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mountains with which it shares the ecoregion.
Morphoregion
A subunit of the georegion, of perhaps several thousand square miles, that marks a distinct territory identifiable by distinctive forms of life on the surface–towns and cities, mines and factories, fields and farms–and the special land forms that give rise to those particular features in the first place. An example would be the distinct parts of a watershed, and the distinct styles of human culture and agriculture therein, which changes character as it flows from the headwaters to the mouth.38
However, Sale pointed out “ultimately the task of determining the appropriate bioregional boundaries–and how seriously to take them–will always be left up to the inhabitants of the area, the dwellers in the land, who will always know them best.”39
Sale regarded the bioregion as a means for “honing” sensibilities about environments and the more “natural” institutions that might
develop therein. For example, he believes a bioregional economy, based as it is upon appropriate scales, would provide a more moral –and hence stable–atmosphere for people living within its boundaries. Why?
A bioregional economy would seek first to maintain rather than use up the natural world, to adapt to the environment rather than try to exploit or manipulate it, to conserve not only the resources but also the relationships and the systems of the natural world; and second to establish a stable means of production and exchange rather than one always in flux and dependent upon continual growth and constant competition, in service to something called “progress,” a false and delusory goddess if ever there was one.40
Growth is not, therefore, the goal of such a community; instead it is sustainability. “At its base,” Sale argued, “it would be an economy that depended upon a minimum number of goods and the minimum amount of environmental disruption along with the maximum use of renewable resources and maximum use of human labor and ingenuity.”41
Such a community, in Sale’s opinion, would have no leader, no ruling committee. Instead, citizen or community officers would perform necessary functions through “the law of complementarity,” or, where necessary, they would rotate positions if no one were available to perform a purely functional role. There would be independent currencies employed and independent militias formed across the various bioregions. Where a larger unit of governance is desired, bioregions would enter into a confederacy, so long as no single bioregion extended its sphere (an artificially extended bioregion would introduce the constraints of homogenous communities).42 A bioregional community, argued Sale, would meet the test of government in the 20th century–namely, to provide liberty, equality, efficiency, welfare, and security:
It promotes liberty by diminishing the chances of arbitrary government action and providing nore points of pressure for affected minorities. It enhances equality by assuring more participation by individuals and less concentration of power in a few remote and unresponsive bodies and offices. It increases efficiency by allowing government to be more sensitive and flexible, recognizing and adjusting to new conditions, new demands from the populace it serves. It advances welfare because at the smaller scales it is able to measure people’s needs best and to provide for them more quickly, more cheaply, and more accurately. And, because of that it actually improves security because, unlike the big and bumbling megastates vulnerable to instability and alienation, it fosters the sort of cohesiveness and allegiance that discourages crime and disruption within and discourages aggression and attachment from without.43
Yet, outside the general theme that science will determine the biological boundaries and people within the bioregion, Sale offered no
means for getting from here to there.