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 enlarge | Author: Bill Mckibben
Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
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Rating:  50 reviews
Sales Rank: 4038
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.8
ISBN: 0805087222
Dewey Decimal Number: 301
EAN: 9780805087222
ASIN: 0805087222
Publication Date: March 4, 2008
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| Customer Reviews:
 Thoughtful and far-sighted July 6, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Bill McKibben is an incredibly hard-working, dedicated journalist and environmentalist who has become an activist. His premise is simple but goes against the prevailing wisdom.....that we can redevelop our regional economies, thus saving money in transportation and creating jobs locally. McKibben and others have done this in Vermont, recreating a home-based economy, in many ways, albeit a very sophisticated one that incorporates Middlebury College, the internet and many other international resources. In these days of contaminated food products being shipped in from China, McKibben's simple prescription to reinvigorate our local economies
looks very prophetic these days.
Re-setting your mind July 4, 2007
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Since the end of WWII, North Americans have created a new outlook on the individual and social relations. Where once we were part of small town rural communities or even close-knit urban neighbourhoods, now we've moved a major part of our population into the suburbs. Single houses, fenced or hedged keep us insulated from each other and the world. McKibben calls it "hyperindividuality" with each of us following the myth of More and Better. We demand More and Better appliances in our kitchen, More and Better vehicles in the garage with More and Better roads to drive them on. An economy based on this philosophy has touted Growth as a beacon to set the direction of our thinking. The resulting high consumption lifestyle has masked the true costs of how we live.
In this comprehensive and long overdue study, McKibben describes the way our current mindset is driving our lives. As an expressive reformer, he also provides a set of almost painless cures to restore without abandoning what we've become accustomed to. We can rebuild "community" without serious disruption. The "almost painless" simply means a small change in outlook and a willingness to undertake the work to achieve sustainable lives and communities. Finding each other and building more more communicative relationships with each other is a major first step. From those initial contacts healthier and more responsible lifestyles can result. The thin edge of the wedge in achieving this is simply for each of us to ask ourselves "How much Growth do we need?"
Personal interaction is best enhanced, according to McKibben, by the shift to local food and other products. With vegetables travelling thousands of kilometres to reach your dining table, paying increased attention to what is available locally has many advantages. Among the greatest of these is knowledge that the products money stays in your vicinity and are likely right at hand in your area. In North America, the "family farm" has disappeared, replaced by huge tracts of land run by distant owners. Still, "Farmer's markets" have burgeoned in recent years and are increasing in number. The "organic" product has even entered the supermarket chains, a step McKibben feels should be further encouraged. Community-supported agriculture is a major aspect of this book. Along with local small farms, the "urban garden" utilisation of vacant lots has also grown . In both forms, the money you spend remains in your community. In some places, that has given rise to a local currency to facilitate support for local farmers and manufacturers.
The author stresses that our situation doesn't require rapid nor radical change in how we live. What he seeks is a "patient rebalancing of the scales". His native country, although its population still believes it stands above the rest of the nations, has slipped drastically in essential features. He has travelled many lands to witness various solutions that have been implemented. Many of these can be applied here, and it is here that the rebalancing is needed most. Our past values are not flawless, but he thinks we have sufficient common sense to find and use the best solutions where they can do the most good. Living in Vermont, he is favoured by his proximity not only to his neighbours, but to the politicians from the township to the federal level. That situation grants him and his fellow townsmen the opportunity to urge things like shifting subsidies from corporate farms to community ones.
None of his proposals embraces the "warm and fuzzy" feeling the word "community" often evokes. The romantic myth of small towns of closely-knit families is just that - a myth. For starters, there's no defined limit of what size a community must be to be workable. There are, McKibben argues, many "data points" to be considered. The difficulty is that our new mind-set has kept us from considering which ones are available to you and how to utilise them best. This volume, which is as much a guide-book for the future as it is a lamentation of why we need such a road-map, explains how to assess those data points by which you can help create a viable future. Read it and find out how and why. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
 Good overall June 1, 2007
4 out of 7 found this review helpful
This is the most convincing book I've read when it comes to buying locally. From farmer's markets to alternative energy sources, the author gives his insights on just how much less oil and water you demand from the environment when you make a few adjustments to your lifestyle. He is also right in challenging the growth for growth sake economic model. The GDP is a misleading number because it doesn't account for the damage we do to the environment, the damage we do to our own bodies and mental health by being a consume-at-all-cost culture. Rightly, he said that those negative effects should be subtracted, not added, to the GDP to present an accurate picture of a country's productiveness.
Where I disagree with him is that you don't have to go back to a farming society (albeit organic) in order to be a ecologically sustainable society. Alternative energy sources such as solar power, wind power, ethanol, etc... can become really huge when they are allowed to compete on an equal footing with big oil. If anyone has doubts that they're not given a fair chance to compete in the market, just consider what happened to my state, CA. The oil companies spent over $600 million dollars to defeat one little initiative bubbled up by the voters last year - to set aside a tiny percentage of tax money for alternative energy research. We're only talking about research here. Not even talking about breaking up the monopolistic practices of big oil. They blitzed the radio and TV stations with negative ads, threatening to increase gas prices if voters pass this bill. While neglecting to mention that it would be illegal for them to do so. I think last year, Californians got a whiff of just how determined the oil companies are in making sure that our society is addicted to oil.
Anyway, I digress. My point is, his vision for alternate energy source use wasn't big enough. What we need, along with more organic farms, is technology on the par of what Japan has - solar power grids and bullet trains that run on magnetic propulsion technology. Better public transportation. Green jobs such as sustainable city planning, green home retrofitting and alternative energy engineering jobs. We also need the European vision of the good, leisurely life. Working less, spending more time with family & community. (To be fair, he did mention this in his book.) Yes, we should have lots more organic farms. But organic farms by itself can't solve global warming. Furthermore, asking poor countries like India & China to go back to the countryside is just irresponsible. They need knowledge and technology, alongside with better farming practices, to turn their economy from being dependent on American patronage, to a truly self-sufficient country.
Great Book, I'm a Fan, But Other Works Exist May 28, 2007
40 out of 44 found this review helpful
I've been a fan of the author since I read his book on The Age of Missing Information, and I then lost touch with his work. I was reminded of him by Paul Hawken, whose book Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming I will review this afternoon.
DEEP ECONOMY is a very fine personal effort with a very straight-forward prescription for localizing food production, energy production, radio, and currency. The author is a gigantic intellect, and writes clearly.
The core point in the first part of the book is an emphasis on a need to restore humanity to the process, to reduce industrial era efficiencies in order to enable more intangible values such as community. The opening chapter is a great review of the literature the author is familiar, but I take off one star because the other books I list below are not mentioned, hence this great book is incomplete in that sense.
The author puts forward three areas where life as we know it is going downhill:
1) Our political systems continue to emphasize industrialization and consolidation that is not affordable by our current rates of depleting energy and water;
2) There is not enough energy for China, let alone Brazil, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and Wild Cards like Turkey and South Africa, to follow in our steps.
3) All this "more" is not making us happier. Indeed the author documents, as others have, that the US was happiest in 1946, and it's been downhill from there. He pegs financially-stimulated happiness at $10,000, after which more money does not bring more happiness in relation to self, community, and eternity.
He educates in pointing out that 50% of the global economy is tied up in food systems; that 50 acres can support 10-12 families; that a gallon of gasoline releases five of its six pounds of weight as emissions.
He introduces Bob Constanza and the calculated value of the ecosystem we are destroyed at $33 trillion annually. I learned of the Earth Stakeholder Report and about Behavioral Economics from this author. To that I would add the World Index of Social and Environmental Responsibility (WISER) and the inspiring works of Paul Hawken with "true cost" metrics and Jon Ramer with local currencies, Interra.
The middle book focuses, as others have, on the loss of community, on hyper-individualization, and on how Wal-Mart can save someone roughly $58 a year, but cost them their entire local economy. He uses this to emphasize the urgency of restoring our sense of community so we can make decisions as a collective, for the common good.
Like Al Gore, but with less pomp, he rails against advertising as the engine for unnecessary consumption.
I was surprised by, and then in agreement with, his voiced need to restore local radio stations that actually focus on local needs and concerns and news. His critical comments on the conglomerate shows that feature Rush Limbaugh and morons talking about pornography are properly devastating.
Take home message: localization is the only way to achieve resilience--the federal government is not going to be effective in the short or long term as things now stand. We learn that the ideal community size for participatory democracy is no more than 500 voters, of whom 40% can be expected to show up for a town hall meeting.
We learn that Anthony Lovins has reported to the Department of Defense that if they spend $180B over the next ten years--$18B a year--that can cut US oil imports in half, and save $70B a year in addition. Now that is what I consider to be a key piece of public information.
He is generally negative on Tom Friedman, with which I agree, and Jeffrey Sachs, for whom I hold out more hope.
Below are the books that teach us beyond and before the scope of this book, which I am very happy to have read and added to my library.
Manufacture of Evil: Ethics, Evolution, and the Industrial System
Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge
The Future of Life
The Ecology of Commerce
Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution
Pandora's Poison: Chlorine, Health, and a New Environmental Strategy
Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource
Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict With a New Introduction by the Author
Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming
Buy local, save the world May 23, 2007
This book is a treatise on why consumers should at least try and support local (small) businesses. From the food you eat to the products you buy, McKibben presents numerous reasons why the world would be better off on a much more local economy.
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