called "too big to fail"

Separating speculative functions from high street,
mainstream, retail functions of banking,

so that money becomes our servant
once more, rather than our master.

The financial crisis has actually given us a
reminder that local banking and local pensions

are, in fact, more stable financial institutions.

We can have our money at credit unions -
where that money is available to the community

for community reinvestment and the
profits are reinvested in the community -

rather than these huge speculative bubbles
caused by financial shenaniganry by big banks.

Turning away from global business has nothing
to do with turning away from the world,

turning away from international
collaboration or cultural exchange.

More than ever today, with our global
problems, we need global cooperation,

but that is very different from the
globalization of the economy.

Agriculture and food production is one area
where not only is localization desirable,

in fact it is necessary.

If you shorten the distance between
producers and consumers,

you're cutting out your food miles, you're cutting out
your emissions, your oil dependency,

you're putting money straight back into the
local economy where it's desperately needed.

In a local food economy consumers often
pay less while farmers' earnings increase.

What's more, local food systems
actively benefit the environment.

Localization is structurally, inextricably linked
to the revitalization of diversity on the land.

When farmers sell in the global market,

they are forced to specialize in a very
narrowrange of standardized products.

Whereas when they sell in the local market

it's actually in their economic interest to
increase the variety of their products.

A whole array of food-based
movements is emerging:

Farmers' markets, consumer/producer cooperatives,
community supported agriculture,

edible schoolyards, slowfood,
permaculture, and urban gardens.

Let's take the example of a farmers' market.
It's good because it uses less energy.

It's really good because it builds more community.

The average shopper at the farmers' market
has ten times as many conversations

as the average shopper at the supermarket.

You know howyou go into the supermarket and
you just run in and grab something and run out.

You come shopping here and you just go, "Ahhh."

Paradoxically, many of the most effective
initiatives to rebuild local food economies

are happening in big cities, from London to Sydney.

In San Francisco, government policy
now requires all public institutions

- from schools and hospitals to prisons -
to obtain their food from local sources.

It goes without saying that most of the food that's
consumed in this country is consumed by cities.

So by definition citizens within those urban centers

should be designing and directing
policy around food procurement.

So we have an executive order that is
advancing a series of principles.

One is we want to see more gardens like this
throughout at least our city and county.

Second, we want to establish new procurement
strategies, newpurchasing strategies.

If we're going to buy food in
San Francisco, let's buy it regionally.

In Detroit, a city hit hard by
the collapsing car industry,

a focus on local food is helping people
regain control over their own lives.

We went from a situation where
this area was fully populated.

Today most of the land is vacant.

The grocery stores that we have are basically
liquor stores that have a little food in them,

but the food is old, old, old and terrible quality.

And since we have so many people who need food,
it's only logical for us to use the land to raise food.

The garden feeds any and everybody,

from that person who comes down
here every day in herJaguar

to the person who comes down here
asking if we have any cans.

So any and everybody can eat, but the
only thing we ask is, "Come and get dirty...

If you see a weed, pick a weed,
and you can always eat."

I mean people come looking forthe garden.
"I see your tomatoes over there - looking good -

can I get a couple of those?"
"Yeah, man, c'mon."

If you want one to grow, you gotta put water,
seeds, and sunshine and water on them too.

We should have something to share with the rest of
the country and with people who are middle class

about what needs to be changed in society:
Changes in values, changing in ways of surviving.

You know, just as a prophetic message, I think that
Detroit might need to look into agriculture again -

We have no choice, with the state of
our economy and where we're headed,

the Big Three no longer, so there are
no factories to take care of people,

you're going to see a lot more people actually
getting back and attempting to reclaim

that which was once theirs.

The rapidly growing local food movement represents
a powerful challenge to the corporate order.

Increasingly, big businesses are attempting to jump
on the bandwagon by painting themselves as "local".

I've been growing potatoes for Lay's since 1964.

We grow potatoes in Texas.
Lay's makes potato chips in Texas.

So it's a natural fit.

At the same time it's commonly argued
that if we in the West localize,

we'll be depriving the Third World
of an important export market.

The reality, however, is very different.

The idea that poverty reduction in the South
depends on market access to northern markets

is a child of globalization.

We have limited resources. There's limited land,
there's limited water, there's limited energy.

And if we have to use that land and water and energy

to produce one extra lettuce head
for a British household,

we can be sure we are robbing Indian
peasants of their rice and their wheat.

We are robbing India of her water.
We are, in fact, creating a situation

where we are exporting to the Third World
and the South famine and drought.

The smarterthing to do is to help communities
in the global South achieve food self-reliance

and other forms of self-reliance.

That's a vision for eliminating global
poverty I think we can stand behind.

Proponents of globalization argue
that on a crowded planet,

only large-scale industrial farms can feed the world.

But smaller, locally-adapted farms are much
more 'efficient' in two very important ways.

First, because they are less mechanized,

they provide far more jobs than
their industrial counterparts.

And second, they are able to produce
substantially more food per acre.

This is our vegetable garden. It's 100% organic.
You can see the yield of these...

Basically, we get very good yields
because we don't use fertilizers.

The soil, ifit is managed well,
the productivity is unbelievable.

For 15 years we have been
analyzing small farms in India:

In the wet areas of Kerala, in the high
Himalayas, in the deserts of Rajasthan.

And our research has shown again and again
and again that bio-diverse, small farms

using ecological inputs produce 3 to 5 times
more food than industrial monocultures.

All I need is a complete integrated farm
of one acre and I can feed 20 people.

We don't need agricultural scientists, we don't
need hybrid seeds, we don't need GM,

we don't need anything. We just need
to be left alone to do ourfarming.

Global warming is already here,
and the era of cheap oil will soon be over.

But projections of energy needs for the future

almost always assume the continued growth
of global business and long-distance trade -

and that means a continued
large-scale use of fossil fuels.

We need to get back to basics, to
see what our real energy needs are.

Do we really need the stuff that the
consumer culture is foisting on us?

And couldn't most of our real needs -
for clothing and housing, forfood and drink -

be produced far closerto home?

If we cut out the outrageous waste
inherent in the current system,

we'd be able to meet a far higher
proportion of our energy requirements

from decentralized, renewable sources.

We have wind power, we have photovoltaics.
We knowhowto save energy,

we can cut energy consumption in halfin the next few
years by some strategic investments at no cost.

The wide range of renewable energy technologies,
small, medium, and large scale,

will pound for pound, dollar for dollar, yen for yen
give you between 2 and 4 times as many jobs

as the kind of centralized, old-fashioned energy
technologies we've got at the moment.

There 's a win - win -win.

The argument for pursuing a
more localized energy path

is particularly strong when
applied to the global South.

In the less industrialized world most people still live
in relatively decentralized towns and villages

and are far less dependent on fossil fuels

It's not a question of "no development".

In Ladakh we've been working with local NGOs

to demonstrate a range of
renewable energy technologies

from photovoltaics to passive solar,
small-scale hydro and some wind.

We've been able to showthat it's
far less expensive and much easier

to introduce a decentralized,
renewable energy infrastructure,

than it is to build up the conventional
fossil fuel-based infrastructure.

And it also allows the fabric of community
and social cohesion to continue.

When we localize, we give our children
role models and a standard they can live by

that affirms them, and affirms who they are in society

without having to look outside their culture
to find imagery or symbols, to emulate.

The symbols, the standards, the values
are right here amongst them.

When people turn away from
the global consumer culture

and start reconnecting with each other
in their own local communities,

they're providing very different
role models fortheir children.

The distant images of perfection in the global media
and in advertising create feelings of inferiority

which all too often in later life translate
into fear, small-mindedness, and prejudice.

On the other hand, when children identify
with real, flesh-and-blood people

who all have their strengths and weaknesses,

they get a much more realistic sense
of who they are, of who they can be.

I sawthis so clearly in Ladakh.

There were no 'celebrities' there.
Everyone was seen, heard, and appreciated.

In effect, everybody was 'somebody'.
And that sense ofbelonging built confidence

and a deep sense of self-respect, which
in turn generated respect for others.

Local economies create a more secure identity
not only by strengthening community,

but by nurturing a deeper connection with the earth.

Young people are now desperately looking for
something else than what they learn in universities.

They were desperately looking
for contact with nature.

It's important to learn traditional
farming, but at the same time

just being in the mud, having fun working like this...

They are learning what it means to live.

They eat rice everyday and nowthey're learning,
"Hey, this is where rice is coming from."

Local knowledge is knowledge that
tells you about life. It is about living.

I call it "grandmothers' knowledge"
and I think the biggest thing we need,

the task for today, is to create
"grandmothers' universities" everywhere,

so that local knowledge never disappears.

Sometimes we get an impression that it's all doom
and gloom, that absolutely nothing is happening.

That's both complacent and wrong.

Wherever you look, there are things
happening at the local level that

if they were identified and supported,
could rapidly accelerate the change

to a more sustainable way of doing things.

In 'eco-villages', 'transition towns',
and 'post-carbon cities'

people are working to rebuild their
economies from the ground up

by favoring local production for
local needs over long-distance trade.

The transition town movement in Britain
and in other countries around the world

has been described as one of the fastest
growing social experiments we've ever seen.

We're going to be looking much, much more
towards the local, towards urban agriculture,

realigning our local agriculture towards
local markets rather than international markets.

Building will move much more
back towards local materials -

using strawbale, cob, clay plasters, hemp, timber,

using the best of modern design,
but using those local materials.

In the Japanese town of Ogawamachi
an organic waste recycling scheme

is the starting point for a whole
range oflocally run projects.

A collectively-owned biodigester
produces both energy for the community

and compost for a nearby farm.

The farm, in turn, sells its produce to local
residents and a local food restaurant.

Purchases within the community can
be made in the town's own currency.

All over the world, money leaks
out of the local economy

like something falling through the mesh of a basket.

What we're trying to do here in
Ogawamachi is to cover the mesh,

to prevent those leaks from happening.

On every continent a pattern is emerging.

We are seeing the beginnings of a
worldwide localization movement.

One organization alone, Via Campesina,
which both opposes globalization

and campaigns for food sovereignty
and local self-reliance,

represents more than 400 million
small farmers worldwide.

It's a very big change we've had
on account of these gardens.

We've got tomatoes, and cabbage!

People are much happier.

Our aim is to defend our own cultures.

Our very existence is a barrier, a form
of resistance to the industrial model.

In some communities even the government
is supporting a shift toward the local.

Local governments realized in recent years

that we have a much bigger role to
play in what goes on in the world.

And what we've encouraged is local business
- local people supporting each other

rather than relying on the multinationals.

It's about building community
as well as a strong economy.

We can do this, and do it well,
and enjoy a quality oflife that is far superior

to a homogenized, corporate way of life
that's imposed on people.

Local communities are gaining strength
by linking up across the world

to collaborate and share information.

In exchanges with the less industrialized world,
westerners can play an important role

by exposing the reality behind the
romanticized images of the consumer culture.

People often say, "How can we tell them in the
Third World not to consume, not to drive cars?

We're doing it."

And, of course, that's absolutely true. We have
no right to tell people howto live their lives.

But we can tell them that they are not stupid and
backward or primitive if they live on they land,

and that there's no need to blindly emulate a
consumer culture in order to feel that you're worthy.

We can provide more real information
about the situation in the West:

About our social and environmental
problems, and also about our search

for more ecological and sustainable solutions.

We've been doing this in our work in Ladakh.

We've also been providing community
leaders with 'reality tours' to Europe

where they can see with their own eyes that, yes,
there are certain comforts and technologies

that can improve life, but
there are also huge problems.

We've lost so many of the things
that the Ladakhis take for granted:

We've lost our connection with community,
our connection with nature,

we don't have time - something
that the Ladakhis have plenty of.

So there's a reality there that needs to be conveyed.

Have you got any grandchildren, Albert?

No. Not married.

The global consumer culture is failing us, but we're
told it's the only way - that there's no alternative.

For an increasing number of people across the world,
however, there is an alternative,

and one that offers the prospect
of real and lasting prosperity.

Bringing the local economy back home,
back to the local level, isn't about sacrifice,

it's not about returning to the Dark Ages and
asking people to do things they wouldn't want to do.

On the contrary, it's about enriching our lives.

It could be more vibrant and diverse and
abundant; and people working closer to home,

spending more time with their families,
breathing cleaner air, eating better food...

...rediscovering the values of
community and mutual caring,

that's where the real happiness,
the real well-being lies.

Consumerism has got us weighed down with
carbon chains, and I suppose the message would be

"Break your carbon chains, be free,
have a better quality oflife."

The wonderful thing is that as we
decrease the scale of economic activity,

we actually increase our own well-being.

That's because at the deepest level
localization is about connection.

It's about re-establishing our sense
of interdependence with others

and with the natural world.

And this connection is a fundamental human need.

English subtitles by David Berrian
Raven Productions, Seattle, WA USA