This book uses falling US consumption of raw materials, energy and reducing US CO2 production to argue that resource use is decreasing despite ongoing economic growth since 1970.
Most of the consumption data referenced does not account for the fact that a large portion of US manufacturing has moved offshore in that period. Much of the data for raw material consumption is from the U.S. Geological Survey- National Minerals Information Center. I emailed them asking whether their consumption data includes imported finished goods - eg. automobiles and washing macines for steel consumption. They replied that this consumption data definitely would not. Energy consumption and CO2 production only include US based figures, ignoring the huge energy consumption and CO2 production in China which has been offshored with manufacturing our goods.
The core thesis of this book is therefore not backed up by data. I'm sure the author knows this and I think it is intellectually dishonest not to reference this in the book, especially when it is being used as a primary source of techno-optimism by Steven Pinker, Christine Lagarde, Eric Schmidt and Larry Summers.
Christine Lagarde's comment after reading this was "it can’t be true!" - I'm pretty sure it isn't.
- File Size: 4688 KB
- Print Length: 351 pages
- Publisher: Scribner (October 8, 2019)
- Publication Date: October 8, 2019
- Sold by: Amazon.com Services LLC
- Language: English
- ASIN: B07P5GPMTY
- Text-to-Speech:
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- Word Wise: Enabled
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #61,565 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
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