Is more really better? Can economies continue to grow indefinitely? And will our insatiable appetite for all things with a price tag finally bring the earth to its knees? In this powerful and provocative manifesto, Bill McKibben offers the biggest challenge in a generation to the prevailing view of our economy, arguing that our goal of endless economic expansion is currently destroying the planet, and with it, our humanity. Rather then pursuing unlimited economic growth-a mindset that has brought the world to the brink of environmental disaster-we should concentrate on creating localized economies, and rethink the things we buy, the food we eat, the energy we use, and the money that pays for it all. McKibben uses a variety of examples to show this concept blossoming around the world with striking results. Offering a realistic, if challenging, scenario for a hopeful future, he eloquently demonstrates that the more we nurture the essential humanity of our economy, the more we will recapture our own.

Author Biography

Bill McKibben is the author of ten books, including The End of Nature, The Age of Missing Information, and Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age. A former staff writer for The New Yorker, he writes regularly for Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly, and The New York Review of Books, among other publications. He is a scholar in residence at Middlebury College and lives in Vermont with his wife, the writer Sue Halpern, and their daughter.