Soil Not Oil : Climate Change, Peak Oil, And Food Insecurity;
By Vandana Shiva; Women Unlimited;
Pages: 156; Price: Rs 225
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She rages, she rants, she performs a marvellous Tandava with words. In this slim volume, Vandana Shiva vents her fury on the globalised fossil-fuel addicted haves who have orchestrated the dance of destruction that is making the earth miserable for the have-nots. The attention grabbing environmentalist's take on the hottest topic of discussion in international forums these days — climate change and its attendant worries — is relevant and engrossing.
As temperatures continue to soar, deserts expand, atomospheric CO2 levels rise, and rains play truant, the outcome of the climate chaos is certainly going to be food shortages, water wars and an energy crisis like no other. Vandana Shiva connects all the dots beautifully and highlights how climate worries, the energy crisis and food shortages are interlinked and how we are already facing the alarming repercussions. “There is no place to hide,” she says grimly, reeling off one hard-hitting statistic after another to support her point.
A strong champion of localisation, and small sustainable farms, she points out how increasing globalisation and industrial agriculture is plunging us deeper and deeper into disaster. In Chapter One, on the politics of climate change, she minces no words in rejecting most of the solutions that the developed world has come up with to tackle the biggest crisis threatening mankind.
Sneering at carbon trading, for instance, she writes: “Creating a market in pollution is ethically perverse…. Instead of putting a value on clean air, emissions trading schemes value pollution. The European markets for carbon trade pollution is estimated at $115 billion over the three year period from 2005 to 2007. Instead of defending the rights of all citizens to clean air and climate security, emissions trading defends the rights of corporations to pollute the atmosphere and destabilise the climate.”
Similarly, the US-India nuclear agreement offered as a “clean energy” agreement comes in for scathing criticism. “Nuclear waste is being ignored as is the potential of nuclear war. The agreement suggests that a nuclear winter is better than global warming,” she scoffs!
But her biggest fury is reserved for some of the technological fixes (especially Bush administration’s suggestion to modify solar radiance) being offered. “Myopic scientists now offer even more reckless interference as the solution… Playing with Gaia as if she were a LEGO set cannot be an appropriate response,” she sums up.
Shiva certainly has a way with words and metaphors – take the way she satirically replaces the car as the sacred symbol of India today rather than the cow. Launching a scathing attack on the automobile culture, she writes: “When something is sacred, it is inviolable. Cows used to be inviolable in India. Today the car has become inviolable…humans and other species can be sacrificed to make way for the car.”
Once she has established the sacredness of the cars, and how policies are being changed, economies are being run on automobile culture, she moves into the topic of biofuels. “Are we producing food for cars or human beings?” is her justifiable question. While one need not necessarily agree with all of Shiva’s views on biofuels — from ethanol to GM soy to jatropha, it’s one unending tirade — she certainly scores points for the compelling way in which she has linked up the theme.
Finally, we come to soil, not oil, which is Shiva’s pet point of growing local and eating local and rebuilding the soil and her million of micro-organisms through organic practices. We are literally eating oil today not the produce of the soil is her contention, as condemns the way oil has become all pervasive in our food — be it in the chemical fertilisers or being used to transport food to far flung places.
Shiva concludes by invoking Shakti, the creative energy of the universe, which for her is the Satvik energy that needs to be unleashed to save the world. Indeed, this is the weakest link of the book — for while she is at her wittiest best in condemning all the solutions offered by policy makers, her solution appears impractical and rather simplistic. It lies in going back to a localised production and consumption economy; creating self sustaining small communities; turning our backs to industrialisation of agriculture, and quite literally going back to the Bullock Cart era (she nostalgically remembers tonga rides and going elephant back in school days!).
Shiva’s prescription is going to need a huge mindset change across cultures to make any dent in the short term, though in the long term, that's perhaps the only route. However, repairing the horribly fractured earth is going to need a lot more answers than just that.
A version of this review was published in Businessworld issue dated 20 July 2009
Book Reviews 
Soil Not Oil : Climate Change, Peak Oil, And Food Insecurity; 
