More from Less
"A surprising analysis of the decline in consumption of natural resources despite the explosion of goods, prosperity, and population"-- Throughout history, the only way for humanity to grow was by degrading the Earth: chopping down forests, fouling the air and water, and endlessly digging out resources. Since the first Earth Day in 1970, the reigning argument has been that taking better care of the planet means radically changing course: reducing our consumption, tightening our belts, learning to share and reuse, restraining growth. Is that argument correct? Absolutely not. In More from Less, McAfee argues that to solve our ecological problems we don't need to make radical changes. Instead, we need to do more of what we're already doing: growing technologically sophisticated market-based economies around the world. How can he possibly make this claim? Because of the evidence. America--a large, high-tech country that accounts for about 25% of the global economy--is now generally using less of most resources year after year, even as its economy and population continue to grow. What's more, the US is polluting the air and water less, emitting fewer greenhouse gases, and replenishing endangered animal populations. And, as McAfee shows, America is not alone. Other countries are also transforming themselves in fundamental ways. What has made this turnabout possible?
Stats for nerds
8recommend
24mentions
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2019–2022years
38% recommend63% neutral
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What Hacker News says
- If you ever want to stop wallowing in misanthropic nihilism, I recommend reading books like "More From Less" - Mcafee which shows that capitalism does in fact reduce/moderate consumption. Next look at "Speed and Scale" - Doerr, or "How to Solve a Climate Disaster" - Gates for a giant list of human innovations that will in fact decrease/reverse climate change.
- See the book More From Less for a counter-argument. Thanks to modern efficiencies and digitization a lot of resource use has decoupled from economic growth and some has actually peaked
- Yes but this has been improving in recent decades as well. See the book More From Less for an argument. Thanks to modern efficiencies, digitization, and government action, resource use has decoupled from economic growth and some has even peaked.
- For a somewhat encouraging counterpoint to this statement, check out the book "More From Less." It describes a lot of positive trends including decreasing demand for many resources whose extraction is damaging to the environment. Some examples: we farm far less land in the United States than we used to while producing more food, and that unused area slowly reverts to forest; we use less metal to make containers for the same volume of liquid. There's still plenty to worry about, but more positive signs than you'd think.
- >> but I think much of it could also be attributed to countries going through their own industrialisation processes
Is that not just a misconception about how countries develop though?
See Andrew McAfee - More from Less.
E.g. we know that as a country’s manufacturing capability matures, it produces more product with less raw material and energy inputs. It’s somewhat counter intuitive though but the end result is the opposite of what you suggest - maturation of industry reduces emissions and reduces raw material consumption and it can be to such an extent that the amount of product produced increases- example, motor industry of America or Japan, example battery production industry of china. Raw material consumption and energy use went down, manufactured product went up. Andrew McAfee’s book has better examples than mine but these were the ones i looked into to try to disprove his argument.
>> The big issue in China is the CCP have no reason to care or abide by any global rules on this
Wait, the US emissions of co2 per capita is just over 16tonnes per year. Why is China who’s per capita emissions at just under 7tonnes per year the key to moving forward? The key is america but the political approach is always to use the metric of convenience- currently that is absolute volume since that paints china worse than the US, and yet it would be only fair that we adjust for population.
>> There's a strong correlation between economic strife and deaths
Sure, but can we quantify it? We need to figure out if we’re over-prioritising covid response. E.g. if there were 1mm excess deaths and only 25% were attributable to covid, that sounds like the cure is worse than the disease.
As it stands though, it appears almost 100% of excess deaths are attributable to covid, that suggests we need to keep focussing on preventing covid deaths rather than focussing on death ultimately caused by economic harm, correct?
- > Research shows biodiversity suffers at the hands of economic growth due to increased resource consumption and pollution
I don't think that's entirely clear. There's a concept in economics called dematerialization. From wikipedia: Dematerialization refers to the absolute or relative reduction in the quantity of materials required to serve economic functions in society.
The idea is that as a country becomes more developed and prosperous, the less resources are required to serve the needs of the people. For instance: Between 1977 and 2001, the amount of material required to meet all needs of Americans fell from 1.18 trillion pounds to 1.08 trillion pounds. The incredible thing is that this seems to be a reduction in absolute resources not resources per populace. Much of that reduction is due to technology (e.g. a cell phone replaced plastic from camcorder, camera, computer etc). The other is due to production efficiencies and migration to cities . A similar trend can be seen with carbon reduction in developed parts of the world.
I'm not 100% convinced by this idea, but it's enough for me to question the premise that economic growth leads to more resource consumption.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dematerialization_(economics)
[Edit] There's a great interview with Andrew McAfee on this concept at EconTalk. Its based on the McAffe's book More from Less that explores the topics. He mentions a few limitations of the idea including environmental concerns
