Deep Economy Bill Mckibben

Bill Mckibben talks about the consequences of economic growth in chapter one “after growth” of his book “Deep economy”. He discusses three major problems that economy brings as it grows, which are income inequality, environment destruction, and happiness. He says these three objection mesh suggest that people will no longer be able to act wisely, either in our individual lives or in public life. Mckibben starts off the chapter by discussing the problem of income inequality. He shows that the real income of the bottom 90 percent of American taxpayers eanred $27,060 in 1979, $25,646 in 2005, which tells us that though our economy has been growing, most of us have relatively little to show for it. And this has happened across the globe.…show more content…
One of his example for limited natural resources is fossil fuel. The fossil fuel is a symbol of the heart of our modern economies. According to Mckibben, the nature of our lives may change as the scarcity damage on the economy if we run out of planet. In fact, not only the fossil fuel, but also the planet, we’re running out of it. The economic growth has put too much stress on the nature. There are many types of environmental damage, and Mckibben examines climate change in the chapter. He points out that climate change is not some future specter and it’s already emerging as the biggest problem the world faces. He also insists that the richer people get, the dirtier the air is, and this is indeed one of the environmental destruction that he described in the chapter. Another destruction that he talks about is the global warming. Researchers are trying to find expensive ways to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide as it pours from power plant smokestacks and finally won’t enter the atmosphere. But Mckibben claims that the cars and factories and furnaces will keep belching carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as long as we burn fossil fuels. He also cited what Yale economist William Nordhaus says, “the damage from global warming will be confined to farming and forestry, which represent only 3 percent of the…show more content…
He talks about the behavior of utility maximization, which is about what will provide a person the maximum utility by making rational decision. However, we know that our behavior is irrational and what makes us happy. “So the orthodox economist’s premise that we can figure out what constitutes a good economy by summing the rational individual actions of consumers is suspect.” Mckibben says. He also claims that people do not seem happier even they have more stuffs because they very act of acquiring stuffs has turned us into more individual and less participate in the community, isolating ourselves in a way that runs contrary to our most basic instincts. He uses example of Chinese workers to make a point that China’s economic growth is the fastest in the history and indeed lifting lots of people out of poverty and in the process making their lives happier; but then he proves that his point was wrong by researchers report. In general, Mckibben says that there is increase in our wealth that has made a failure on the planet’s ecological system, but it is not making us happy; because people thought happiness would have increased with the increase in