Book Club: Deep Economy

Welcome to the inaugural post of Book Club, the posts where we look at books that I'm reading.

In this case, it's a book I'm finishing, which is to say it's a book I just read. So it fits the bill of book club. But I digress...

Deep Economy

Wow. A fascinating book, one that brings this question to the table: is too much never enough? Which is to say, is More always Better?

If you've read any of Thomas Friedman's books, it's incumbent on you to read what amounts to a counterpoint, found here in Deep Economy.

The book in a nutshell:

• The current growth model the rest of the developing world is following is that of the Western world, and primarily that of the US
• Based upon what is accepted as gospel in liberal circles*, the consumption of natural resources this growth requires - as well as what is currently an average individual level within the US - will continue to push us as a planet down a road we cannot afford to go down

In certain ways, Al Gore beat McKibben to the popular punch here. You've seen/read Inconvenient Truth, this is not new to you.

But where Deep Economy goes beyond, in a very compelling manner, is painting a picture that provides some very reasonable alternatives to the model with which most of us who would ever come across this post are currently familiar. These options run the gamut from "Go Back to Portland" to "Hey, that seems to make sense", though honestly the methods themselves - as well as the tenets that inspire one to pursue them - will likely be a tough pill for a lot of folks to swallow, at least initially.

Other points:

• We (Americans) have much more on as average individual (seems like a contradiction in terms - sorry, I'm keeping it in here) now than we did in the early post-war boom years, and yet, based on some convincing (I'm not going to list them here. go read the book if you're curious) metrics, we're less happy now than we were then. We've got more, but it feels like less, in some sense.
• There is a range we can consider between having too little and too much. This is happy medium we can shoot for.
  

The good news (at least according to McKibben)? We can still change. It's not hopeless.

Added bonus: McKibben, like Michael Pollan, is a wonderfully polished writer. His sentences are enjoyable to read.

If you're interested, here's more on Bill McKibben.

Until the next Book Club,

Yours

*One that, for the purposes here, I'm certainly cheerfully sitting Indian style within

Update: Just checked out McKibben's website. Deep Economy was published in 2008. Between then and his latest book, we apparently missed the boat on making substantive changes. Crap.