Is there time to slow down?

Wolfgang Sachs, an expert on technology and the environment at the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Energy, and Environment in Wuppertal, Germany, cites some of those differences. He believes that the American psyche is at grave odds with the realities of the 21st century, particularly environmental realities. The endless pursuit of time-saving innovation is based on the frontier mentality, he says, which promotes the belief that there are no boundaries within time, space, or the natural world. Dr. Sachs says this attitude is outdated, and its prevalence causes Americans to ignore their own impact on the environment.

Sachs has shown through his work that as speed increases, the amount of resources used rises exponentially. A car that consumes five liters of fuel at 80 kilometers an hour will need 20 liters to go 160 km an hour.

Sachs promotes a slower lifestyle as personal choice and national public policy. We must decide how much speed is enough and learn to live with dignity within those boundaries, he argues. To that end, he has spoken out against high-speed trains in France and Germany, saying that the extra speed is not worth the cost. And he has questioned the introduction of budget airlines in Europe, which encourage people to travel farther for shorter time periods.

"The ecological crisis can be read as a clash of different time scales; the time scale of modernity collides with the time scales which govern life and the earth," Sachs says. Every year, the industrial system burns as much fossil fuel as the earth has stored up in a period of nearly one million years.

In recognition of the high costs of hurriedness, a group in the United States is organizing Take Back Your Time Day, an event on Oct. 24 designed to start a national discussion about the American time famine. John De Graaf, a primary organizer and author of "Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic," says the date is set nine weeks before the end of the year to help Americans visualize how much vacation their European counterparts enjoy. On that day, the average European could take the rest of the year off.

Mr. De Graaf says his group isn't against work. Instead it is striving for a better balance between time spent working and that left over for community endeavors, families, creativity, and living light on the land.

Once people have made the conscious choice to collect "time" affluence instead of material affluence, Sachs has a ready idea on how to spend that time: Do nothing.

When you do nothing, you experience the time it takes to study, care, hope, grow, have friends, or paint, Sachs argues in an essay called "Slow Is Beautiful."

If you stay home and read a book, you avoid driving somewhere and burning limited fossil fuels. You decline to buy packaged consumer goods at a store that is as well lit as a football field, and you omit a trip to a fast-food restaurant, with all its waste in production, delivery, preparation, and serving. When you're not in a rush, you're more likely to recycle, reuse, buy used, and do it yourself.

With the American focus on personal efficiency and productiveness, doing nothing can be a countercultural activity. And it may take a cultural shift for doing nothing to be seen as valuable.

• 'All the Time in the World' runs through March 30 at the State Museum for Technology and Labor in Mannheim, Germany. For more information: www.landesmuseum-mannheim.de.

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