More from Less Quotes

“A study published in 2017 by researchers Christian Schmidt, Tobias Krauth, and Stephan Wagner found that 88–95 percent of all plastic garbage that flowed into the world’s oceans from rivers came from just ten of them, of which eight were in Asia and two in Africa. The developed economies of North America and Europe were as a group contributing little to the problem of river-sourced plastic trash in our oceans.”
― Andrew McAfee, More from Less: The Surprising Story of How We Learned to Prosper Using Fewer Resources—and What Happens Next

“As I said in the previous chapter, all of the rich countries that meet my definition of capitalist have welfare systems that include support for the poor and unemployed, subsidized health care for at least some groups, child and elder care, and so on. Advanced capitalist countries have tremendous variations in their social safety nets—Norway’s, for example, is very different from America’s—but all such countries have one.”
― Andrew McAfee, More from Less: The Surprising Story of How We Learned to Prosper Using Fewer Resources—and What Happens Next

“My story is basic economic theory, phrased in the language of the four horsemen of the optimist: capitalism, tech progress, responsive government, and public awareness. The story is that in recent years capitalism and tech progress have combined not only to increase human prosperity but also to bring us post-peak in resource consumption in America and other rich countries and finally allow us to get more from less. This happened because resources cost money, profit-seeking competitors don’t want to spend that money if they don’t have to, and tech progress now offers them many ways to slim, swap, evaporate, and optimize their way out of using resources. As a result we continue to consume more, but our consumption is now dematerializing. We are entering a Second Enlightenment. But”
― Andrew McAfee, More from Less: The Surprising Story of How We Learned to Prosper Using Fewer Resources—and What Happens Next

“As recently as the time of Christ all of us humans together probably weighed only about two-thirds as much as all the bison in North America, and less than one-eighth as much as all the elephants in Africa.”
― Andrew McAfee, More from Less: The Surprising Story of How We Learned to Prosper Using Fewer Resources—and What Happens Next

“I’ve found that the book’s fundamental concept—that capitalism and tech progress are now allowing us to tread more lightly on the earth instead of stripping it bare—is hard for many people to accept.”
― Andrew McAfee, More from Less: The Surprising Story of How We Learned to Prosper Using Fewer Resources—and What Happens Next