'Deep Economy': ideas for a better world

Bill McKibben envisions a new economy more attuned to environmental harmony and human satisfaction.

from the May 29, 2007 edition

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Growth "is bumping up against physical limits" [peak oil and global warming] so that continuing to expand the economy may be impossible and possibly even dangerous."

Then there's this wild card: "New research from many quarters has started to show that even when growth does make us wealthier, the greater wealth no longer makes us happier."

McKibben is an active Methodist in his Vermont community, so there's a tone of the social gospel here. But I see that as a definite plus – he writes from the heart as well as from the intellect – particularly at a time when all major faith groups (including many evangelicals) see environmental protection in terms of "creation care."

Still, there's a refreshing lack of political harangue here (although it's still not a book likely to end up on President Bush's nightstand). But McKibben is also clear-eyed about the challenge.

"Mainstream liberals and conservatives compete mainly on the question of what can flog the economy faster," he acknowledges. And that is especially true in the burgeoning economies of China and India. (China finishes a new coal-fired power plant every few days.)

Learning how to better live together, McKibben concludes, may be the best and most important way out of the present dilemma: "The key questions will change from whether the economy produces more or less to whether it builds or undermines community – for community, it turns out, is the key to physical survival in our environmental predicament and also to human satisfaction."

This can seem like an impossible and depressing dream. Or it can be an exalting point of view and a thrilling goal. McKibben finds enough examples to give him hope.

"Models of these new economies can be found in embryo, in adolescence, and occasionally even in something resembling maturity here and around the world," he writes. "They're exciting possibilities, experiments to try out, ways to imagine humans thriving more fully and durably than at present."

• Brad Knickerbocker is a Monitor staff writer.

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