Erik Lindberg

If I have a overriding theme, it is this: unless as a society or civilization we can conceive of a good that celebrates a low-energy and low-consumption way of life, one that offers intrinsic reasons for living simply and within the Earth’s ecological limits, we are likely either to consume our selves into oblivion, or should expect external or extrinsic limits of the sort imposed by heavy-handed governments.

How do we define “good” or “excellence” without imposing an ideology or world-view on others who have their own?  Who judges and according to what standards?  If such a reconciliation is impossible, will we be required to make a difficult choice?  Or is there no real choice at all?

By “conservative” I am not referring to anything resembling Republicans or European “center-right” parties, or positions yet further to the right on the liberal-conservative continuum as it is commonly understood today. 

For someone like me who believes we ultimately need to strengthen local economies but doesn’t believe heavy industry (like mining and aluminum extrusion) should form the heart of these economies, the issue of tariffs has no clear answer.

Although certainly embraced more frequently and ardently by liberals than by what passes for a conservative today, Wendell Berry is clearly a religious rather than Liberal thinker, praising the unified and relentless in his criticism of the fragmented. 

Growth is the social glue that has held liberal industrial societies together, which is one of several connected reasons why we won’t address our relationship to our natural ecology by becoming “more liberal” or “more progressive.” Sustainability, then, is neither liberal nor progressive.