Questions About More from Less: The Surprising Story of How We Learned to Prosper Using Fewer Resources―and What Happens Next

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about More from Less, please sign up.

Answered Questions (1)

As far as I know, McAfee only considers data about domestic production when making the claim that material usage has decreased in the US. How much would considering imports undermine his claim about decreased material usage in the US?

Paul Boosz Excellent question, everything depends on your metric. That's why you have to dig a little deeper to understand what's happening.

Researchers measure m…moreExcellent question, everything depends on your metric. That's why you have to dig a little deeper to understand what's happening.

Researchers measure material consumption with DMC (Domestic Material Consumption) that account for national extraction + imports - exports. US's DMC is stagnating not decreasing. But we now know that DMC is largely flawed because it doesn't account for the material involved in the production and transportation of the imported goods. So an iphone is accounted for 200g in the DMC when in fact you had to use much more minerals, fossil fuels, to produce it and transport it...

The material footprint is a much more accurate indicator. Looking at the material footprint the story is different there is no absolute decoupling. There's in fact a recoupling : The US'material footprint is growing faster than its GDP since the 90's !
See : https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/112...
Go further on the possibility of decoupling : https://www.researchgate.net/publicat...(less)

flag

Unanswered Questions

About Goodreads Q&A

Ask and answer questions about books!

You can pose questions to the Goodreads community with Reader Q&A, or ask your favorite author a question with Ask the Author.

See Featured Authors Answering Questions

Learn more