Book Review: Soil Not Oil

Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis, by Vandana Shiva, 144 pages, South End Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2008, $15

With both our planet and our economy at the tipping point, Soil Not Oil, by Vandana Shiva, should give fresh inspiration to those already active in the creation of a sustainable future and provide an accessible introduction for those more recently attuned to the challenges we face as a species.

Many of those devoted to the defense of our environment are intimately familiar with Shiva’s work. Few authors have offered humanity a more compelling message of reconciliation and survival.

In Soil Not Oil, Shiva connects three most pressing threats: climate change, peak oil, and food security. She convincingly argues that these problems cannot be addressed in isolation, that piecemeal attempts to perpetuate business as usual cannot succeed.

While many treat climate change as an impending problem, Shiva demonstrates that in fact this problem is happening now, people are dying as a result, now.

Climate change is the final manifestation of what she calls “eco-imperialism.” After the colonization of land and water, the atmosphere is now being traded as another commodity through the sale of carbon “offsets.” Shiva argues that these offsets make no contribution to the global reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, and they subsidize practices that should instead be prohibited.

Shiva cautions against faith in the technological solution. She disabuses the reader of the notion that nuclear power is safe and “carbon free,” pointing to a genocidal and petroleum-based nuclear fuel cycle. She demonstrates how unrealistic it is – in the face of peak oil and mass hunger – to expect biofuels to save us, and she challenges the wisdom of deploying “alternatives” that are unsustainable.

The element that ties climate change, peak oil, and food insecurity together is the car. The automobile infrastructure ensures the rapid depletion of oil and water, leading to climate change and crop failure. It displaces those least able to afford the luxury of private transportation to make way for factories and highways. These highways, in turn, make human- and animal-powered locomotion impracticable or illegal.  Shiva argues that we must focus on the needs of people, rather than seek a more efficient gas-guzzler or a non-existent replacement for oil.

A recurring theme in Shiva’s work is that the distribution of people on the land, the modes of transit we employ, and the kinds of “development” to which we are subjected have nothing to do with the workings of markets. Rather, these are political decisions, favoring international capital and local elites, and their implementation is rife with blatant corruption.

Instead of implementing development in any meaningful sense of the term, these policies distort economies by subsidizing the automobile economy, destroying local markets, and externalizing social costs. Rather than encouraging prosperity and democracy, these policies ensure poverty and the violent repression of those who would challenge power: “A top-down model for sustainability,” she writes, “results [only] in pseudo-sustainability and eco-imperialism.”

Some readers, those most alert to breaking developments in science and politics, may find few surprises. Arguably, the book may best serve as a primer for those beginning to take notice of the crises in climate, energy and food. Still, Shiva’s knowledge, wisdom and passion ensure that even the most seasoned and informed environmentalist will come away with fresh ideas, more evidence, and renewed commitment. 

Although change is always a collective effort, when we succeed in the struggle to reclaim our planet, Vandana Shiva will stand with those to whom we owe special thanks.

Dr. Martin Orr is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology at Boise State University in Idaho.