Book Review

The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream
                          by Jeremy Rifkin, 2004, Tarcher/Penguin $25.95 hardcover; $15.95 paper.

- a review by Carol Van Strum -

Perceived as a threat to U.S. commerce, the European Union is rarely portrayed favorably or accurately in our media. The result is that few Americans have a clue what the EU is all about. Filling this serious gap, Jeremy Rifkin's The European Dream might well be subtitled, "What U.S. business doesn't want you to know about the European Union."

Originally promoted by the United States as a bulwark against communism and Soviet influence, the EU began fifty years ago as the European Economic Community (EEC), a common market for its member states. With the end of the Cold War, the EEC quietly evolved into the European Union, expanding both its membership and its horizons far beyond economic issues, essentially re-inventing the functions of state and the power of collective action on a global stage. Ironically, the EU's vision of a sustainable global economy now presents a bulwark against the destructive, growth-at-any-cost policies of the United States.

The European dream articulated by Rifkin envisions a civilization focused on quality of life, sustainable development, and both personal and community interdependence. By contrast, the classic American dream emphasizes unlimited growth, personal wealth, and both individual and national autonomy.

Rifkin traces the cultural roots of these divergent attitudes back to the 18th Century, when mechanical and capitalist innovations of the Industrial Revolution promised limitless economic development and accumulation of wealth. This promise flourished in America, where an entire continent offered seemingly limitless resources, engendering a sense of entitlement that now extends to the entire planet. Europeans, on the other hand, had few illusions about infinite growth; after centuries of conflict over scarce resources, they formed the EU amid the wreckage of two devastating wars, stark reminders of the imperative to recognize limits to growth and improve the quality of life within such limits.

These diametrically opposed attitudes clash visibly in U.S. opposition to the Precautionary Principle, which Rifkin calls "the centerpiece of EU regulatory policy governing science and technology in a globalizing world." Profit-driven U.S. regulatory policy, imposing an impossible burden of scientific certainty on even the mildest restriction, allows lethal technologies to continue even as body counts rise and global disasters accrue. Recognizing the insanity of such policies - e.g., atmospheric ozone depletion, BSE in cattle, the proliferation of antibiotic resistant bacteria, ubiquitous damage from PCBs and other toxins - the EU seeks to forestall such harm by taking action before scientific uncertainties are resolved.

The EU's adoption of the Precautionary Principle, Rifkin notes, represents "a profound shift in the way society views its relationship to nature." The densely populated nations of Europe, intimately acquainted with the far-reaching impacts of industrial growth, have traditionally valued natural landscapes and rare wild places as precious in their own right, rather than just resources to be exploited. The Precautionary Principle provides a balance between the intrinsic value of nature and the commercial value of development, particularly where the impacts of modern technology are global and irreversible. "When the whole world is at risk because of the scale of human intervention, then a new scientific approach is required that takes the whole world into consideration," Rifkin writes. "This is the logic at the heart of the precautionary principle."

Needless to say, the U.S. has thrown its considerable economic and political might into attacking the EU's precautionary policies at every turn and by any means possible. Withstanding U.S. pressure is but one of the difficulties faced by the fledgling EU. As Rifkin points out, persuading 25 sovereign nations to relinquish any of their power is neither a smooth nor an easy task, and the problems are legion; for example, only fifteen members to date have ratified the EU Constitution.

How well the EU will succeed in fulfilling its dream is at present an open question, but the need for a comprehensive political and economic strategy to address critical global issues is no longer in any doubt. Despite the flaws and contradictions in Europe's vision, British historian Tony Judt noted recently, "of all the models that are on offer in the world today, [Europe's] is the one most likely to be well-equipped to face the coming century."¹

¹ Quoted in "Economists are from Mars, Europeans are from Venus," by John Thornhill. The Financial Times, June 10-11, 2006, p. 7.

 

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