---I want my world music on my local radio station that also carries the local basketball game and in-depth reporting from the state legislature, not some Clear Channel pipeline of bland designed to appeal to the broadest possible audience.---

I agree with every word, every syllable, every letter of this well-presented first person essay pleading for an end to globalization in favor of the community. So why don’t I like it? The problem is the execution. Let me explain. I’m a generation x-er and, while I haven’t read Mr. McKibben’s bio, I would venture that he comes from that generation before me that still had heroes and believed in the fundamental goodness of man in the most earnest and humorless fashion available. This may explain the whiff of comfortable, suburban, college town moral superiority that is off putting and that, for all its urbane erudition, comes off as myopic. The author is talking down, taking moral judgments and making assumptions and suggestions far out of the reach of the regular Joe. We would all like an “energy cell” on the roof and “windmill on the nearby ridge”, but who can afford it? And while it’s really great that some people in Wyoming saved their town center from clutches of WalMart, the fact is most struggling Americans shop there because it’s cheap and simply don’t have the luxury of thinking of the big picture. Recognition of this reality is missing here. And it is a weaker piece for it.