Richard Heinberg's A New Covenant With Nature may change your whole worldview or at least help crystallize the one you have. With a clear and thoughtful style Heinberg takes an anthropological look at how humans have related to nature in various cultures and concludes that "civilization" is destined for collapse. His hope for humankind and its participation in the ecological world is for small groups to form self-reliant, ecologically based, intentional communities.
Heinberg delves into the basic categories of human cultures and their "covenants" with nature: hunting/gathering, horticulture, herding, agriculture, and modern civilization. Every culture has unique relationships with nature which define their covenants: how they conceptualize it, what they can take from it, what they must give to it, and what their place in nature is. In addition there is a thoughtful analysis of economics, governance, the arts, science, and spirituality and their places in driving our current culture towards collapse. But rather than just examining what's wrong with society, Heinberg gives clear guidance for how each of these cultural elements can be turned towards a path of cultural renewal.
A New Covenant With Nature concludes with suggestions for both personal changes and global political and economic changes that could help avert or at least diminish the impending ecological degradation and human suffering that our current culture would otherwise lead us to. Globally he calls for abolishing secret government, reforming agriculture, decentralizing government, abolishing corporations, and reforming our economic system. He sees hope in the recent trends toward feminism, eco-ethics, earth-centered spirituality and a resurgence of indigenous cultures. At a personal level Heinberg calls for people to start living out models of sustainable community living employing such alternatives as biointensive agriculture, alternative currencies, permaculture, revitalizing democracy and bioregionalism.
It is truly wonderful how clearly, wittily, and movingly Heinberg states the need for what so many of us are already dedicating our lives' work toward. It's a perfect book for reinvigorating your radical idealism or making believers out of those becoming disillusioned with the current mainstream culture.
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