• Plenitude is now over ten years old and this review, added to the blog in January 2021, was first published in 2010. Ten years is a long time in terms of our understanding of climate change but Schor’s analysis and conclusions are as relevant as ever.
Plenitude
Juliet Schor
Scribe, $35.00
Global warming, Peak Oil and the instability of our financial system mean that Business As Usual will doom us and the next generation to miserable lives in a degraded environment.
Yes, you have heard it all before (and may or may not believe it) but Juliet Schor has an answer: ‘Plenitude’, her term for an alternative to BAU which avoids any eco-miserly austerities but will give us happier, richer lives while avoiding eco-disaster and another financial melt-down.
How can we do it? We must simply move gently out of the mainstream economy by reducing hours in traditional employment and making up for lost income by moving towards self-sufficiency in food, reducing our use of fossil-fuelled energy by installing our own renewable power supplies, reducing our narrow dependence on our employer and our nuclear family by strengthening ties within our broader local community.
Yes, you have heard it all before (and may or may not believe it) but Juliet Schor (Wikipedia) is an economist and she argues for the ‘alternative’ ‘green’ agenda from economic necessities and benefits, not shamanist mysticism, and supports her thesis with an impressive array of references. Cutting back on our ‘day’ jobs, she says, will help re-balance an economy which has grown over-dependent on debt-fuelled over-consumption, and reduce the environmental pressures which are a direct result of that excessive consumption.
Writing as an economist, Schor provides a valuable new rationale for the greenie programme.