Last week IUPUI hosted its 6th annual International Festival on the 40th anniversary of Earth Day.  The focus was “Celebrating Earth Day from IUPUI to the World.”  The day’s events put a perfect exclamation point on the first year of IUPUI’s Common Theme.

In this our final week of reading Deep Economy, Bill McKibben also directs our gaze abroad.  He celebrates the European model of high economic productivity combined with a high quality of life.  He cites statistics on happiness, energy use, government foreign aid and environmental concern that show western European nations well out in front of the United States, despite the higher average incomes and possessions enjoyed by Americans.

What can these comparisons teach us?  For some readers McKibben’s praise for Europe is tantamount to preferring French fries to freedom fries.  However, McKibben notes what is common between the European and U.S. economic systems.  “In the twentieth century, two completely different models of how to run an economy battled for supremacy.  Ours won, not only because it produced more goods.  It also produced far more freedom, far less horror.” (225)  The defeated system was collectivist state planning not the capitalist welfare states of Europe, the U.S. and other nations including Canada and Japan.  Given all that we share with Europe, it is eye-opening to learn that “Europeans use half as much energy as we do.” (222)  Partly this has to do with the smaller geography of Europe, but it also reflects their technological lead at time when building a greener economy is the next big business and industrial opportunity.  And that’s before we consider the technological development that is taking place in China, India, Japan and other nations all around the globe.

Of course an open marketplace of innovators rapidly developing new technologies for a greener future is a good thing.  Economic development in other countries is a key piece of sustainability because effective infrastructure is needed to reduce resource use.  The real danger is that the U.S. will start far back in the pack or may not even compete in the race.  As McKibben notes, markets work; they have a way of stimulating innovation and entrepreneurialism.

McKibben’s larger message, however, is that building an economy and society of more is no longer sufficient.  The urgent task is deciding what we really want more of and deepening our investment in those forms of wealth, both economic wealth and the wealth of communities.  Answering these questions will take creative and candid conversation.  IUPUI’s Common Theme is all about conversation, and next year we will continue to discuss “Consuming Well for the Wealth of Communities, from IUPUI to the World.”  Be sure to join us as we read Colin Beavan’s No Impact the Man, our shared campus book for the 2010-2011 academic year.

Happy summer everyone!

David Craig

Religious Studies

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