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Self-Reliance Before Sustainability?
am Nation A short film by Sara Schaumburg
By Eleanor Ennis
“It is only as man puts off all foreign support, and stands alone, that I see him to be strong and to prevail.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
In each State of the Union Address since 9/11, President Bush has sung an American tune of self-reliance: reduce dependency on foreign oil. Emerson captured it 160 years ago as “standing alone” independent of “foreign support.” To reach this lofty goal of reducing dependency on Middle Eastern oil (which, in 2005, counted for 23 percent of America’s oil imports) by 75 percent before 2025, the president has called on citizens to support domestic oil and gas production.
How can the United States sustain this kind of self-reliance when, according to the Sierra Club, it consumes 25 percent of the world’s oil, and has a capacity to produce only 3 percent? Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, stated that at this rate of American oil consumption, even the proposed drilling of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would provide less than a year’s supply.
It is not only oil; it’s the unsustainable temptation to make a profit off the over-tapping of finite resources. American self-reliance would seem to depend on American resources and American consumption— going solo regardless of the social and environmental consequences.
After Worldwatch Institute’s 1984 annual State of the World reported, “we are living beyond our means, largely by borrowing against the future,” the UN World Commission on Environment and Development published the highly-regarded 1987 Brundtland Report. It defined the “Sustainability Revolution” as encompassing “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
Practical alternatives to unsustainable self-reliance are everywhere. In Bavaria, Germany, 9,000 homes are powered by the world’s largest solar power plant. In the U.S., North Carolina State University Solar Center’s initiative of HealthyBuiltHomes Program promotes renewable energy technologies including solar, wind, micro-hydro, geothermal, and biofuel. Countless other communities are creatively embracing sustainable alternatives by setting up local farmers markets, changing school curricula, implementing local currencies, strengthening labor unions, and consuming less.
Alternatives are out there. Perhaps a collective national head nodding to repetitive State of the Union Addresses might not be the safest route for future generations. We might instead align self-reliance within the “Sustainability Revolution” if the long term is to ever survive the short.