Last week Green Success Stories talked some More About the Story of More.
There’s still more to say. More about More (and Less).
Hope Jahren’s beautiful (and ultimately hopeful) book describes how the story of humanity on earth is a story of exponential growth – in numbers, in production, in consumption, in pollution, in greenhouse gases, you get the picture.
(And in our previous look, we included Hope Jahren’s Environmental Catechism, listing the so so many ways that our story of growth has unfolded. For better and for worse.)
- population has doubled.
- child mortality has decreased by half.
- average life expectancy has increased by twelve years.
- 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 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.
- global fossil fuel use has nearly tripled.
True, we’re in an era of more…
We’re in a culture of more. An era of more.
We’re supersized.
But we’re also less able or willing to hold back the tide of the consequences of our more… (though it’s still not too late).
And still…
I guess this whole more or less thing was something that felt a bit misleading or maybe apt to set one off on a wrong tangent of thinking.
More is not necessarily bad. Less is not necessarily good.
Less can be bad too. More can be good.
It’s the More or Less of what.
More health, more money, more love, more justice, whatever – more power to you.
Less resources, less interest, less safety – we’ll take less of that.
Maybe it’s less succinct, and less catchy, but the issue is not More per se, but more The Story of Over. Overconsumption. Overobliviousness. Overcallousness. Overdisconnectedness.
Maybe we’ll suggest it to Hope Jahren for an update.
“The Story of Over. How our “over-everything” is leading us to Game Over.” Or something like that.
But in the meantime, check out Hope’s suggestions for action in her addendum entitled The Story of Less.
In her The Action You Take section, she guides us through practical decision making and consciousness in our efforts. She advises actions from examining values to taking specific small steps and larger ones too toward making our world better.
We’ll take more of that any day.
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