Green Success Stories just finished reading The Story of More by Hope Jahren.
(It’s overdue at the library, by the way, but we’re holding on to it for a little more. Apologies to the library, but we want to stay with it longer. Then we’re just gonna buy it.)
The Story of More is one of the seminal books in the literature of sustainability. It’s beautifully written, and leaves you thinking, more and more, about more. Many of the stories she tells in it resonate (as Green Success Stories can tell you, stories resonate).
The basic premise is that modern humankind, especially lately, has been on a trajectory of exponential growth, exponential more, in many ways. Population. Production. Consumption. Pollution. More and more we’ve been unwittingly or unconscionably messing around with nature, using nature as a dumping ground. We’ve been impacting the environment around us, more and more, until we’ve gotten ourselves into more more more scary climate situations.
(More more more, too much more).
Take a look at her Environmental Catechism, in which she lists the “mores” of our exponential growth:
It includes figures such as:
- waste of edible food has increased such that it now equals the amount of food needed to adequately feed all o the undernourished people on Earth.
- one trillion tons of carbon dioxide have been released into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels.
- the average global surface temperature has increased by one degree Fahrenheit.
- the average global sea level has increased by four inches; half of this rise was due to the addition of water melted from mountain glaciers and polar ice.
- more than half of all amphibian, bird, and butterfly species has declined in population; one-quarter of all fish and plant species has declined in population.
We’re in a state of more, that’s affecting us more and more.
We need to talk more about how to make things better.
Next time: There is Hope – Hope Jahren’s Action Guide
More
In the meantime, here’s the full
Environmental Catechism (from The Story of More)
GLOBALLY, since 1969… [and as of publication in March 2020:]
- population has doubled.
- child mortality has decreased by half.
- average life expectancy has increased by twelve years.
- forty-seven cities have grown to contain more than ten million people
- production of cereal grains has triled
- the amount of crops that can be harvested per acre has more than doubled.
- the amount of land cultivated for farming has increased by 10 percent.
- production of meat has tripled.
- annual slaughter of pigs has tripled; chicken has increased sixfold; cattle has increased by half.
- consumption of seafood has tripled.
- the amount of fish taken from the ocean has doubled.
- the invention of aquaculture made fish farming the source of half of all seafood eaten today.
- production of seaweed has increased tenfold; we eat half of the total as hydrocolloid food additives.
- consumption of table sugar has nearly tripled.
- the amount of human waste produced each day has more than doubled.
- waste of edible food has increased such that it now equals the amount of food needed to adequately feed all o the undernourished people on Earth.
- the total amount of energy that people use every day has tripled.
- the total amount of electricity that people use every day has quadrupled.
- 20 percent of the world’s population has come to use half of the world’s electricity.
- the total population living with no access to electricity has grown to one billion people.
- the number of airline passengers has increased tenfold, while the total distance traveled by rail has declined.
- the miles traveled by car each year has more than doubled; there are currently almost one billion motor vehicles on the planet.
- global fossil fuel use has nearly tripled.
- coal and oil use has doubled; natural gas use has tripled.
- the invention of biofuels has grown to consume 20 percent of the global annual harvest of grain.
- the production of plastic has increased tenfold.
- the invention of new plastics has grown to consume 10 percent of the fossil fuels used each year.
- the share of electricity generated using hydropower has decreased to an all-time low of 15 percent.
- the share of electricity generated using nuclear power increased to an all-time high of 6 percent.
- the adoption of wind- and solar-powered electricity has grown to provide almost 5 percent of all electricity generated each year.
- one trillion tons of carbon dioxide have been released into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels.
- the average global surface temperature has increased by one degree Fahrenheit.
- the average global sea level has increased by four inches; half of this rise was due to the addition of water melted from mountain glaciers and polar ice.
- more than half of all amphibian, bird, and butterfly species has declined in population; one-quarter of all fish and plant species has declined in population.
Still More
And here’s some more from Hope Jahren herself:
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