Vandana Shiva on Biodiversity Economy: How Changes in Attitudes Should Come First

photo credits: betsy-jean79

The cause of climate crisis lies with the its external focus bring about false solutions such as introducing nuclear power and biofuels which are ironically non-sustainable instead of focusing on correcting internal problematics of consumption behaviour and flawed ideologies.

Since the industrial revolution, people have related progress with production and consumption, leading to an increment of fossil fuel usage to supply demands, destroying earth at an alarming rate regardless of the rights of other species and the welfare of future generations to come. Vandana Shiva, author of Soil Not Oil- Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis, believes that what it means ‘to be developed is to be industrialized’ within this fossil fuel paradigm . (Alternatives Journal, Pg 23) The consumption of fossil fuel parallels to the held idea of modernity equating to prosperity. Here, Shiva reinterprets the idea of ‘the developed’ in a reversal: