Wednesday night my daughter and I went to Bainbridge High School to hear author J.B MacKinnon. He was interviewed on stage by local Bainbridge resident Becky Rockefeller whose a founder of the Buy Nothing movement. She was a knowledgeable and perceptive interviewer.
The discussion was exciting. Mackinnon's ideas about changing consumerism were realistic - "if we cut back shopping by 25% one day, the economy would collapse" - and there were lots of examples of people who have chosen non-consumer life-styles.
A key concept for me was the idea of one-world living. Not sure what your first thought was when you hear that term, but mine was not what he was talking about.
He was talking about how many planet earths were required to sustain a country's level of consumption. He said the US needed about five or six planet earths to supply the resources for all that we consume of the long haul. (He said he didn't remember the exact number.) When he was writing the book he looked for countries that were one-world or less. The most attractive life at the level, at the time, was Ecuador.
I realize that one reason I'm blogging less frequently is that trying to do it right takes more time than I seem to have. So I'm going to use a shortcut and offer this YouTube with MacKinnon so you can get a sense of his ideas yourself.
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