True Wealth: How and Why Millions of Americans Are Creating a Time-Rich, Ecologically Light, Small-Scale, High-Satisfaction Economy

by Juliet B. Schor

Developments since the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, whose data ended in 2006, have been grim. Arctic sea ice was melting at hitherto unimaginable rates, and oceans were rising at more than double the IPCC report’s maximum possibility. Drought conditions were spreading. World emissions were sharply up in 2007, and in June 2008, James Hansen, NASA’s leading climate scientist, told Congress that the CO2 target “we have been aiming for is a disaster.” By February 2009, the news was worse, with scientists reporting that the speed of climate change was already beyond anything considered in the last round of models. Hansen and his colleagues warned that carbon dioxide levels beyond 350 parts per million are incompatible with preserving a planet “similar to that on which civilization developed.” But we were already at 385 and rising.