Who is jb mackinnon

This is the consumer dilemma. The planet says we consume too much: in North America, we burn the earth's resources at a rate five times faster than they can regenerate. And despite our efforts to "green" our consumption--by recycling, increasing energy efficiency, or using solar power--we have yet to see a decline in global carbon emissions.

The economy says we must always consume more, because, as we've seen in the pandemic, even the slightest drop in spending leads to widespread unemployment, bankruptcy and home foreclosures. Addressing this paradox head-on, J. MacKinnon asks, What would really happen if we simply stop shopping? Is there a way to reduce our consumption to earth-saving levels without triggering an economic collapse? At first, this question took him around the world, seeking answers: from America's big-box stores, to the hunter-gatherer cultures of Namibia, to communities in Ecuador that consume at an exactly sustainable rate.

Then his thought experiment came shockingly true, as the coronavirus brought shopping to a halt and MacKinnon's ideas were tested in real time. Drawing on experts ranging from economists to climate scientists to corporate CEOs, MacKinnon investigates how living with less would change our planet, our society and ourselves.

Along the way, he reveals just how much we stand to gain. From Random House Canada. MacKinnon is a journalist and writer who lives in Vancouver. He is also the author of the nonfiction books Dead Man in Paradise and The Once and Future World and is the co-author of the book The Mile Diet, which popularized the local food movement. I thought I knew what nature waswhat we were trying to conserve or preservebut I wasn't even close.

I found his writing gripping and colorful. I link below to a couple recordings I made that quoted the book at length. We've been talking about our work, his new book he's nearly finished, my book I've just started, and how he was thinking of acting on his research personally. He was sharing so personally about the challenge he was considering for himself, impromptu, I asked if he would consider recording a podcast episode.

We just jumped into it. The other half of the problem is that our economies run on it. As George W. Andrew Keen: You begin the book with a number of really provocative quotes, one by the great African American polemicist James Baldwin. I think the great emotional or psychological or effective lack of love and touching is the key to the American or even the Western disease. How are they entangled? It was colonial expansion that really allowed the engine of modern consumerism to get started.

And it continues as resource exploitation around the world, as those resources are drawn towards the richest parts of the globe and the richest communities within each nation around the planet who are doing most of the consuming.

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MacKinnon is an independent magazine journalist and writer. He has been down nearly every highway and a lot of the dirt roads, too. Reporting Beat: Environment, food. Website : J.