Radical Simplicity: Small Footprints on a Finite Earth

by Jim Merkel

Book Overview

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0865714738
• ISBN13: 9780865714731
• Release Date: September 2003
• Publisher: New Society Publishers
• Length: 248 Pages
• Weight: 0.96 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.1" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Very important and thoughtful reading.

It's encouraging to read a book so full of personal integrity and hope. So many people are unwilling to face the facts of the future before us. Very few people will read this book, but for those that do it will be a godsend to know that there are others that feel the same level of empathetic responsiblity. There are not enough books of this type, and fewer authors qualified to write them. The only other work I have recently encountered that is of the same level of accountability as well as offering a real means of living benignly is Jerome Fitzgeralds "Sea-steading." I recommend this as well.

A balm for painful truth

Merkel is a gentle soul whose moment of truth came when he saw the Exxon Valdez disaster on TV. Realizing his lifestyle contributed directly to this sort of environmental destruction and a host of other world problems, he set out to do something about it. Travels in Kerala (in India) and among the Chumash taught him how to live a simpler life with less waste, fewer things, and greater connections to the land and people. As he reduced the environmental stress that his life caused, he also found that his life became less stressed. But he doesn't leave it at that. He's an engineer, and he gives you the analytical tools he used to evaluate the effects of his lifestyle on the world. First the bad news: if you make more than $10,000 a year or have more than one child, you're almost certainly using more than your share of Earth's resources (pages 70 and 84), which contributes to starvation and extinction. Now the good news: using tools borrowed from two other books (Your Money or Your Life and Our Ecological Footprint), Merkel shows how you can take charge of the flows of material in your life. He walks you through examples such as the environmental cost of e-mail vs. snail-mail (in his case, snail-mail had the smaller footprint; in my case, e-mail did). Let's face it, the process of coming to terms with your own plunder of the world is stressful: a combination of accounting and soul-searching. But the end goal is a sustainable relationship with nature and a simpler, less stressful life. Radical simplicity provides the tools you need to get started.

Closer to the Bone

"The year 1978" says author Jim Merkel, "was a special year in both Earth's history and human history, and it passed without notice. It was the year humans claimed the entire sustainable yield of Earth." Since that time, the stakes have only risen. Humanity now gobbles up some 20 percent more than of the earth's bioproductivity. "Why, then, hasn't the system begun to collapse?" you ask. The short answer is that it is, although the word collapse is a bit misleading. Over the last century, wars have claimed 175 million lives; and most, if not all, of those wars were fought to eliminate other humans, gain control land and resources, or maintain geopolitical and economic security. A third of the world's children suffer from malnutrition, of which tens of thousands die everyday, while, in the same amount of time, an estimated 100 to 1000 species vanish from the face of the planet. These are just a few symptoms of ecological collapse. In order to talk about sustainability, says Merkel, we have to talk about ecological footprints. Your ecological footprint is the amount of bioproductive land and sea area in continuous production to supply all you use and to absorb all you waste. Global sustainability, then, is a combined ecological footprint of humanity that does not tax earth faster than it can regenerate. When humanity takes from the earth faster than it can replenish, things breakdown: fisheries collapse, soils erode, species vanish, aquifers run dry, etc. - things you might read about on page A-14 of the newspaper everyday. "But how would I know if I am taking too much?" you ask. Ecological foot printing, says Merkel, is the best way to take the guesswork out of sustainability. "It allows us to measure our progress." But then, what is progress? To some, paving over the entire world and covering it with skyscrapers, channeling every brook and stream to flow through culverts, and relying on large multinational corporations to synthesize our food from genetically-modified seeds sounds appealing, perhaps even sustainable. To others, sustainability entails reverting to something like the Stone Age and hunting in the forest with blunt instruments for wild game. Acknowledging a diversity of perspectives, Merkel merely asks us discover and then live according to our personal values. "What is your worldview?" he asks. The bottom line is that "there are 28.2 billion acres of bioproductive land on Earth - the total surface area minus the deep oceans, deserts, icecaps and built-up land. When divided between six billion people, each person gets a 4.7-acre share" - and no more. But this figure assumes humanity utilizes all of the earth for itself. So a better question would be, 'How much of my 4.7-acre share do I want to use for myself and how much do I want to leave for other life forms?' After quizzing you about your preferred tax on the planet, desired world population, and level of equity with other human and nonhuman inhabitants, he then shows you h

Let's Get Radical!

I have been waiting for this book for a long time. Seriously, there is a hole in western consciousness and in our publications about REALITY---the fact that western culture is ruining the planet, and how do we as individuals make a new way? With more calculaton tables than I liked, but interspersed with interesting, inspiring, thought-provoking world experience, philosophical musings and present-day challenges in carving a sustainable lifestyle, Merkel's book arrests the imagination of the reader. I think about this subject every day and I have Merkel to thank for pointing me toward concrete ways to `live as if life truly matters.' If you're looking for related hardcore simplicity (which isn't really so simple in this culture, is it?) check out www.myfootprint.org (more of Merkel's work) and Primal Conscious Living on the web---a couple in Georgia making sustainability real in their daily lives: http://geocities.com/newlibertyvillage/earthstar.htm