Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman--Including 10 More Years of Business Unusual

by Yvon Chouinard

No animal is so stupid as to foul its own nest, except humans.

By keeping clothing in use just nine extra months, the related carbon, waste, and water footprints are reduced by 20 to 30 percent each, according to the UK-based group WRAP.

Modern food production is one of the main culprits in the destruction of our planet. With close to 30 percent of the world’s habitable land and 70 percent of its water used for pasture and farming,23, 24 it’s doubtful there’s any other industry with such deep and widespread impact.

Half the world’s topsoil has been lost in the last hundred and fifty years.

A recent study by Technische Universitat Munchen showed that organic farms emit around 20 percent less greenhouse gases per yield unit than conventional farms.34 The Rodale Institute found that organically managed soils can actually sequester more carbon than they release.35 They found that if all cropland were converted to the regenerative model, it would absorb 40 percent of annual carbon dioxide releases, and if ranching lands were to do the same, those lands would absorb an additional 71 percent.

With the average American reading at only an eighth-grade level2 and nearly 50 percent of Americans not believing in evolution,3 we have the government we deserve.

As it stands now, worldwide we are using up the resources of one and a half planets—a consumption level that is far from sustainable.