Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

With Soil Not Oil, Vandana Shiva connects the dots between industrial agriculture and climate change. Shiva shows that a world beyond dependence on fossil fuels and globalization is both possible and necessary.

Condemning industrial agriculture as a recipe for ecological and economic disaster, Shiva's champion is the small, independent farm: their greater productivity, their greater potential for social justice as they put more resources into the hands of the poor, and the biodiversity that is inherent to the traditional farming practiced in small-scale agriculture. What we need most in a time of changing climates and millions hungry, she argues, is sustainable, biologically diverse farms that are more resistant to disease, drought, and flood. In her trademark style, she draws solutions to our world's most pressing problems on the head of a pin: "The solution to climate change," she observes, "and the solution to poverty are the same."

Using Shiva's organization Navdanya-praised by Barbara Kingsolver as "a small, green Eden framed against the startling blue backdrop of the Himalayas"-as a model, Soil Not Oil lays out principles for feeding the planet that are socially just and environmentally sound. Shiva then expands her analysis to broader issues of globalization and climate change, arguing that a healthy environment and a just world go hand in hand. Unwavering and truly visionary, Soil Not Oil proposes a solution based on self-organization, sustainability, and community rather than corporate power and profits.

A world-renowned environmental leader and thinker, Vandana Shiva is the author of many books, including Earth Democracy, Water Wars, and Staying Alive. She is the editor of Manifestos on the Future of Food and Seed.

About the Author

A world-renowned environmental leader and recipient of the 1993 Alternative Nobel Peace Prize (the Right Livelihood Award), Shiva has authored several bestselling books, most recently Earth Democracy. Activist and scientist, Shiva leads, with Ralph Nader and Jeremy Rifkin, the International Forum on Globalization. Before becoming an activist, Shiva was one of India's leading physicists.

Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: South End Press (October 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0896087824
• ISBN-13: 978-0896087828
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #28,955 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another outstanding book by Vandana Shiva!, December 6, 2008

By	wildflowerboy (planet earth) - See all my reviews

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In her latest book, Vandana Shiva, a leading opponent of water privatization and biotechnology, takes on the energy and transportation sectors, exposing how the oil industry is causing climate chaos and food insecurity. She also condemns industrial biofuels like ethanol and biodiesel, arguing that the mass production of genetically engineered monoculture crops like corn and soy is robbing the poor of land and food. Furthermore, tropical rainforests which are crucial carbon sinks are being bulldozed to plant soy and palm plantations, killing these delicate ecosystems along with the indigenous peoples that inhabit them. While trading in one's automobile for an oxcart, donkey, or bicycle may seem like a bizarre idea to most middle-class white folks in the global north, such sustainable alternatives are the norm for millions of people in Latin America, Asia, and Africa and should be embraced by everyone concerned about climate stability. I, personally, found Vandana Shiva's childhood recollections of riding an elephant to school totally delightful! Given the frightening reality of peak oil, global warming, and the worldwide agrarian crisis, this is an extremely important and thought-provoking book. Please read it and do what you can to support decentralized, small-scale, biodiverse, local, organic food systems and sustainable, carbon-neutral transportation alternatives!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The World is Not "Phat", May 22, 2009

By	Rajesh Oza (Palo Alto, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The World is Not "Phat"

SIDDHARTHA R. OZA and RAJESH C. OZA


Four years ago, Tom Friedman celebrated globalization with his best-selling "The World is Flat." While seeming to upend the status quo (after all, the world is round), Friedman emphasized the importance of multinational companies and their market-based economics. Indeed, he updated his Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention ("people in McDonald's countries didn't like to fight wars anymore") to a high-tech "Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention" ("global supply chains in the flat world are an even greater restraint on geopolitical adventurism"). Last year, in "Hot, Flat, and Crowded," Friedman acknowledged the problems of global warming, rising expectations, and population growth, but he continued to promote the free market, causing us to recall Einstein's quote: "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."

An antidote to this monocultural thinking is Vandana Shiva's "Soil Not Oil," a little book that questions conventional wisdom and demands environmental justice. Whereas Friedman views globalization as an ameliorative process, one that makes life less Hobbesian--less "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short"--Shiva is a realistic utilitarian who believes the globalized world is not "phat," not at all cool: not only is the earth heating up due to careless fossil-fuel addiction, but this addiction has also exacerbated the inequity between the haves and the have-nots.

Shiva is a scientist, activist, feminist, philosopher, and community organizer who champions the rights of those whose lives are nasty, brutish, and short--those without a seat in corporate boardrooms. The seat-less include the billions who go hungry every day, small-plot food producers who sustain themselves and their communities with local farming, the earth which organically provides this food, and future generations to whom we owe a healthy Gaia. The narrative which emerges in "Soil Not Oil" is of a world headed toward catastrophe. Food insecurity, peak oil prices, and climate change are the result of hubris, and because the lifestyle of global elites is neither scalable nor sustainable, cultures of violence will emerge locally and spread back to the center. For example, the automobile and highway culture of the West has found its way to India: "6 million people will die and 60 million will be injured over the next 10 years in developing countries, with India experiencing 30 percent of those accidents."

As the "landscape [is] transformed from being centered on the sacred cow to being centered on the sacred car," the earth is seen as a source of food for cars, not people. Shiva suggests that those with seats in big oil, big agriculture, and big automobile boardrooms have a vested interest in maintaining a centralized model which enables profitable economies of scale based on standardization. Even when they seem to promote change, they are offering "false solutions," as in the case of ethanol. Shiva argues that it takes 1.5 gallons of gasoline and 1,700 gallons of water to produce one gallon of ethanol. Shiva's distress and disdain is palpable as she advocates change: "Agribusiness and the oil and auto industries ... will use the climate crisis they have created to increase their market opportunities, even if it comes at the expense of the starving poor and pushes the planet into climate disaster." Because the book was published before the current global financial meltdown, its author's impatience with the carbon-cum-capitalist world system feels prescient.

"Soil Not Oil" brings a revolutionary perspective to the debate on how best to address the concurrent food, oil, and climate crises; indeed, some might view Shiva's earth justice activism as a poster child for South End Press's "read, write, revolt" tagline. This activism pushes for grass-roots change: local agriculture, and independence from big corporations. Readers looking for a balanced assessment of soil and oil should look elsewhere; Shiva (who uses contemptuous phrases such as "corporate dictatorship" and "food fascism") is either unable or unwilling to concede that corporate innovation has improved our standard of living through advances in healthcare, nutrition, education, transportation, communication, and entertainment. Perhaps because of this imbalance, the reader is required to re-think who the "our" is in "our standard of living." For example, although the Green Revolution introduced drought-resistant and pest-resistant high-yield-variety seeds which have mitigated starvation in South Asia, it also has been inextricably linked to a business model that benefits oil and agriculture oligopolies. Shiva's belief in bottom-up change reflects a faith in individuals to be the change they wish to see, rather than continuing the top-down structure that enables us to maintain our Anglo-American standard of living.

In many ways, Shiva is one of Gandhi's modern-day apostles of satyagraha. Like the Mahatma, she holds fast to the truth as she sees it: championing the village scale rather than the global, embracing the time-tested elegance of simplicity, and encouraging nonviolence. Over the past two decades, she has established in India an organic-farming movement called "Navdanya." This movement is based on two principles of Earth Democracy: diversity and decentralization. The diverse seeds allow the farmers to be independent of corporations which have built profitable businesses from non-renewable seeds. And local production reduces the carbon footprint of food production and consumption. A compelling common-sense argument is made for this model, which grows more food and provides higher incomes to farmers. We suspect that Shiva would agree with Einstein that "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius--and a lot of courage--to move in the opposite direction."

Originally published in India Currents

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars so good, February 11, 2009

By	Ethan Kastner - See all my reviews

really really good, makes you think
a must read (if you like this type of stuff)