Author pursues another kind of green
Kevin Danaher did not shed any tears over the collapse of the latest round of global trade negotiations. Since at least 1988, when he co-founded Global Exchange, he has been in the forefront of those seeking an alternative to top-down, centralized regulation of international commerce.
Danaher will be in Spokane tomorrow to discuss his own vision for using trade to achieve social good and environmental remediation.
“My mantra is the local, green economy,” says Danaher, who has written prolifically about what he considers the menaces of globalization. The titles tell you just about all you need to know about where he’s coming from: “Ten Reasons to Abolish the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and World Bank,” “Corporations are Gonna Eat Your Momma: Globalization and the Downsizing of the American Dream,” and “Globalize This: The Battle Against the World Trade Organization.”
Battle, literally. Danaher participated in the demonstrations that sabotaged the November 1999 WTO meeting in Seattle. That was a fight, he has written, between elite globalization and grassroots globalization. It was a bad week for the elite, and Seattle.
“This is not about trade, it’s about an institution that is not being democratic,” he says. The WTO is a tool of multinational corporations pursuing their own agendas, agendas that may have little to do with anything other than maximizing profits. Social justice, environmental restoration, even national interest should not be bargained away, he says.
“Who is at the table when the rules are made?” Danaher asks. “What are the values that are driving trade?”
He does not reject capitalism, he just wants to downsize it.
His latest project, a Global Citizens Center, would feature a GreenMart on the ground floor of a green-built, mixed-use structure in San Francisco, also the home of Global Exchange. Danaher says he wants to create a model for the transition to grassroots capitalism, with tenants sharing their resources and expertise.
“Instead of a bunch of fingers, you start thinking like a hand,” he says.
Free enterprise, he says, should mean everyone is free to be enterprising. Being an entrepreneur is empowering, says Danaher, who notes that Global Exchange, unlike many grassroots organizations, does not rely on grants for money. Fund-raising activities include cross-country Bike-Aid trips that spread the group’s social and environmental messages, and Reality Tours that expose travelers to the subsistence end of existence in 40 countries, Cuba among them. Danaher calls them Club Med in reverse.
The organization promotes the use of alternative fuels, organic foods and fair-trade goods, which its sells in three of its own stores in San Francisco, Berkeley and Portland.
The world’s poor do not want hand-outs, he says. “They want to earn their way out of poverty.”
Global Exchange has taken on the multinationals, scolding Ford Motor Co. for its over-reliance on SUVs — as if Wall Street has not driven that message home — and Nike for “sweatshop” conditions in some of factories where its shoes are manufactured.
Once ideas on the fringe, Danaher says he sees signs the mainstream is coming around. Some of the smart money has already arrived.
International insurers Swiss Re and Munich Re are asking clients about how their activity might affect, or be affected by, global warming. Social investment — money managed according to social and environmental criteria — tripled from 1995 to 2005. Green building standards that seek to minimize energy use are finding wider acceptance.
Danaher predicts high fuel costs will make long-distance shipment of goods increasingly cost-prohibitive.
“Things will move back to the local economy,” he says. “The value of the green economy is going to skyrocket.”