Interview: "China's villages are most promising places for ecological civilization construction"

China's villages are good places to start the ecological civilization construction, said U.S. ecological philosopher John Cobb, Jr. in a recent interview with Xinhua.

"Even if the process of alienation from the land has begun among Chinese farmers, China's villages are still the most promising places for ecological civilization construction," Cobb said before leaving for the Third China Village Civilization Development Forum in Beijing next week.

"If we look broadly at the human story, we see that the more 'civilized' a people have become, the deeper is their alienation from nature. Even in ancient times, human beings were sometimes a destructive part of their ecosystem. They were responsible for the extinction of a good many species."

Cobb believed the industrial revolution only intensified the alienation of the urban population from nature and then eroded rural living altogether by industrializing agriculture and turning husbandry into manufacturing meat.

"If farmers share in urban alienation from nature, this does not move toward ecological civilization. There is great danger that this is occurring," said Cobb, who is well-known for his more than four decades of continuing effort to promote ecological awareness.

Cobb has been keeping a close eye on the latest policies and development in China during the past decade. In the Center for Process Studies which he founded in early 1970s in Claremont, Southern California, there is a Chinese department focusing on studies in philosophy and social issues in China.

In recent years, the Chinese government and people are making great effort on ecological civilization construction, including reducing the use of fossil energy, improving the environment, reducing pollution and building a more harmonious relations among peoples and among nations. In China's rural area, the usage of chemical herbicides and pesticides is reduced, rural infrastructures are improved, farmers' livings are changing for the better.

Cobb said that these changes in China are encouraging.

The 90-year-old theologist worried that reconnecting with the land remains marginal in the educational system. "Our universities still largely ignore such ideas," he said. "In the United States, most of the people who work in agriculture today are just as alienated from the land as any urban dweller."

"Today it seems more likely that civilization will lead us into making our planet uninhabitable for our species than to ecological civilization," he said. "Human beings have been exploiting the land to some extent ever since they invented the plow. Half of the topsoil that once covered much of the land has been lost. And today's industrial agriculture has greatly speeded up the pace of loss."

"Unless we change, our common home will lose its ability to feed us, and our shared destiny will include massive starvation," Cobb warned. "But if it is possible to transform civilization, then our efforts in that direction are not wasted." Endit