Book Review - Less is More (Jason Hickel)

This is a recent book that author has written about limiting climate change and levers that we can use while we still have time on this side of tipping point.

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He uses a term Capitalocene to set up the narrative.

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His basic premise is CAPILTALISM driven growth mindset of US and Global North (!!) has created a well set framework where Uber metric of a country’s strength is its GDP and annual growth rate of GDP.

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Author argues that GDP is not multidimensional enough. He mentions on multiple occasions, that GDP’s creator Simon Kuznets, himself warned against its limited usage when he introduced GDP to US Congress in 1930s and famously said “The welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from measure of national income”.

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Author goes into the past and starts from late medieval age, in 1200s, into Europe’s social and political setup.

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His book takes us through political structure built around agriculture based economy with Lands owned by Lords and Barons while majority of people working their lands as Serfs. He then moves to inclosure system introduced post bubonic plague of mid-14th century with nationalization of commons (common property such as pastures, forests etc), large farm holdings, nobility and?proletarians. Thereafter we move to Transatlantic expansion of economy, mining in South America, African Slave trade and there onwards to colonization and finally redrawing the world political map post WW2 and end of colonialism.

?Each of these steps entailed a win-lose scenario where losing side (serfs, commoners, Africans, native Indians and colonies) obviously ended up as loosing sides leading to significant violence and long drawn and human misery.

To overcome economy contraction between two?WWs, USA brought in production and consumption focus in mid 1940s. President Truman and successive POTUSes pedaled democracy and market economy (Capitalism) as panacea to rest of the world. Courted ones includes newly freed colonies and this was done to keep the flock from mingling with Soviet Bloc.

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Capital as in Capitalism needs expansion (3% annual GDP growth at a minimum at a global level) and hence compulsively seeks resources at an ever higher rates (natural, land and people) until it hits a limit.

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Once hit by a limit, over decades or even centuries, Capital found ways (often violent) to find newer pastures. That is where author brings in last 900 years of global domination of western powers into the perspective and starts stitching current story of environmental deterioration due to over exploitation of resources with a pure profit motive.

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GDP as a metric, in 1950s brought in a simplistic measure for Capital growth while removing other parameters of Human development, ecology and nature's equilibrium. Capitalism treats these as “externalities”, and they are exactly how they are termed. External to GDP measurements.

Most of the first half of the book is one sided view of the history and author’s perception of the pathway leading to current issues and can be called rhetoric. However cutting the Hubris, there are very relevant issue identification with respect to current situation on climate collapse.

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Author writes copiously about Extraction and production being done even today in a non-sustainable manner as proximate reasons for environmental damage. He talks about planetary boundaries (nine in numbers) for natural resources and flora fauna that need to be preserved and mentions that safe thresholds for four out of nine boundaries have already been breached. This is again linked to the issue of excessive and ever increasing extraction and production demands made by capitalism unabated by the concerns of welfare of human and nature.

Author brings to the focus ever-increasing extraction and continuous plunder of the planet over last 100 years. Annual extraction of extraction has grown steadily from <15 billion tons per year in 1950 to nearly 100 billion ton annually in present times. Safe and sustainable limit is 50 Billion tons annually as per some work groups. Author again links it back to rise of capitalism post WW2 and GDP being use as a super single metric and justification for growth oriented mindset.

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Excess consumption in current times, in high income nations is sustained by ongoing process of net appropriation from the lands and peoples of global south!

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Author talks about current level of global warming and limits that have been accepted by global leaders convening under forums like COP and IPCC. Timelines have been put in place regarding rolling back on carbon emission, however author summarily dismisses the action plans put up by world governments and?as “Leap of faith” from a vertical cliff without any concrete planning about soft landing when one hits the ground. Carbon Capture tech, Green energy, innovation etc have been summarily made suspect with enough data to support contrarian view point.

?Summary. It’s an extinction event with no action plan so far a la “Don’t Look UP!!”

?Author segments global emission, consumption, extraction and production data by global North and Global south and points out the inequality in the overall patterns. Using this as a narrative author shows a glimmer of hope that wasteful extraction with sole purpose for profitability and hence GDP growth and capital expansion can be curbed to bring in more human welfare while healing the planet. He compares USA GDP outcomes with counties having much lower GDP per capita with much superior human welfare and sustainability outcomes. These countries include Scandinavian, Spain, Italy in Europe and Costa Rica, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and even State of Kerala. Reason for this as per author are share community supports on healthcare, education and inclusion that have decoupled mindless GDP growth with development.

Using these as examples Author build his narrative that these outcomes are possible at a much lesser GDP per capita compared to USA which is around 60,000 USD per annum. Cut down on this mindless consumption driven growth is the case that author argues.

?There onwards Authors gets in to a solution mode and prescribes action items that can be implemented.

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1.????????Stop Planned Obsolescence – Companies selling gadgets and stuff, design those for a deliberate lower usage life. Anyone using a 2 years old cellphone would understand what is trying to point here.

A product can have twice or three times the product life with marginal incremental cost or at times at a tad lower cost in fact. Companies build obsolescence as a product feature to generate future demand and protect itself from degrowth.

Eliminating or controlling planned obsolescence, can reduce stuff and raw material needed to build new products by nearly 30% in US alone. Entire developed world can cut down on product consumption with extended warranties and field repair enablement built into products as part of regulation (!!)

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2.???????? Limited Advertising – Companies using smart campaigns work on generating need for a product that is not needed by individuals or societies fueling FOMO. This smart advertising works in tandem with Planned obsolescence as above. An action (!!) here will be beneficial in a similar manner.

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3.????????Eat lower in the food chain and Eat Local – Author says that nearly 60% agricultural land / grassland globally is used for beef, while contributing to only 2% of human calories consumed.

Land used in above manner, totals up to 11 million square miles which is entire area of US, Canada and China combined. Then there are other food stuff and consumption items that as part of global supply chain are produced, stored, transported and consumed over large distances. The incremental value in terms of novelty or nutrition is negligible as compared to GDP growth or ecological damages that these cause. Hence eating lower in the food chain and eating local is a needle mover by a large degree.

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4.????????Shifting from ownership to usership -?public transport, healthcare, education

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5.????????Scale down ecological destructive industries – fossil fuel, large luxury good etc

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?There onwards author moves to Bernie Sandersque suggestion such as cancelling loans including national debts of southern countries extended by institutions controlled by Northern economies. His point is that global GHG block (all human caused GHG sitting in atmosphere so far) is historically a contribution of USA and EU (~70%), its fair deal that 85% of noncontributing population is compensated now for their past deeds.

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Overall an interesting book urging one to digging deeper here….