by Jim Merkel
This book asks and answers the following question: Imagine you are first in line at a potluck
buffet. The spread includes not just food and water, but all the materials
needed for shelter, clothing, healthcare, and education. How do you know how
much to take? How much is enough to leave for your neighbors behind you — not
just the six billion people, but the wildlife, and the as-yet-unborn?
From YES! Magazine:
“Sometimes it’s easier not to know. It’s comfortable to have a vague idea
that a bit of recycling and fewer miles in the car constitute sustainable
living. Those who are satisfied with a few small things should not read Jim
Merkel’s Radical Simplicity. The book is radical in both meanings of the word:
Merkel’s analysis is both revolutionary and directed at the roots of our way of
life.
Merkel starkly outlines the unsustainability of our current path. Were the
productive acreage of the Earth divided evenly among its human inhabitants,
each would get 4.7 acres. If all humans used their full 4.7 acres, nothing
would remain for the other species. The average American consumes the
productive capacity of nearly 25 acres. Put another way, America’s
300 million people consume the share of more than 1.5 billion people (or more
than 5 times their fair share). Merkel notes that his $5,000-a-year
lifestyle—unimaginable poverty for most Americans—ranks him in the wealthiest
17 percent of all humans.
(You can now measure your footprint on-line. I entered all my data, none of it very
admirable when viewed through the sustainability lens, and came up with 25
acres which makes me an average American – in one area that I’d actually prefer
to be below average!)
Is it even possible to reduce one’s ecological footprint by more than 80
percent? Merkel forthrightly admits having the same question when he began to
attempt it. He also admits that he’s not there yet, although his ecological
footprint is now three acres, small enough that if every human did the same,
there would still be something left to support non-human life. He recognizes
the tension between the impulse to sustainable living and the pervasive culture
of consumption.
Merkel charts his own evolution, from a weapons engineer on a fast track to
material wealth to a person who lives on less than $5,000 per year. His
transformational moment was the Exxon Valdez oil spill. As he watched the news
of that disaster, he realized the deep connection between the oil-based
American model of consumption and the destruction of habitats and species,
including homo sapiens.
Merkel set out to find another way, a pilgrimage that took him from the
Indian state of Kerala to the Native American Dineh Nation in Arizona,
from the Himalayas to the Sierra Nevada,
and from British Columbia to Maine.
Radical Simplicity shows the result of that journey: the discovery
that life on a fair-share footprint, although austere by American standards, is
not only possible, but satisfying. The alternative is to continue as we are,
with the one billion richest consuming 80 percent of the goodies now available
(which represents the whole of the Earth’s carrying capacity), leaving the
other five billion to eke out a mere existence on the remainder.
Merkel applies his engineering background to produce a systems analysis,
detailing the present reality and the steps available to change it. He relies
on the work of others—the Ecological Footprint analysis of scientists Mathis
Wackernagel and William Reese and the money/life-energy paradigm of Joe
Dominguez and Vicki Robin’s Your Money of Your Life (YMOYL)—along with
his own third element, reconnection with nature.
This book is not a jeremiad. It’s a manual, an engineer’s text written with grace
and good humor. Unlike many books on voluntary simplicity and sustainability,
this one provides tools to quantify the effects of your consumption choices.
Readers can measure their ecological footprint—the number of acres of usable
land occupied in supporting their standard of living.
Merkel provides diagnostics: his “Sustainability Sweatshop” helps set goals
(and does it early in the book, before revealing what it takes to reach them);
he offers Wackernagle and Reese’s “Ecological Footprint Quiz,” followed by
detailed instructions for calculating an ecological footprint. His chapter “The
Wiseacre Challenge” discusses how life looks lived with one-, three-, and
six-acre footprints. The materials from YMOYL show how to reclaim your life
energy from the effort to earn and spend money; the chapter, “Learning from
Nature,” demonstrates how to turn that freed-up energy toward a better
relationship with the natural world. Finally (what engineering text would be
complete without them?) there are extensive appendices providing worksheets for
calculating your ecological footprint, taking the Wiseacre Challenge, and
applying the principles of YMOYL.
Existing work on sustainability, resource justice, and escaping the consumer
lifestyle has opened the door to the possibilities of a simpler life. Merkel
invites the reader to step through the door and follow him down the path to
realizing those possibilities.”
The Story of Stuff
with Annie Leonard
Annie Leonard "spend(s) a lot of time thinking about stuff: where it comes from, where it goes, why it is designed the way it is and stuff like that." She is so fired up about this topic that she made a 20 minute movie The Story of Stuff to share what she's learned with the rest of us.
After I viewed the movie, I sent it to my 13-year old daughter and her friends.
To quote Leonard, "It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever."
Given that a company called Simply Self Storage is the #1 fastest growing business in America, according to Entreprenuer Magazine, proving that we have WAY TOO MUCH stuff . . . that's a very good thing.
May 02, 2008 in Changing the World, Social Commentary, Sustainability | Permalink | Comments (6)