Localism: Bringing Together Conservatives and Progressives

What does a Lancaster County Amish farmer have in common with a green-leaning community activist in Philadelphia? Where can ardent Republicans (even libertarians!) find ideological common ground with their political counterparts? The answer, at least in part, lies in localism - the movement towards local economies and shorter supply lines of all kinds. While almost everyone defines "local" differently - for some it means buying everything within a bike's ride of home, for others it includes anything produced within one's recognizable geographic region - the intentions of living within one's physical, economic, and geographic means are often similar. After all, is the progressive desire for ecologically and humanly sustainable communities really so different from the centuries-old Protestant work ethic and conservative ideals of self-reliance?At the risk of over-generalizing, let me qualify all subsequent claims with the fact that plenty of free-market-touting politicians of every political stripe have no interest in slowing the advance of globalization's world economy, and certainly will not renege on any of the previous two decades' free-trade agreements. And plenty of middle- and upper-class American households, no matter their religious or political leanings, enjoy the benefits of year-round produce from South America and LCD screens (and every other imaginable good) from China.

But plenty of these very same households are beginning to realize that the party of rash and over-consumption cannot continue indefinitely. Many religious and political traditionalists are increasingly aware of the the correlation between the breakdown of human communities and the rise of consumerism centered around the individual, a way of living and buying that destroys the connections between producers and consumers. And people of all world views - the atheist and the fundamentalist - have to admit that the taste and textural qualities a vine-fresh tomato unvaryingly outclass their grown-for-shipping counterparts picked two weeks too early.

The motivations for patronizing local goods and services, of course, vary greatly. Environmental activists, naturally, shop for locally grown food in order to minimize the transportation mileage - and accompanying CO2 emissions and climate change implications - associated with transporting goods over long distances. Considering that the average bite of American food travels over 1,500 miles to reach our plates, and that transportation accounts for approximately 15% of CO2 emissions, this is a reasonable venture. Traditional family farmers, on the other hand, may choose to sell their products at a local farmers market in order to avoid the revue losses from dealing with a "middleman" distributor. Some buy locally in order to ensure a given product's quality and fair means of manufacturing, while others do so in order to preserve the vitality of a local economy and the vocational and artisanal traditions preserved therein.

But at some level - conscious or unconscious, practical or philosophical - "locavores" (as they're unofficially dubbed) recognize that moving towards self- and communal-sufficiency is virtuous, and even necessary, in the not-too-distant future. The abundance and cheapness of fossil fuels, after all, undergirds our current world economy, but the era when fossil fuels are neither cheap nor abundant is all too imaginable.

True localism, though, has its consequences. If you're eating according to a 100-mile diet, tomatoes in January and oranges in February are highly unlikely (though the possibilities presented by a creative seasonal diet are far from dull or limiting). Similarly, the cost of shoes made by the local cobbler (they still exist!) will undoubtedly surpass that of shoes from a Chinese sweatshop (though your locally made shoes will likely last several times longer, and can be repaired by their producer). And replacing one-stop-shopping at Walmart with a a few stops at the farmers market and related stores may seem downright inconvenient (inconvenient for our too-hectic, overworked lifestyles, that is).

Fully vetted, the lifestyle and monetary sacrifices of "living locally" do not outweigh the potential benefits of rebuilding once-vibrant local economies now ravaged by the global reaches of the current recession. The relationships built through buying and selling locally will - alongside our retooled economies - foster deeper, more interconnected human communities. And the beauty of this deliberate shift towards local living lies in the fact that the movement itself is comprised of a multiplicity of people: the progressives and traditionalists, the religious and the secularists. Vitality accompanies such diversity and inclusiveness - vitality that is unlikely to deteriorate any time soon.