Farmers market or super-mega-grocer? Your decision could change our world

“Properly hopeful.” This elegant phrase appears near the end of Bill McKibben’s new book, “Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future.” Properly hopeful also perfectly describes this exhilarating and essential book.

To say it plainly: “Deep Economy” should be required reading for every economist and economics student in the developed world; for every elected official on the local, state and federal levels; and for everyone else as well. The book articulates the profound environmental and human costs caused by dominant and rutted economic behaviors while counterbalancing these sober realities with real-world examples of sane and successful “economies that are more local in scale.”


Oregonians will be pleased to discover that projects and activities in Portland and Oregon appear frequently as examples of localized economies and neighborhood building: from cattle co-ops and KBOO to cobblestoned intersections and bike lanes.

A central tenet of “Deep Economy” is the growing disconnect between “more” and “better.” For centuries in the developed world, the pursuit of “more” has been the unwavering economic theme that delivered the material prosperity and relative ease that distinguish our lives. However, McKibben, a resident scholar at Middlebury College and author of “The End of Nature,” carefully presents the argument that a dogged pursuit of “more” through economic growth and expansion is “no longer making most people wealthier . . . and is bumping up against physical limits so profound — like climate change and peak oil — so that continuing to expand the economy may be impossible; the very attempt may be dangerous.”

The Oregonian