Is Localism a Retro Fad or a Blueprint for Sustainability?

As someone who tracks environmental discourse in real time, I find it valuable to step back on occasion and look at how public attitudes are shaped. For that, I depend on the work of scholars. One book from 2008 that I've only just read explores how several major contemporary environmental themes have been expressed culturally, such as in literature and movies. It's called Sense of Place and Sense of Planet, by Ursula Heise, a UCLA English professor. (I had the pleasure of meeting and talking with Heise several months ago.) In her text, Heise analyzes two conflicting impulses in environmentalism, which are famously summarized in the "think globally, act locally" slogan. This is a tension that environmentalists haven't come to grips with yet, especially when we consider the scale of today's environmental challenges. Averting catastrophic climate change and meeting the energy and food needs of 7 billion people will not be solved by local food markets and rooftop solar panels. There is no going back to the garden to save the world. (Still, I love that song!) And I say that as someone who loves to shop at my local farmers market and believes there is great value in community gardens. But people are fooling themselves if they think localism is a the formula for sustainability. The contradiction between the global nature of the climate threat and the traditional environmentalist approach to solving it is embodied today by America's most influential environmentalist. To understand this, to grapple with it, you have to read Matthew Nisbet's new discussion paper, titled: