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

by Andrew McAfee

Before and during the Industrial Era countless people took seriously a command from the God of the Hebrew Bible. The book of Genesis declares that immediately after creating human beings, “God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” We were fruitful. We multiplied. And we subdued so much, so thoroughly, that it’s easy to believe our dominion was ordained from on high. But we failed miserably at our duty to replenish. It’s as if we didn’t hear that crucial divine word.