• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

As we begin to let go of the notion that there are economic laws that take us off the hook, the environmental awakening reminds us that there are indeed laws—ecological laws—that we cannot escape.

There is no “away.” (Radioactive wastes cannot be stored away because that place doesn’t exist.)

And if that is true, then so is the corollary—everything is connected. We can’t do just one thing.

And, finally, since in a wink of historical time we have spent our “fossil fuel” savings, we have no choice but to live on our solar budget.

Now these are pretty obvious truths. And the environmental scolds will tell us that these truths determine our limited means, to which we must now resign ourselves. But is this bad news, really? What such a negative casting ignores is the deep human need precisely for limits—for what are limits but guidelines, a coherent context for human conduct, helping us make choices?

Looked at thusly, a feeling of relief might come over us instead of panic. For it is unboundedness, endless choices that make people crazy. If little kids need rules to know they’re loved and to be happy, perhaps all human beings have that need. Limitlessness means meaninglessness. Nature’s very real, nonarbitrary, and universal laws can offer a sense of boundedness, imbuing our individual acts with meaning and giving us direction in making choices.

As we gain the courage to let go of the human-made laws of economic dogma, in which we have sought relief from choice, perhaps we can discover instead the real laws of the biotic community. In this discovery we can take joy in becoming contributing members, not masters, of that community.

Yes, it is an extraordinary time to be alive. Can the 21st century be the era in which human beings finally come home, meeting our deep need for security and meaning not in ignoring or conquering, but in living within the community of nature? Now that the stakes are indisputably ultimate, we can break through the limits of the inherited mechanistic worldview and discover the real meaning of the era of ecology—that our very being is dependent upon healthy relationships. We can find in the focus on relationships—the key insight of ecology—the beginning of what we need to meet the multiple crises affecting us, from homelessness to the environmental crisis itself. We can create an ecology of democracy—democracy not as fixed structure but as a rich practice of citizen problem solving, grounded in the democratic arts and equal to the challenges of our time.

Amidst such obvious social decline and environmental devastation—yet with the possibility of rebirth—more than anything we each need to find sources of hope. Hope that we can be part of such an historical awakening. Such honest hope, as opposed to wishful thinking, demands hard work. Cynicism is easy. Honest hope comes only as we experience ourselves changing, and are thus able to believe that “the world” can change. For 20 years, responses to Diet for a Small Planet have been for me a primary and continuing source of hope—always reminding me of the words of Chinese writer Lu Hsun I have framed on my bedroom wall:

Hope cannot be said to exist, nor can it be said not to exist.

It is just like the roads across the earth.

For actually there were no roads to begin with,

but when many people pass one way a road is made.

Preface

I GAVE MY first speech as the author of Diet for a Small Planet at the University of Michigan in early 1972. I recall how hard I worked on that speech—locking myself in the basement of my mother-in-law’s house while upstairs she cared for my baby son. I remember standing at the podium, shaking like crazy but delivering what I thought was a rousing political speech. Then, the question-and-answer period. A young man far back in the auditorium raised his hand. “Ms. Lappé,” he asked, “what is the difference between long grain and short grain brown rice?” In the 1975 edition of this book, I described my reaction:

I wilted. I had wanted to convey the felt-sense of