Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future

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Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future

  • ISBN13: 9780805076264
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The bestselling leader of The End of Scenery issues an impassioned call to arms for an economy that makes community and ennobles our lives

In this powerful and provocative manifesto, Bill McKibben offers the largest challenge in a generation to the prevailing view of our economy. For the first time in human history, he observes, “more” is no longer synonymous with “better”—indeed, for many of us, they have become nearly opposites. McKibben puts forwards a new way to reflect about the things we buy, the food we eat, the energy we use, and the money that pays for it all. Our buys, he says, need not be at odds with the things we truly value.

McKibben’s animating thought is that we need to go beyond “growth” as the paramount economic ideal and pursue prosperity in a more local direction, with cities, suburbs, and regions producing more of their own food, generating more of their own energy, and even making more of their own culture and entertainment. He shows this concept blossoming around the world with arresting results, from the burgeoning economies of India and China to the more mature societies of Europe and New England. For persons who worry about environmental threats, he offers a route out of the worst of persons problems; for persons who marvel if there isn’t something more to life than buying, he provides the insight to reflect about one’s life as an individual and as a member of a larger community.

McKibben offers a realistic, if challenging, scenario for a hopeful future. As he so eloquently shows, the more we nurture the essential humanity of our economy, the more we will recapture our own.
Bill McKibben is the leader of ten books, including The End of Scenery, The Age of Missing Information, and Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age. A ex- staff writer for The New Yorker, he writes regularly for Harper‘s, The Atlantic Monthly, and The New York Review of Books, among additional publications. He is a scholar in residence at Middlebury College and lives in Vermont with his wife, the writer Sue Halpern, and their daughter.
In this manifesto, Bill McKibben offers the largest challenge in a generation to the prevailing view of our economy. For the first time in human history, he observes, “more” is no longer synonymous with “better”—indeed, for many of us, they have become nearly opposites. McKibben puts forwards a new way to reflect about the things we buy, the food we eat, the energy we use, and the money that pays for it all.
 
The animating thought of Deep Economy is that we need to go beyond “growth” as the paramount economic ideal and pursue prosperity in a more local direction, with cities, suburbs, and regions producing more of their own food, generating more of their own energy, and even making more of their own culture and entertainment. McKibben shows this concept blossoming around the world with arresting results, from the burgeoning economies of India and China to the more mature societies of Europe and New England. For persons who worry about environmental threats, he offers a route out of the worst of persons problems; for persons who marvel if there isn’t something more to life than buying, he provides the insight to reflect about one’s life as an individual and as a member of a larger community.
 
A generation ago, many environmentalists advocated “deep ecology,” through which they sought to go beyond fleeting-term, piecemeal reforms by asking profound questions about the choices people make in their daily lives. McKibben demonstrates that we need a similar shift in our thinking about economics—we need to reflect about the “deep economy” that takes human satisfaction and societal durability more seriously. As he shows, the more we nurture the essential humanity of our economy, the more we will recapture our own.
“It would be unwise to dismiss McKibben’s thoughts as pipe dreams or Luddism. He makes his case on anecdotal, environmental, moral and, as it were, aesthetic grounds. An attentive, widely traveled writer and environmentalist, McKibben cites the success of local projects around the world, from a rabbit-raising college in China to a Guatemalan cooperative that manufactures farm machinery from ancient bicycles.”—Lance Morrow, The New York Times Book Review
“It would be unwise to dismiss McKibben’s thoughts as pipe dreams or Luddism. He makes his case on anecdotal, environmental, moral and, as it were, aesthetic grounds. An attentive, widely traveled writer and environmentalist, McKibben cites the success of local projects around the world, from a rabbit-raising college in China to a Guatemalan cooperative that manufactures farm machinery from ancient bicycles.”—Lance Morrow, The New York Times Book Review
 
“I’d like to see Deep Economy read in every Econ 101 class. Bill McKibben questions the central human question: What is the economy for? The stakes here are terrifyingly high, but with his genial style and fascinating examples of alternative approaches, McKibben convinces me that economics is anything but dismal—if only we can learn to do it right!”—Barbara Ehrenreich, leader of Nickel and Dimed
 
“The cult of growth and globalization has seldom been so effectively challenged as by Bill McKibben in Deep Economy. But this bracing shot in the arm of a book also throws the bright light of McKibben’s matchless television journalism on the vibrant local economies now springing up like mushrooms in the shadow of globalization. Deep Economy fills you with a hope and a sense of fresh possibility.”—Michael Pollan, leader of The Omnivore’s Dilemma
 
“How is our nation going to cope with global warming, peak oil, inequality, and a growing sense of isolation? Bill McKibben provides the simple but brilliant answer the economists have missed—we need to make ‘depth’ through local interdependence and sustainable use of resources. I will be requiring this inspiring book for my students, and passionately recommending it to everyone else I know.”—Juliet Schor, professor of sociology, Boston College, and leader of The Overspent American
 
“Bill McKibben works on the frontiers of new understandings and returns with his startling and lucid revelations of the possible future. A saner human-scale world does exist—just over the horizon—and McKibben introduces us to the people and thoughts leading us there.”—William Greider, leader of The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy
 
“Beginning with his prescient treatise on global warming, The End of Scenery, McKibben has been investigating and elucidating some of the most confounding aspects of our lives. He now brings his signature clarity of thought and handsomely crafted prose to a pivotal, intricate theme, the negative consequences of our growth-oriented economy. McKibben incisively interprets a staggering array of studies that document the symbiotic relationship between fossil fuels and five decades of dizzying economic growth, and the many ways the pursuit of ever-privileged corporate profits has led to environmental havoc and neglect of people’s most basic needs. At once reportorial, philosophic, and anecdotal, McKibben, intoning the mantra ‘more is not better,’ takes measure of diminishing returns. With eroding security, a dysfunctional health system, floundering public schools, privileged excise of depression, ‘wild difference’ in the distribution of wealth, and hurt to the biosphere, McKibben believes a new paradigm is needed, that of a ‘deep economy’ born of sustainable and sustaining communities anchored in local resources. Using the farmer’s market as a template, he clarifies the logistics of workable alternatives to the corporate imperative based on ecological capacities and the ‘economics of neighborliness.’ With the threat of energy crises and global warming, McKibben’s vision of nurturing communities rooted in traditional values and driven by ‘green’ technologies, but utopian, may provide thoughts for constructive change.”—Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)
 
“Challenging the prevailing wisdom that the goal of economies should be unlimited growth, McKibben argues that the world doesn’t have enough natural resources to sustain endless economic expansion . . . McKibben’s proposals for new, less growth-centered ways of thinking about economics are intriguing, and offer hope that change is possible.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

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