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avid Cayley is a

broadcaster with the

“Ideas” program on CBC

radio. He has recently

compiled the transcripts of

a number of radio essays

from over the last 5 years,

under the title The Age of

Ecology. In the book, he

attempts to explicate, throughconversations with

activists and thinkers, the fundamental ideas

that arise for these people in the age of ecology.

I spoke with David Cayley about his book,

the ideas in and behind it. He kindly gave me

more timeona fine spring day thanmy questions

warranted. He was warm and congenial, and

spoke with a sense of humour that is probably

lost in the transcription. The conversation we

had was invigorating and thought provoking,
and I hope that comes across.

 

The Age of Ecology

by David Cayley

published by James Lorimer & Company
paper back, 272 pages. $16.95

Stephen So: Was there a moment when you*
first became aware of what you call environmental
degradation today?

David Cayley: I would say probably when
I was about 7 years old, maybe 8 years old, and
not because something happened in that year.
That was when I became aware that something
was wrong with my world, something thatmade
medifferent from my fatherand my grandfather.
And, in fact, what happened to my father and
my grandfather was moreterrible than anything
that'shappened tome. Both of them came
of age fighting wars in Europe, but I think it was
just a sense of the change in the world. Some
people associated that with nuclear weapons. I
wasalwaysa little nervous of that kind of talk. It
became a kind of excuse that we were growing
up in the shadow of the bomb...and I thought
well, I’m not so sure. But there was a sense of a
difference about my world, and incallinga book
The Age of Ecology, I’m talking about that. It’s the
reality that we live. It’s the condition that we
have moved into and will stay in, and that

  

   

happened at Alamagordo, or it doesn’t matter
where you thinkithappened. Ithappened when
people finally discovered that human beings
were having an impact on the very composition
of the atmosphere.

You could put the moment anytime, but I
think it’srecognizing thatacritical limithas been
reached and then broached, and from that
moment on, you're living in a fundamentally
new reality.

SS: You mention a critical limit. This is
something Ivan Illich has talked about. How
important is Ivan Illich’s thinking in shaping how
you understand issues about the environment.

DC: Totally important. He’s a very close
friend and he’s also a person who I think has
presented me with the greatest challenge
intellectually that I have ever had to face. Illich
is important for me.

SS: Youdistinguish between the twoapproaches
tothe “apocalypticmoment”. And you use the words
humility and hubris to make the distinction. They’ re
old words. Why do you use them?

DC: Because! don’t think you can do better
than those words, whichare very old words that
comeout of theGreek, and alsooutofthe Biblical
traditions. I was responsible for bringing Illich
to Toronto to speak in 1970 at a enter that I
organized together with others. He spoke then
about theenvironment,and hesaid (I’m recalling
his words from 20 years ago), he felt that the
environmental degradation was a result of a
a in man’s self image.

id that there would be two possible
responses to this. One would be to address it at
that level, as an ey way of living in
creation. The second would be to let it go to the

 

the Other Press

point at which it became a managerial problem, think that’s a way of thinking that might be you can’t live there anymore, you don’t have a

and then begin to manage it, which would
involve the creation of a whole new sector of
social services, environmental services.

Now we have seen a massive expansion of
environmental services in the 20 odd years since
he spoke. ~
international institutions like the
World Bank, which has certainly
been an author of 40 years of
development and destruction,
reappearingas the white knight that
is going to save the environment. I
think Illich was a prophet.

And the other thing thathesaid
was that environmentalism, or
concern with the environment, or
ecology, or whatever name it goes
under, has the capacity to tighten
the, noose of the economy on our
necks. He said that 20: years ago,
and I don’t think I even understood
itatthe time. Butitseems tomenow
that that’s true. If you saw the
contradiction between humans and
nature as absolute, that’s what I’m
talking about with the bomb, -you
see at a certain level that this is an
absolute contradiction. And you
see that a society that keeps on
growing can’tlast. Ithas to,atsome

int, adjust itself to the reality of
iteness.

SS: He talks about limitations..

DC: Yes, to the possibility that ;
suffering is part of the human
condition, that you cannot solve
every problem. How ever that
recognition comes to you, what you
see is that environment, or ecology,
then stands for the need to factor the
unsustainability of this way of life, and to ask
what would be good political institutions, what
would be good social institutions under these
circumstances.

SS: So you come to a choice then.

DC: Yes, well that was how! sawitthrough
his eyes. Now, he also saw that if it wasn’t
approached at that depth, that what would

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happen is daily life would become more and
more minutely economized in a way, because
every gesture [would be scrutinized]. I mean,
we probably shouldn’t be having this coffee.
Youeither establish limits within which you live
what hesawas being anaustereconviviality, (he
likes to quote medieval sources, you know, sort
of drunken sobriety, these kind of paradoxes
thatarevery, very old), thatif youliveesthetically
or austerely, then you can also live it up in a
certainsense. Youcan live withabandon, freely.
But, otherwise, we come now into a kind of
hygienic form of society where everything is a
cause for concern, everything is a source for
potential alarm. And the minutest gestures of
daily lifecomeunder surveillance. How dothey
affect the environment? How do they affect our
health?

This is troubling in two ways. It’s certainly
troubling because it’s life under surveillance
and, therefore, it is not a free form of life where
we can be concerned about one another, where
friendship would bea very important thing and
not me worrying about whether you're alright,
whether you’re politically correct, whether
you retaking responsibility for yourownhealth.
Whateveritis, wecome toamomentof concepts
of responsibility.

Soitcan goin that direction, andIthinkalso
thatmight bea prefascistcondition. Idon’twant
to speak sensationally, but if you look at what
happened in Germany, that was also an
ecological society, the Nazi society. There were
organic gardens on the boundaries of Dachow.
That was the society that became obsessively
concerned about health, with the health of a
certain kind of social body, and then developed
the image of these pathogens, these pollutants. I

seit Bas ‘ =

  

We're seeing major are

possible for this society if things get bad enough
and people get panicky enough. So those area
couple of reasons to be concerned about an
approach like that. I never answered your
question. This is typical.

David Cayley is broadcaster at CBC Radio's Ideas program.

SS: Well, it was about humility and hubris.
Why choose the old words?

DC: I guess I did answer it . Imean they’re
good words. And I think the Greek myths in
many ways simply represent the way intelligent
people saw that things are in the world. And
they’re still like that. Always will be.

SS: What doyou mean bythe commons? What
is the commons?

pee ide
and The Politics of
Enviromental Degredation

DC: Well I don’t think we have any very
good idea what a commons is in this way of life,
because there is no commons. But we have seen
inourlifetimes, certainly since the second World
War and the development era, let’s put it that
way, that wholecountries havebeen transformed
from communal lands, from commons, into
stateownership. Undertheownership of remote
elites without political roots, those commons
have been decimated.

My main example is the country that I
know, whichis Sarawak, EastMalaysia,northern
Borneo, which was, until the 70s think, asociety
that was probably modernizing at a pretty
moderate pace. There were transistor radios
and outboard motors that you would see in the
long houses and somehow, it seemed to me
anyway, and it’s a superficial judgment, that
people were taking those things in out of choice,
atleast limited choice,and somehow managing,
somehow coping. And then the government
simply began to parcel out the country in timber
licenses, and they found themselves facing utter
catastrophe. They found their forests were just
cutout from underneath them and they couldn’t
live as they had lived anymore, and that’s
happened all over the world.

I guess part of my understanding of a
commons as someone living in Toronto and
very much shaped within the climate of
environmentalism, as we've called it here, was
that in ‘88 in Toronto, there was the so-called
Citizen’s Summit, which was an alternative
summit to the G7, Group of Seven. There I met
all kinds of people, or people who talked about
other people anyway, for whom the term
environment just simply had no meaning. If

you’ reliving inSarawakand the forest goes, and

  

= couple of years that there seems to be a kind o

  
   
  
   
    
     
    
   
  
   
   
   
     
  
   
   
  
   
   
   
  
  
   
   
   
  
   
   
   
   
  
  
    
   
   
    
    
    
   
   
   
     
   
     
     
  
   

September 1, 1992

oblem in your environment any longer, you
bee a catastrophe in your world. I mean, your
world is gone. Your world is utterly gone.

An environment is only an externality, as
economics calls it. It’s asif, this is a rather tragic
view of the situation, that by the
time people can speak of an
environment, they are obviously
too far gone todoanything, because
an environment already implies
something external to you which
you necessarily manage and which
hasmeaning onlyinrelation to you.
That's really what environment
means. It’sa purely relational term.
It has nocontent. You don’t go for
a walk in the environment.

SS: There's nothing to hold in
your hand.

DC: That's right. If’s not an
exhaustively beautiful world. It’s
an environment. It’s a nothing.

SS: Has the term environment
become one of our modern day
certainties?

DC: Yes, I thirk it has.
Absolutely. Peopleare sure thereis
an environment. You know,
® certainties isa term that Illich gives

a particular twist to as meaning ...

“ SS: Common sense...

DC: Yes, what you and I in
conversation won’tquestion. What
will be taken for granted. Soa radio
interviewer will say to me, “Mr.
Cayley, what do you think the
condition of the global environment
is?” And he'll take his question as
thesensibleone. And he'll probabl
be offended ifI say, well that’sabsolutenonsense
as you've just said. Why don’t you please ask
meanintelligent question, ora sensiblequestion
or something? How could I poo answe
that? There’s no such thing in the first place. It’s
a figment of your imagination to think there’s a
global environment.

Maybe scientists can talk like that. They
can’ ttalk veryaccurately like that, because we've

      

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just been through a big ozone loop that scared
the pants off everybody, and then it turned out
tobenothing. The equipment wasacting up that
day. I mean, it’s pretty tough tocount molecules
intheozonelayer. You’renot going togetitright
every time. I’m digressing, but you see this asa
problem of being delivered into the hands of the
scientific management, that you become subjec
to that kind of thing. So certainties are things
that you take for granted and become concepts
thatareina way below your horizon. Youdon’t
see them anymore but they shape your world.

And it’s interesting now to go around and)
do interviews and so on. Very often it seems a
if you can’t easily raise those questions. I mea:
I can raise them with you clearly and you are
obviously interested in questioning those things
yourself so it’s not universally true, but there
does seem to be a kind of talk going around
which takes global responsibility and such kind
of concepts for real. And not only that, but
might think of a descent from them as slightl
treasonous because this is the turn-around
decade, and we've got to turn it around, and
we’veonly gotsomany more years, and let's get
onsideand let's get out thereand do something
There’s that kind of mood, which is not a good
climate in which to raise what seem to be a
philosopher’s quibbles.

SS: It strikes me that Hazel Henderson is an
ecocrat,a term you use in he
impose a certain hegemony on the discourse about
ecology. A question, like you say, is posed about t
global environment, and it's loaded with these ke
words. So how do you address people then, talk to
people in a way in which you can be understood?

DC: I don’t know the answer to that. I
don’t. It’s only become clear to me in the last