The example of Cuba being forced to adapt in the Soviet Union’s absence in order to survive correlates metaphoricly (and perhaps vaugely) to my current state. Hell, we're the richest country in the world, the most powerful. It is not until consumers develop a … Architects are now designing houses primarily based on privacy and isolation. The main connection I made between the reading and the class discussion is with one the graph of Economy, Society, and Environment. p. 58 Focusing on expanding the economy quickly for struggling or developing nations may not be the answer. That simple, cheap, concentrated power lies at the heart of our modern economies. d. Wal-Mart is estimated to eliminate “a job and a half for every job that it creates.” (pg. But if you're using corn, as most American ethanol production does, then by the time you've driven your tractor to plant and till and harvest the corn, and your truck to carry it to the refinery, and then powered your refinery to turn the corn into ethanol, the best-case "energy output-to-input ratio" is something like 1.34 to 1. ii. In many spots on the face of the earth, all you have to do is stick a pipe in the ground and oil comes spurting to the surface. We should, theory insists, use less oil, both by changing our habits and by changing to new energy sources. As we grow, there is more of an unequal distribution of wealth and more war over the diminishing resources. . Economists can't explain all the underlying reasons for this spreading gap. As the nation's school superintendents were warned at a meeting in 1912, "the call for efficiency is felt everywhere throughout the length and breadth of the land, and the demand is becoming more insistent every day." We have surrendered community, extended family, and home roots. An economic historian named Robert Collins recently described the rise of what he called "growthmanship" in the United States. -points: From what I learned in the discussion, Thinking in Systems attempts to get the reader to noticed all the systems in life and take note of the components that make them continue. When logging is needed, the organization follows strict environmental requirements. Return to main book page for Deep Economy. Our last frontier has long since been reached. For the first time in human history, he observes, "more" is no longer synonymous with … . Deep Economy, Chapter Two: The Year of Eating Locally Darlene Chan-Arias, Krystle Kaye, Cammie Lawson Salvador Pacheco, Madison Quiroga, English 301 Professor Kathleen Patterson California State University Fullerton Chapter two of Deep Economy, written by Bill McKibben, starts out by the author trying to eat food only in season and locally. Per capita gross national product grew 24 percent between 1947 and 1960, and during that year's presidential election John F. Kennedy insisted he could speed it up if the voters would only reject "those who have held back the growth of the U.S." Indeed, he proved correct: between 1961 and 1965, GNP grew more than 5 percent a year while the percentage of Americans living in poverty dropped by nearly half. Priority bus systems have been built in China and Brazil, which rapidly decrease the amount of cars being driven and strengthened their communities. yes, it is bs, but it seems so deeply internalized that often times it is validated by experiences. Economists scrambled to catch up, and in doing so they built the base for modern growth theory. These include regions that generate their own food, their own energy, their own culture, and their own entertainment. The solution to the problem of the destruction of our planet may be right next door. Do you think such a movement could gather enough support on campus? Paper 2 ' Deep Economy 080700730 Book By Bill Mckibben Essay by Kevin Malone “More and better,” states Bill Mckibben ' in his national best selling book Deep Economy ' “are two birds roosting on the same branch.” Within traditional economic values these two birds could be taken out with one stone synonymously in every attempt. A year ago, in a humanities class centered around concepts of sustainability, I began to draw the parallel between the self-destructive state of the world, and my own lifestyle. Because of companies, like Wal-mart, having this agenda of more growth for less, America’s farmers are vanishing. Reagan convinced us it was "Morning in America" again, and under various banners—supply-side economics, globalization—it has stayed morning ever since. on p. 117, McKibben says “once everyone has a big efficent piece of equipment all their own…” there was no reason to visit neighbors becuase. It business model of demolishing all competitors and taking over communities around the world shows what our over consumption can create. A former staff writer for The New Yorker, he writes often for Harper’s Magazine, National Geographic, and the New York Review of… More about Bill McKibben Even for those with four-year college degrees, and even though productivity was growing faster than it has for decades, earnings fell 5.2 percent between 2000 and 2004 when adjusted for inflation, according to the most recent data from White House economists. Buses and subways drew more riders. Deep Economy Bill McKibben Course Description: Though there will be many, ... 1/26 Introduction to Summary Response Assign Literacy Autobiography assignment Read: Douglass, “Learning to Read and Write,” TSIS Chapter 1 1/28 Read: Erdrich, “Two Languages in Mind”; and TSIS Chapter, 2 Week Three: Deep Economy: Chapters 3 and 4 Chapter 4: The Wealth of Communities Thesis: The development and growth of local communities in the 21st century United States will not only make people 'better' but also help with the peak oil and climate change issues accompanying economic … The question I bring up for discussion is What can politicians, celebrities, and everyday citizens due to make environmental activities cool? Basically, almost all the growing wealth accumulates in a very few (silk-lined) pockets. ( Log Out /  This was a subtle point made in the book but I feel it is one of the most important. "It will include a swim-in-place lap pool, a climbing wall, and a fitness center." We could examine all the components that operate the system and maybe the majority of people in our society would see all the practices that are hurting the planet in order to feed our desire to over consume. Growth is producing more inequality than prosperity, more insecurity than progress. Soon, as Jeremy Rifkin observes, the efficiency revolution encompassed everything, not just factory work but homemaking, schoolteaching, and all the other tasks of modern life: "efficiency became the ultimate tool for exploiting both the earth's resources in order to advance material wealth and human progress." The statistics are such that even an arch-conservative commentator like Dinesh D'Souza calls them "staggering." Our task now is not discovery or exploitation of natural resources, or necessarily producing more goods. As McKibben defines it, a deep economy “cares less about quantity than quality [and] takes as its goal the production of human satisfaction as much as surplus material.” Deep Economy asserts that what we eat, what we drive, where we live and what we feel are By the early twentieth century, increasing efficiency had become very nearly a religion, especially in the United States, where stopwatch-wielding experts like Frederick Taylor broke every task into its smallest parts, wiping out inefficiencies with all the zeal of a pastor hunting sins, and with far more success. How can we get kids and teens that watch Mtv and are constantly on Facebook all day thinking that being environmentally responsible is that their PEERS will admire? Deep Economy is a very well written and important book. He focuses mainly on economy. a. Making environmental responsibility cool may be a solution for many problems. Ethanol is one modern scientific version of using old-fashioned "biomass" (that is, stuff that grows anew each year) for creating energy. All basic needs are covered, and the rest is up to the tenants. Bill McKibben is the author of more than a dozen books, including The End of Nature, Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age, and Deep Economy.A former staff writer for the New Yorker, he writes often for Harper's, National Geographic, and the New York Review of Books, among other publications.He is the founder of the environmental organizations Step It Up and 350.org, a … By shopping locally and supporting independently owned farms, you help the income of the middle class, use up less fossil fuel, and usually eat healthier. Having found what has been truly a magic wand, the strong temptation is to keep waving it. McKibben also explains challenges to large-scale industrial farming which include rising oil prices, changing climate, and shifting global politics. . The work promoted sustainable economy in close-knit communities. Deep Economy. c. When visiting touring the Nayakrishi movement in Bangladesh, McKibben’s host Sajed Kamal said the following, “People say that it’s a miracle Bangladesh can survive it’s food and energy crisis, that it somehow perserveres. Even when the question of inequality has been engaged, though, the standard liberal line is to question not expansion but only the way that the new money is spread around. Page 1 of 1 [ 17 topics ] Home Page » Forum index » The Archives » Archived Book Discussion Forums » Archived Book Discussions 2006-2007 » Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future - by Bill McKibben It's different: if fossil fuel is a slave at our beck and call, renewable power is more like a partner. In this powerful and provocative manifesto, Bill McKibben offers the biggest challenge in a generation to the prevailing view of our economy. It is the soberer, less dramatic business of administering resources and plants already in hand . The major oil companies report that they can't find enough new wells most years to offset the depletion of their old ones; worrisome rumors circulate that the giant Saudi fields are dwindling faster than expected; and, of course, all this is reflected in the rising cost of oil. The decline of unions had something to do with it, and so did the advent of computerization. In the Netherlands, bicycle riding is becoming ever more popular as opposed to driving cars. Mobilization for war proved just how fast the economy could grow; by 1943, even in the midst of battle, the National Resources Planning Board sent this report to Roosevelt: "Our expanding economy is likely to surpass the wildest estimates of a few years back and is capable of bringing to all of our people freedom, security and adventure in richer measure than ever before in history." Much the same thing has happened across most of the globe; in Latin America, for instance, despite a slavish devotion to growth economics, real per capita income is the same as a quarter century ago. Most of the second half of his book reiterates the points made in the beginning of the book about investing locally, especially community involvement and agriculture. . I feel that the most important points made in the book are as follows: a-“a deep fallacy of many economists..think of human interaction as mainly a means to an end, rather than also an end in itself.” p.110 There is one were the focus is on how much output can be produced but there is no meat and very few proteins available. And then, in 1712, something new finally happened. The British prime minister Margaret Thatcher used to use the acronym TINA to underscore her contention that There Is No Alternative to a world fixated on growth. 2) a. The median wage in the United States is the same as it was thirty years ago. Chapter 2 Seminar Deep Economy by Bill Mckibben In the second chapter of the book Deep Economy, Bill McKibben regards the Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future by Bill McKibben is published by Henry Holt. Bill McKibben is the author of more than a dozen books, including The End of Nature, Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age, and Deep Economy. : Bill McKibben, Schumann Distinguished Scholar Bill McKibben. Local currency is a very good way to stimulate local economies and communities over the global economy. For almost all of human history, said the great economist John Maynard Keynes, from "say, two thousand years before Christ down to the beginning of the eighteenth century, there was really no great change in the standard of living of the average man in the civilized centers of the earth. Author Bill McKibben believes, as do a growing number of economists, that we indeed have to choose between one and the other. With the spread of the Internet, the number of jobs that can be transferred across continents has grown exponentially. WEEK 3: Political & emotional responses to climate change. "26 That is, energy depended on how much you could grow. But it's hard for us to simply park our cars, precisely because cheap oil coaxed us to build sprawling suburbs. Deep Economy offers an insightful platform to any reader as it prompts him to analyze his current living condition. The administration of George W. Bush assures us that we can have tax cuts and still protect Social Security because the tax cuts will stimulate economic growth so much that we'll have more than enough cash on hand to take care of our old. I agree with the argument for fairness, that we should distribute wealth more equitably both here and around the globe. Mainstream economists thought the American economy was `` Morning in America '' again and! 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