What do you think?
Rate this book
The Story of More: How We Got to Climate Change and Where to Go from Here
Goodreads Choice Award
Nominee for Readers' Favorite Science & Technology (2020)Hope Jahren is an award-winning geobiologist, a brilliant writer, an inspiring teacher, and one of the seven billion people with whom we share this earth. In The Story of More, Jahren illuminates the link between human consumption habits and our imperiled planet. In short, highly readable chapters, she takes us through the science behind the key inventions - from electric power to large-scale farming and automobiles - that, even as they help us, release untenable amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. She explains the current and projected consequences of greenhouse gases - from superstorms to rising sea levels - and the actions that all of us can take to fight back. At once an explainer on the mechanisms of warming and a lively, personal narrative given to us in Jahren's inimitable voice, The Story of More is the essential pocket primer on climate change that will leave an indelible impact on everyone who reads it.
224 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 3, 2020
702 people are currently reading
24243 people want to read
About the author
Hope Jahren
10 books2,065 followersHOPE JAHREN is a teacher, scientist, and book lover living in Oslo, Norway. Recognized as one Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People, Jahren is the recipient of three Fulbright Awards and was named one of the Brilliant 10 by Popular Science magazine in 2005. She is the author of two works of nonfiction: The Story of More and Lab Girl, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography. Adventures of Mary Jane is her first work of fiction.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,311 reviews
January 23, 2021
Words cannot describe how much I love Hope Jahren. Check out my full review on Booktube!
March 30, 2021
Thoughts soon.We are at present a deeply divided nation politically and unfortunately this has spilled over to the politicalzation of science and climate change. Many simply do not believe or at the least mistrust both. This is unfortunate in many ways because but we don't have an earth left for our children and grandchildren, none of the rest matters.
In this very readable book the author takes us through the last fifty years, using facts and figures, to show us how we got from there to here. Extreme weather patterns, polluted and and water, polar ice caps melting and the extinction of many species, population growth are all discussed among other subjects. The use of fossil fuel alone has tripled, 25 percent of animal species will have become extinct by 2050, and we waste 40 percent of our food, enough to feed the entire world.
Like the title portrays, we and the top nations just simply want more. Giving up something seems not to be in our nature, but it needs to be and quickly. At books end she gives us easy ways to start, little actions that if more people adopt them could make a small difference. Of course bigger actions by our governments, our scientists and wealthy corporations and individuals are needed. This book should be a must read.
In this very readable book the author takes us through the last fifty years, using facts and figures, to show us how we got from there to here. Extreme weather patterns, polluted and and water, polar ice caps melting and the extinction of many species, population growth are all discussed among other subjects. The use of fossil fuel alone has tripled, 25 percent of animal species will have become extinct by 2050, and we waste 40 percent of our food, enough to feed the entire world.
Like the title portrays, we and the top nations just simply want more. Giving up something seems not to be in our nature, but it needs to be and quickly. At books end she gives us easy ways to start, little actions that if more people adopt them could make a small difference. Of course bigger actions by our governments, our scientists and wealthy corporations and individuals are needed. This book should be a must read.
February 22, 2020
A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down is a concise description of The Story of More. Hope Jahren has written a passionate, direct and searing indictment of what Man has made of this planet in just her lifetime (She repeats at least 20 times she was born in 1969). And yet, every chapter (there are 19) begins with a nostalgic look at her childhood in Minnesota, her parents, family rituals, and life at that time. She had a pet chunk of ice she named Covington that she kicked all the way to school and back all winter. The book is a wonderfully odd combination of warm, fuzzy memories and stark, fraught trends and stats, that do not portend good things to come.
Minnesota and her later home in Iowa have changed dramatically over her lifetime. The increased amount of corn per acre is stunning, but pales before the amount of fertilizer and pesticides used to get those better yields. She says we have pushed plants to produce as much as they physically can, and where we go for more is unfathomable. Not that we make good use of it. About 20% is simply burned up in biofuels, and most of it goes to feed domesticated animals for meat. The amount actually consumed as food comes dead last. She backs it up with figures, both global and American, that demonstrate the really poor connection between then and now. (She lists them all again at the end, because frankly, it's all very hard to believe one at a time.)
Americans eat 15% more food today. It shows. They throw out 40% of the food they buy, enough to feed all the undernourished in the rest of the world. By 2004, Americans were consuming a pound and a half of sugar - a week. In sum, Americans, who make up 4% of the global population, consume 15% of the food, 15% of the energy and 20% of the electricity in the world. If the rest of mankind were to the rise to that level - the world could simply not work.
Already, half the fish we eat are farmed because there aren't enough left in the wild. The amount of excrement they produce is way more than the oceans can deal with. Similarly, cattle and our other domesticated animals produce 300 million tons of feces a year, far in excess of the amount humans produce as a result of eating them. It's not a beneficial tradeoff. To make that manure, those animals consume a billion tons of grain, in order to give consumers (just) 100 million pounds of meat. This math leads nowhere good, and Jahren soon switches from dispassionate scientist to frustration:
"The amount of fruits and vegetables that is wasted each year exceeds the annual food supply of fruit and vegetables for the whole continent of Africa. We live in an age when we can order a pair of tennis shoes from a warehouse on the other side of the planet and have them shipped to a single address in less than 24 hours; don't tell me that a global food distribution is impossible."
All this overconsumption seems to have done Americans no good. They are no happier now that they work more, eat more, drive more, fly more and consume more. Quite the opposite, according to the figures. She says we need to consume less and share more. But neither of those are American values any more, and she has no stats for trends in sharing - just aspirations. More is a one way street, an addiction and a plague on the planet. Americans have yet to notice.
Meanwhile, there are (still) a billion people with no access to electricity.
Her 19 chapters cover the gamut from plastics to cars to species extinctions, passing through global warming and greenhouse gases. She has unkind words for both deniers and alarmists; neither is doing any good. She is all about reducing consumption, and concludes with how each individual American can reduce consumption and actually make a difference. "If we want to take action, we should get started while it still matters what we do."
David Wineberg
Minnesota and her later home in Iowa have changed dramatically over her lifetime. The increased amount of corn per acre is stunning, but pales before the amount of fertilizer and pesticides used to get those better yields. She says we have pushed plants to produce as much as they physically can, and where we go for more is unfathomable. Not that we make good use of it. About 20% is simply burned up in biofuels, and most of it goes to feed domesticated animals for meat. The amount actually consumed as food comes dead last. She backs it up with figures, both global and American, that demonstrate the really poor connection between then and now. (She lists them all again at the end, because frankly, it's all very hard to believe one at a time.)
Americans eat 15% more food today. It shows. They throw out 40% of the food they buy, enough to feed all the undernourished in the rest of the world. By 2004, Americans were consuming a pound and a half of sugar - a week. In sum, Americans, who make up 4% of the global population, consume 15% of the food, 15% of the energy and 20% of the electricity in the world. If the rest of mankind were to the rise to that level - the world could simply not work.
Already, half the fish we eat are farmed because there aren't enough left in the wild. The amount of excrement they produce is way more than the oceans can deal with. Similarly, cattle and our other domesticated animals produce 300 million tons of feces a year, far in excess of the amount humans produce as a result of eating them. It's not a beneficial tradeoff. To make that manure, those animals consume a billion tons of grain, in order to give consumers (just) 100 million pounds of meat. This math leads nowhere good, and Jahren soon switches from dispassionate scientist to frustration:
"The amount of fruits and vegetables that is wasted each year exceeds the annual food supply of fruit and vegetables for the whole continent of Africa. We live in an age when we can order a pair of tennis shoes from a warehouse on the other side of the planet and have them shipped to a single address in less than 24 hours; don't tell me that a global food distribution is impossible."
All this overconsumption seems to have done Americans no good. They are no happier now that they work more, eat more, drive more, fly more and consume more. Quite the opposite, according to the figures. She says we need to consume less and share more. But neither of those are American values any more, and she has no stats for trends in sharing - just aspirations. More is a one way street, an addiction and a plague on the planet. Americans have yet to notice.
Meanwhile, there are (still) a billion people with no access to electricity.
Her 19 chapters cover the gamut from plastics to cars to species extinctions, passing through global warming and greenhouse gases. She has unkind words for both deniers and alarmists; neither is doing any good. She is all about reducing consumption, and concludes with how each individual American can reduce consumption and actually make a difference. "If we want to take action, we should get started while it still matters what we do."
David Wineberg
December 15, 2020
Beautifully written, basic primer on climate change with a compelling call for degrowth. Why only 2 stars? The call is an individualistic, personal call for the reader to reconsider their own consumption, rather than a political call to action, to limit consumption collectively. Almost no individuals reading this book could make any significant impact on climate change, unless they had control of US military spending.
March 16, 2021
A highly readable and informative book on climate change
The author, rather than focusing on the coming catastrophes that are likely to occur if we do nothing to curb climate change, points out all the changes that have already taken place in the last forty years.
She mixes anecdotes with fact and, for most of the book, it was easy to forget I was reading a book on climate change. Usually I dislike anecdotal material in science books but it worked for this.
It was interesting to note the difference between Hope Jahren's book and Bill Gates' new book on climate change. She stresses the need for less consumption on everyone's part whereas Gates focuses on how technology can save us rather than telling people they need to consume less.
I recommend reading both.
The author, rather than focusing on the coming catastrophes that are likely to occur if we do nothing to curb climate change, points out all the changes that have already taken place in the last forty years.
She mixes anecdotes with fact and, for most of the book, it was easy to forget I was reading a book on climate change. Usually I dislike anecdotal material in science books but it worked for this.
It was interesting to note the difference between Hope Jahren's book and Bill Gates' new book on climate change. She stresses the need for less consumption on everyone's part whereas Gates focuses on how technology can save us rather than telling people they need to consume less.
I recommend reading both.
Read
February 8, 2020One-sixth of the global population uses ⅓ of the world’s energy and half the world’s electricity. They’re responsible for ⅓ of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, ⅓ of the world’s meat consumption, and ⅓ of the world’s sugar consumption. It’s statistics and data like this that Jahren breaks down for readers in a book that’s meant not to terrify readers about the overwhelming scope of global warming and climate change but instead, to instill hope that indeed, small changes add up over time.
“Having hope requires courage” is her big message throughout the book, which was inspired by the classes she’s taught at universities. The book breaks down big topics, such as meat consumption, carbon dioxide emissions, energy creation and consumption, the growth in the use of plastics, and more, and looks at how just over the course of her own life the richest countries in the world have consumed more than their fair share and how that’s impacted less-wealthy countries, as well as the world as a whole.
Unlike a number of climate change books, this one is data-driven and extremely accessible for the average reader. It doesn’t feel overwhelming -- in fact, Jahren is reassuring that doing even the tiniest things adds up over the long haul. Can you go one night without eating meat? That can make a difference. Can you swap a flight for a trip on a train? What about purchasing lower-energy appliances, washing clothes with cold water, purchasing less stuff including food that you ultimately end up throwing away?
By using less, we allow more resources to be better distributed among those on Earth. That, in turn, reduces creation of more, which can and does impact the overall vitality of the globe.
Encouraging, accessible, and written conversationally, Jahren’s book should be a first stop for anyone interested in reducing their own footprint. It’s short, too, making it feel completely doable, as opposed to overwhelming and complicated. Start small, as she does with her students: dump open your briefcase or purse and count up how many of those items are made from plastic. What can you swap out for something not plastic when it runs the course of its life?
And more, change in your own life doesn’t need to be global in scope, either. Choosing one area in your life to target for change is good work. If you change your consumption habits and swap soda for water at more meals, buy fewer processed goods, consume less meat (and she never says you need to go vegetarian or vegan, like other books preach), that does make an impact.
The book doesn’t overlook the realities of living in a capitalist society and that it’s big corporations that have done this to us. That’s the binding thread throughout. But, by choosing to battle back with changes in our lifestyle as dictated by capitalism, we can better help our fellow inhabitants on Earth by sharing resources.
“Having hope requires courage” is her big message throughout the book, which was inspired by the classes she’s taught at universities. The book breaks down big topics, such as meat consumption, carbon dioxide emissions, energy creation and consumption, the growth in the use of plastics, and more, and looks at how just over the course of her own life the richest countries in the world have consumed more than their fair share and how that’s impacted less-wealthy countries, as well as the world as a whole.
Unlike a number of climate change books, this one is data-driven and extremely accessible for the average reader. It doesn’t feel overwhelming -- in fact, Jahren is reassuring that doing even the tiniest things adds up over the long haul. Can you go one night without eating meat? That can make a difference. Can you swap a flight for a trip on a train? What about purchasing lower-energy appliances, washing clothes with cold water, purchasing less stuff including food that you ultimately end up throwing away?
By using less, we allow more resources to be better distributed among those on Earth. That, in turn, reduces creation of more, which can and does impact the overall vitality of the globe.
Encouraging, accessible, and written conversationally, Jahren’s book should be a first stop for anyone interested in reducing their own footprint. It’s short, too, making it feel completely doable, as opposed to overwhelming and complicated. Start small, as she does with her students: dump open your briefcase or purse and count up how many of those items are made from plastic. What can you swap out for something not plastic when it runs the course of its life?
And more, change in your own life doesn’t need to be global in scope, either. Choosing one area in your life to target for change is good work. If you change your consumption habits and swap soda for water at more meals, buy fewer processed goods, consume less meat (and she never says you need to go vegetarian or vegan, like other books preach), that does make an impact.
The book doesn’t overlook the realities of living in a capitalist society and that it’s big corporations that have done this to us. That’s the binding thread throughout. But, by choosing to battle back with changes in our lifestyle as dictated by capitalism, we can better help our fellow inhabitants on Earth by sharing resources.
September 10, 2023
4 ☆
The Story of More: How We Got to Climate Change and Where to Go from Here by paleobiologist Hope Jahren offers an accessible, comprehensive, and science-based primer about climate change.
So Jahren focused not on predictions but on what has already actually occurred, especially during her half-century lifespan. She interspersed bits of her personal story from her childhood in Minnesota to her beloved dog swimming away from Hawaii and towards California. Although Jahren wrote globally, her statistics concentrated on the US and on the OECD nations (36 members at the time of her research). Her first section covered international population trends and essentially said that recent climate change has been driven by our relentless pursuit of "more."
Part Two described food production of plants, domesticated land animals, and the rise of aquaculture. Her outrage was clearly evident in her chapter about uneaten food. People see food past its prime and toss them into the (hopefully, the compost) bin. Jahren sees the amount of water, the animal feed, the medications, the excrement, the government subsidies, and the time the farmer had invested into growing that food. And then there's the approximately (pre-Covid-19 pandemic) 800 million people worldwide who habitually deal with hunger.
Section Three was about energy, and this was the most interesting portion of this book for me. Up until this point (about the 40 percent mark), The Story of More covered familiar information, and I was eager for something new. Jahren discussed fossil fuels like coal and oil and "renewable" energy including biofuels, hydroelectric, solar, wind, and nuclear. Part Three was not an optimistic section. In the US alone, we have a high appetite for electricity and for gasoline.
Biofuels are not the answer as Jahren pointed out the inefficiency of subsidizing and growing what could be food but that is instead burned up as fuel. Apparently, if the US lost its fossil fuels, the US' current annual supply of biofuels would satisfy 6 days of demand.
But the real stinger was what Jahren wrote about "green energy," especially for the US. Jahren punctured the message of hope that's been pitched with renewable energy such as hydroelectric, solar and wind. They are good, but they're insufficient to replace fossil fuels entirely because the US' demand for energy is too great. Green energy does need to be adopted but they are only partial solutions.
Part Four was where Jahren tied the previous chapters to changes that have already been measured about our planet - from increasing average temperatures to rising sea levels and the impact on changing habitats. At today's rate of loss, the year 2050 will put us close to 25 percent extinction of species. We are on the verge of triggering the sixth mass extinction on earth as we're about one-third of the way to the 70 percent mark that characterizes a mass extinction.
In the final section, Jahren offered her main solution to the endless pursuit of "more" by the OECD nations, but her comments were in particular directed at the US. Jahren advocated for conservation of resources and stopping the pursuit of "more." In truth, I believe that a multi-pronged approach by as many people as possible and by the OECD nations is the very least of what is needed.
The Story of More is an excellent primer about climate change if you know little about the facts. In my case, I've read several books and have watched documentaries. Jahren is also a scientist and that means that she could have inundated her book with statistics. She didn't, which was a negative for me as I'm comfortable with technical writing. I had listened to the audiobook which she narrated. Because she targeted a general audience, she occasionally read her material in a way to heighten the emotional impact by repeating phrases, lowering her tone, and slowing her delivery. These instances ended up distracting / annoying me more often than not, so in that respect, I preferred the ebook to the audiobook.
all of the want and suffering in the world - all of it - arises not from the earth's inability to produce but from our inability to share
The Story of More: How We Got to Climate Change and Where to Go from Here by paleobiologist Hope Jahren offers an accessible, comprehensive, and science-based primer about climate change.
All human beings are a lot better at describing what is happening than at predicting what will happen. Somewhere along the way, however, we began to hope that scientists were different--that they could be right all the time. And because they're not, we kind of stopped listening. By now we're quite practiced at not listening to things scientists say over and over again.
So Jahren focused not on predictions but on what has already actually occurred, especially during her half-century lifespan. She interspersed bits of her personal story from her childhood in Minnesota to her beloved dog swimming away from Hawaii and towards California. Although Jahren wrote globally, her statistics concentrated on the US and on the OECD nations (36 members at the time of her research). Her first section covered international population trends and essentially said that recent climate change has been driven by our relentless pursuit of "more."
Part Two described food production of plants, domesticated land animals, and the rise of aquaculture. Her outrage was clearly evident in her chapter about uneaten food. People see food past its prime and toss them into the (hopefully, the compost) bin. Jahren sees the amount of water, the animal feed, the medications, the excrement, the government subsidies, and the time the farmer had invested into growing that food. And then there's the approximately (pre-Covid-19 pandemic) 800 million people worldwide who habitually deal with hunger.
The more we eat, the more we waste: in 1970, each American wasted 1/3 pound of food a day, on average. Today, that figure is 2/3 of a pound.
Twenty percent of what American families send to the landfill each day is, or recently was, perfectly edible food.
Section Three was about energy, and this was the most interesting portion of this book for me. Up until this point (about the 40 percent mark), The Story of More covered familiar information, and I was eager for something new. Jahren discussed fossil fuels like coal and oil and "renewable" energy including biofuels, hydroelectric, solar, wind, and nuclear. Part Three was not an optimistic section. In the US alone, we have a high appetite for electricity and for gasoline.
America is not an oil rich nation: the proven oil reserves of the US amount to 3% of the global total, which is bad news for a country so thoroughly committed to the automobile.
Biofuels are not the answer as Jahren pointed out the inefficiency of subsidizing and growing what could be food but that is instead burned up as fuel. Apparently, if the US lost its fossil fuels, the US' current annual supply of biofuels would satisfy 6 days of demand.
But the real stinger was what Jahren wrote about "green energy," especially for the US. Jahren punctured the message of hope that's been pitched with renewable energy such as hydroelectric, solar and wind. They are good, but they're insufficient to replace fossil fuels entirely because the US' demand for energy is too great. Green energy does need to be adopted but they are only partial solutions.
Part Four was where Jahren tied the previous chapters to changes that have already been measured about our planet - from increasing average temperatures to rising sea levels and the impact on changing habitats. At today's rate of loss, the year 2050 will put us close to 25 percent extinction of species. We are on the verge of triggering the sixth mass extinction on earth as we're about one-third of the way to the 70 percent mark that characterizes a mass extinction.
In the final section, Jahren offered her main solution to the endless pursuit of "more" by the OECD nations, but her comments were in particular directed at the US. Jahren advocated for conservation of resources and stopping the pursuit of "more." In truth, I believe that a multi-pronged approach by as many people as possible and by the OECD nations is the very least of what is needed.
The Story of More is an excellent primer about climate change if you know little about the facts. In my case, I've read several books and have watched documentaries. Jahren is also a scientist and that means that she could have inundated her book with statistics. She didn't, which was a negative for me as I'm comfortable with technical writing. I had listened to the audiobook which she narrated. Because she targeted a general audience, she occasionally read her material in a way to heighten the emotional impact by repeating phrases, lowering her tone, and slowing her delivery. These instances ended up distracting / annoying me more often than not, so in that respect, I preferred the ebook to the audiobook.
June 13, 2020
I adored Lab Girl and it is the reason I read this book. I sadly wish I had not read it as this did not live up to that wonderful book. First, this was a very simplified view of the history of development and industrialization in the world with a focus on the US. This is a tiny book and the ground the author tried to cover plus amusing anecdotes lead to generalizations to the point of oversimplifications. It also assumed zero background knowledge, so space was spent defining DNA and the word tummy was used for stomach, which is just infantilizing outside of a children’s book.
Finally, and this is my soap box, this would be a three star book had it used footnotes. Yes, it had a list of general sources at the back but saying some statistics came from the World Health Organization (WHO) and some from Vanity Fair gives me no ability to judge the quality of the work and research. Second, especially, when discussing research that people have spent most of their lives on this work, it needs to be cited. It is unethical to do otherwise. I will continue to hold this belief on all popular science books that without footnotes, there is no ability to judge the quality of the sources and it fails to give credit to the hard work that went into the research that is being used for the book.
Finally, and this is my soap box, this would be a three star book had it used footnotes. Yes, it had a list of general sources at the back but saying some statistics came from the World Health Organization (WHO) and some from Vanity Fair gives me no ability to judge the quality of the work and research. Second, especially, when discussing research that people have spent most of their lives on this work, it needs to be cited. It is unethical to do otherwise. I will continue to hold this belief on all popular science books that without footnotes, there is no ability to judge the quality of the sources and it fails to give credit to the hard work that went into the research that is being used for the book.
August 27, 2020
VERY eye opening.
May 6, 2024
I found Lab Girl to be one of the more enlightening books I had read in years. For earth day, weekly question in one of my goodreads’ groups was “what books have you enjoyed about the environment.” I admit it is not a preferred genre; however, I thought that Lab Girl brought science to life hence my foray into The Story of More. If someone follows the news and current events, then they would know the basics about many of the environmental issues that Hope Jahren poses in this book. She explains each of these nineteen issues in a way that even the least scientific person would understand. At times it is preachy as she urges each of us to find a way to sustain the planet. Many of these sustainable items, we are already participating in; it is up to mega corporations to do their share as well. Jahren’s voice is as uplifting as in her first book, but the subject matter does sound at times as a warning bell rather than encouragement. It is tricky then to figure out what actually has to occur to prolong life on this planet. Thankfully, if the scientists working to solve these worldwide problems are as successful and intelligent as Jahren, then I think that the earth is in the good hands of quality caretakers. Otherwise, this has been another example of climate change culture that I generally look to avoid.
3 stars
3 stars
March 23, 2020
A beautiful (yet terrible) little book, well worth reading ... and sharing. A sobering yet accessible and empathetic introduction ... a gentle yet jarring dipping of one's toe into the water ... on climate change. And (during the era of coronavirus social distancing, as opposed to, say, the holiday season ... as you do your best to support your local independent bookstore), potentially, an excellent gift for a relative, friend, or neighbor open to learning something new and doing some hard thinking.
Elephant in the room: the book's strengths - to my mind - derive from the (1) splendid, comfortable, almost languid prose; (2) the author's knowledge and experience - she's the real deal; (3) broad and creative research, eloquently presented alongside, and building upon, endearing anecdotes; and (4) a reader-friendly, easily digestible, "sequential nugget" (or very short, thematic chapter) organizational rubric.
While I expect that, for some, I'd be inclined to recommend Wallace-Wells' The Uninhabitable Earth instead, I'm guessing that, due to Jahren's lighter (gentle? soft? silky?) touch, for most readers, this will reach them more directly, or prove less likely to turn them off and simply shut down on the topic.
Ultimately, I increasingly think ... nay, fear ... that no topic is more important to the future of our planet ... and the world my children (and their children) will inherit and inhabit ... than climate change. We need to broaden and emphasize the discussion and apply leverage to our governments, at all levels, to make difficult decisions, embrace sacrifice, and change (many types of) behavior. If this book furthers that discussion and opens (or, dare I say, persuades) minds on that score, then Jahren has done us all (and those that will follow) a great service.
Elephant in the room: the book's strengths - to my mind - derive from the (1) splendid, comfortable, almost languid prose; (2) the author's knowledge and experience - she's the real deal; (3) broad and creative research, eloquently presented alongside, and building upon, endearing anecdotes; and (4) a reader-friendly, easily digestible, "sequential nugget" (or very short, thematic chapter) organizational rubric.
While I expect that, for some, I'd be inclined to recommend Wallace-Wells' The Uninhabitable Earth instead, I'm guessing that, due to Jahren's lighter (gentle? soft? silky?) touch, for most readers, this will reach them more directly, or prove less likely to turn them off and simply shut down on the topic.
Ultimately, I increasingly think ... nay, fear ... that no topic is more important to the future of our planet ... and the world my children (and their children) will inherit and inhabit ... than climate change. We need to broaden and emphasize the discussion and apply leverage to our governments, at all levels, to make difficult decisions, embrace sacrifice, and change (many types of) behavior. If this book furthers that discussion and opens (or, dare I say, persuades) minds on that score, then Jahren has done us all (and those that will follow) a great service.
March 25, 2021
Hope Jahren has written a page-turner of a book, full of humor, about a serious subject: climate change. As the title says, the book is about how we got here and what to do about it, and her illustrations of the sheer size of humans' impact of the planet are helpful in terms of getting your head around the issue. Some of her illustrative examples are laugh out loud funny, like how she provides a visual image of the quantity of, er, human waste produced on a daily basis by the residents of St Paul, MN - fyi, her brother works at the Sanitation Department for St Paul, so she has an inside track for this information. The book is full of numbers and numerical analysis of our predicament, but all of it is presented in an accessible way, as when Dr. Jahren explains the massive effect that air travel has on atmospheric CO2 by comparing the gas mileage of a car (about 30 mpg) to a jet airliner, which is.....about 500 FEET per gallon. When I read that, being a math geek, I thought, that can't be right, because that means a plane would have to carry nearly 10 times as many gallons of fuel as the number of miles it is going to fly, for example, 3625 miles from NYC to Paris. So I looked up the fuel capacity of a Boeing 777, and sure enough, it can carry more than 48,000 gallons of fuel. Wow.
The book is full of this sort of concrete information that makes you think, and helps you understand how big an impact humans, and especially those from the OECD countries are having on the planet. For instance, did you know that the total weight of plastic produced each year exceeds the total weight of humanity? Yikes! Many of her points have to do with either a) how much more efficient we are at producing food and other essentials than we were 50 years ago, or b) how much of the available stock of everything we have used up. And these two points have implications that are obvious and not obvious; often the more efficient a process is, the less room for disruption there is, and the closer we cut things in terms of taking the maximum possible number of fish or trees or whatever, the closer we push the larger system to collapse. So, for example, American agriculture is hugely efficient in terms of extracting the absolute maximum yield from an acre of farmland, but what if average temperatures rise 3 degrees F, and weather (rain, wind, etc) become less predictable? All other things being equal, yields will decrease because we won't be able to maintain that astonishing level of productivity absent the reliable weather we are used to. And with regard to fish stocks, scientists estimate we are using 75% of the stocks that are available. Once we pass 100%, the fish stocks will collapse, and we know this because there are precedents, like the Atlantic cod fishery, which collapsed in 1992, and has still not fully recovered 30 years later.
Hope Jahren's key message is we should all consume less and share more, and that is a real part of any strategy to get through the next 30-50 years and avoid global warming's worst effects. OECD residents need to use less electricity, less fuel, drive less, fly less, eat less red meat (by the way, the huge inefficiencies involved in producing the massive amounts of meat eaten by Americans gets a full chapter from Dr. Jahren). She also talks about ways to reduce CO2 emissions by converting to renewable sources of energy, but she is realistic about how much we can move in that direction, and her analysis provides a corrective to starry-eyed ideas of 100% renewable energy; maybe someday, but not with current technology. Which again means we have to reduce consumption to make ends meet on reducing CO2, and we have to keep those nuclear plants humming, at least for now.
But I feel I'm not doing justice to Hope Jahren's sense of humor in this review - the woman is funny! I often felt like she was channeling Kurt Vonnegut, only funnier. And her oft-expressed, deeply felt love for her science-teacher dad, and anecdotes related thereto were really moving. Her indignation at the amount of wasted food in the US arises naturally from growing up amongst the farm communities of southern Minnesota; she knows, as few Americans do, the back-breaking labor required to bring food to market, and wasting it just feels wrong to her, disrespectful of the labor. In many ways, I wanted to start reading this book again as soon as I finished it, and take notes, to have a summary of facts I can throw out in conversations about over-consumption and global warming. I may do that.
The one criticism I have is that Dr. Jahren did not go far enough down the road of explaining what we should do. Should we all buy electric cars? Well, not if the electricity to charge them comes from a coal-fired plant. Should we build 100 million scrubbers to pull the CO2 out of the air, as Elizabeth Kolbert has suggested? Will we need to shade the Earth with a particulate screen to hold down temperatures to bridge to a decarbonized future? Dr. Jahren does point to the book, Drawdown (which is also an active science / engineering project and website) as a resource on these questions, but we need a consolidated, comprehensive plan, and that plan is not part of her book. Which, honestly, would be a lot to ask of one person, but I wish she had speculated a little, at least. Nonetheless, I enjoyed this book more than any I've read lately on the subject of sustainability, and I highly recommend it. I liked it so much, I will shortly be buying the hardback version, and her earlier book, Lab Girl, just because I enjoy her writing so much.
P.S. - After writing this review, and after also reading Lab Girl, I read an interview with Hope Jahren in which she was asked about her literary influences:
"Interviewer: Who is the author, or what is the work, that has been most influential to you?
HJ: There are so many. I think Kurt Vonnegut is the voice that most rings in my memory — a clear direct voice, with a long-sounding tenor of ache, simply confessed — that is a voice that spoke to me most deeply when I read it, the one which I aspire to recreate as best I can."
I knew I was hearing echoes of Kurt in her writing!
The book is full of this sort of concrete information that makes you think, and helps you understand how big an impact humans, and especially those from the OECD countries are having on the planet. For instance, did you know that the total weight of plastic produced each year exceeds the total weight of humanity? Yikes! Many of her points have to do with either a) how much more efficient we are at producing food and other essentials than we were 50 years ago, or b) how much of the available stock of everything we have used up. And these two points have implications that are obvious and not obvious; often the more efficient a process is, the less room for disruption there is, and the closer we cut things in terms of taking the maximum possible number of fish or trees or whatever, the closer we push the larger system to collapse. So, for example, American agriculture is hugely efficient in terms of extracting the absolute maximum yield from an acre of farmland, but what if average temperatures rise 3 degrees F, and weather (rain, wind, etc) become less predictable? All other things being equal, yields will decrease because we won't be able to maintain that astonishing level of productivity absent the reliable weather we are used to. And with regard to fish stocks, scientists estimate we are using 75% of the stocks that are available. Once we pass 100%, the fish stocks will collapse, and we know this because there are precedents, like the Atlantic cod fishery, which collapsed in 1992, and has still not fully recovered 30 years later.
Hope Jahren's key message is we should all consume less and share more, and that is a real part of any strategy to get through the next 30-50 years and avoid global warming's worst effects. OECD residents need to use less electricity, less fuel, drive less, fly less, eat less red meat (by the way, the huge inefficiencies involved in producing the massive amounts of meat eaten by Americans gets a full chapter from Dr. Jahren). She also talks about ways to reduce CO2 emissions by converting to renewable sources of energy, but she is realistic about how much we can move in that direction, and her analysis provides a corrective to starry-eyed ideas of 100% renewable energy; maybe someday, but not with current technology. Which again means we have to reduce consumption to make ends meet on reducing CO2, and we have to keep those nuclear plants humming, at least for now.
But I feel I'm not doing justice to Hope Jahren's sense of humor in this review - the woman is funny! I often felt like she was channeling Kurt Vonnegut, only funnier. And her oft-expressed, deeply felt love for her science-teacher dad, and anecdotes related thereto were really moving. Her indignation at the amount of wasted food in the US arises naturally from growing up amongst the farm communities of southern Minnesota; she knows, as few Americans do, the back-breaking labor required to bring food to market, and wasting it just feels wrong to her, disrespectful of the labor. In many ways, I wanted to start reading this book again as soon as I finished it, and take notes, to have a summary of facts I can throw out in conversations about over-consumption and global warming. I may do that.
The one criticism I have is that Dr. Jahren did not go far enough down the road of explaining what we should do. Should we all buy electric cars? Well, not if the electricity to charge them comes from a coal-fired plant. Should we build 100 million scrubbers to pull the CO2 out of the air, as Elizabeth Kolbert has suggested? Will we need to shade the Earth with a particulate screen to hold down temperatures to bridge to a decarbonized future? Dr. Jahren does point to the book, Drawdown (which is also an active science / engineering project and website) as a resource on these questions, but we need a consolidated, comprehensive plan, and that plan is not part of her book. Which, honestly, would be a lot to ask of one person, but I wish she had speculated a little, at least. Nonetheless, I enjoyed this book more than any I've read lately on the subject of sustainability, and I highly recommend it. I liked it so much, I will shortly be buying the hardback version, and her earlier book, Lab Girl, just because I enjoy her writing so much.
P.S. - After writing this review, and after also reading Lab Girl, I read an interview with Hope Jahren in which she was asked about her literary influences:
"Interviewer: Who is the author, or what is the work, that has been most influential to you?
HJ: There are so many. I think Kurt Vonnegut is the voice that most rings in my memory — a clear direct voice, with a long-sounding tenor of ache, simply confessed — that is a voice that spoke to me most deeply when I read it, the one which I aspire to recreate as best I can."
I knew I was hearing echoes of Kurt in her writing!
November 15, 2020
READ THIS BOOK !!!
It does not matter if you "believe" in climate change or not. This book is full of such great information, well written and so readable, I found I could not put it down. I did listen to the audio and then went right out and bought the book (now in paperback) for myself and several friends. The audio is read by the author and she does an incredible job. Even if non-fiction is not your thing (and I am not a voracious non-fiction reader) this is excellent non-fiction and I hope a book that will be widely read. I also loved Lab Girl by the same author which is also excellent.
The title tells you what the book is about. This short book is amazing in that it manages to outline pretty much of the current state of affairs of where we are now in our earth's environment backed up by well stated and incredibly researched facts. And don't forget to read the Appendix. A wonderful reading that I plan to go back to again and again.
It does not matter if you "believe" in climate change or not. This book is full of such great information, well written and so readable, I found I could not put it down. I did listen to the audio and then went right out and bought the book (now in paperback) for myself and several friends. The audio is read by the author and she does an incredible job. Even if non-fiction is not your thing (and I am not a voracious non-fiction reader) this is excellent non-fiction and I hope a book that will be widely read. I also loved Lab Girl by the same author which is also excellent.
The title tells you what the book is about. This short book is amazing in that it manages to outline pretty much of the current state of affairs of where we are now in our earth's environment backed up by well stated and incredibly researched facts. And don't forget to read the Appendix. A wonderful reading that I plan to go back to again and again.
June 5, 2021
4.5 star round up.
The Story of More is a sober analysis of the current climate crisis - how we got here and what we can do from now on. Science-based, data-packed, a heavy subject made accessible to everybone. The book starts with the industry revolution and how coal and petroleum became the energy source we depend upon. Topics discussed: the damage of climate change - water rising, ice melting, drought, extreme weather, mass extinction, etc...; human race's impact on the climate - population growth, agriculture (grain and meat), aquaculture (fish, seaweeds), transport, food waste, plastics, etc...
Several things I've learned: aquaculture is not as sustainable; biofuel is renewable but not sustainable because of its high carbon footprint during production; eating meat, especially beef creates a very high carbon footprint. And of course, tree-planting is great and necessary but it takes time to have any impact on the climate, so it is not a quick solution for our current crisis.
On population growth: "One thing these great thinkers [i.e. Thomas Robert Malthus] never explored is, however, the corralation between the status of a woman within her society and the average childre she bears in her life time. " In short, the smaller the gender gap, the less number of children avarage women bear in their lifetime. To reduce the population overgrowth, the best way is to improve gender equality. Population estimation by 2100: 10 billion. What would the author make of the recent census results of the United States and China? I am skeptical of those economists who decry the slowdown of population growth. Population is NOT getting smaller anywhere, just the growth is slowing down a bit! There are still too many people on the earth messing up our enviornemt, and animals and plants sharing the same planet with us.
"Even with meat production siphoning 1/3 of the world's edible grain supply, we still produce 2900 calories of food for every one of the 7.5 billion people on earth every single day. " It's depressing to read that the amount of total grains wasted in the rich countries (i.e. the United States and Europe) is close to the total grains available in India. Consumers in rich countries waste almost as much food as the entire net food production of sub-Saharan Africa each year.
The real shock comes from the renewable (green) energy. We have high hopes for green energy. Green energy is the fastest-growing energy source in the United States, increasing 100 percent from 2000 to 2018. However, the growth rate of energy consumption has far outpaced the growth of renewable engery. As Jahren soberly points out: "Switching [from fossil fuel] to renewable engery at today's level of electricity consumption is not possible for the United States, although I have heard people talk about it, as it is an attainable goal. At today's rate of electrinicty consumption and generation, powering America using only hydropower would require 50 functioning Hoover Dams within each one of the 50 states of the union. Powering America using only wind power, will require more than 1 million wind turbines, or 1 every mile or so across the whole continental United States. As for solar engery, a land area the size of South Carolina will have to be scraficed to solar pannels in order to generate Amercia's annual diet of electricity. Entirely switching to renewbles at present rate and efficiency is, unfortunately, a pipe dream."
The author adovocats engery conservation, which is not because fossil fuels are running out, but because we can not survive the climate crisis while maintain the current rate of energe consumption. Her idea might sound anti-progress to some, but I think it is a must. At least the energy conservation is needed before the invention of better technologies in renewable engery. Right now, "there is no magic technology coming to save us from ourselves. Curbbing consumption is the outimate trial of 21 centurary. Using less and sharing more is the biggest charlenge our generation will ever face. It is the bewilderingly difficult proposition and therefore unlikely. It is also the only sure fire way that we can start to get ourselves out of this mess. "
The action items are placed in the appendices. First is to exam your energe use: fly less; drive less; eat less meat; raise the airconditioner temperature in summer and reduce in winter; install a smaller hot water tank. Others include following: dont invest in fussil fuels or meat production companies, become an activist, urge politicians to make policy change, etc...
The book mostly deals with OECD countries, especially the United States, because the author's an American, and because the United States has the highest historical carbon emmisions record and by far the highest carbon emission per Capita to date. However, climate change is a global problem that needs global solutions. For the question of who should be more responsible for the climate crisis, I find this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipVxx... by Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell.
Every person's every effort counts, which I agree. However, I am yet to read a book on climate crisis that exams national and global policy changes required.
Quotes:
"Convincing people to exam their engergy use is like trying to let them quit smoking or eat more healthily. They already know they should do it but there is a billion dollor industry working around the clock, inventing new ways to make sure they don't."
"Somewhere along the way, however, we began to hope scientists where different that they could be right all the time, and because they are not, we kind of stopped listening. "
The Story of More is a sober analysis of the current climate crisis - how we got here and what we can do from now on. Science-based, data-packed, a heavy subject made accessible to everybone. The book starts with the industry revolution and how coal and petroleum became the energy source we depend upon. Topics discussed: the damage of climate change - water rising, ice melting, drought, extreme weather, mass extinction, etc...; human race's impact on the climate - population growth, agriculture (grain and meat), aquaculture (fish, seaweeds), transport, food waste, plastics, etc...
Several things I've learned: aquaculture is not as sustainable; biofuel is renewable but not sustainable because of its high carbon footprint during production; eating meat, especially beef creates a very high carbon footprint. And of course, tree-planting is great and necessary but it takes time to have any impact on the climate, so it is not a quick solution for our current crisis.
On population growth: "One thing these great thinkers [i.e. Thomas Robert Malthus] never explored is, however, the corralation between the status of a woman within her society and the average childre she bears in her life time. " In short, the smaller the gender gap, the less number of children avarage women bear in their lifetime. To reduce the population overgrowth, the best way is to improve gender equality. Population estimation by 2100: 10 billion. What would the author make of the recent census results of the United States and China? I am skeptical of those economists who decry the slowdown of population growth. Population is NOT getting smaller anywhere, just the growth is slowing down a bit! There are still too many people on the earth messing up our enviornemt, and animals and plants sharing the same planet with us.
"Even with meat production siphoning 1/3 of the world's edible grain supply, we still produce 2900 calories of food for every one of the 7.5 billion people on earth every single day. " It's depressing to read that the amount of total grains wasted in the rich countries (i.e. the United States and Europe) is close to the total grains available in India. Consumers in rich countries waste almost as much food as the entire net food production of sub-Saharan Africa each year.
The real shock comes from the renewable (green) energy. We have high hopes for green energy. Green energy is the fastest-growing energy source in the United States, increasing 100 percent from 2000 to 2018. However, the growth rate of energy consumption has far outpaced the growth of renewable engery. As Jahren soberly points out: "Switching [from fossil fuel] to renewable engery at today's level of electricity consumption is not possible for the United States, although I have heard people talk about it, as it is an attainable goal. At today's rate of electrinicty consumption and generation, powering America using only hydropower would require 50 functioning Hoover Dams within each one of the 50 states of the union. Powering America using only wind power, will require more than 1 million wind turbines, or 1 every mile or so across the whole continental United States. As for solar engery, a land area the size of South Carolina will have to be scraficed to solar pannels in order to generate Amercia's annual diet of electricity. Entirely switching to renewbles at present rate and efficiency is, unfortunately, a pipe dream."
The author adovocats engery conservation, which is not because fossil fuels are running out, but because we can not survive the climate crisis while maintain the current rate of energe consumption. Her idea might sound anti-progress to some, but I think it is a must. At least the energy conservation is needed before the invention of better technologies in renewable engery. Right now, "there is no magic technology coming to save us from ourselves. Curbbing consumption is the outimate trial of 21 centurary. Using less and sharing more is the biggest charlenge our generation will ever face. It is the bewilderingly difficult proposition and therefore unlikely. It is also the only sure fire way that we can start to get ourselves out of this mess. "
The action items are placed in the appendices. First is to exam your energe use: fly less; drive less; eat less meat; raise the airconditioner temperature in summer and reduce in winter; install a smaller hot water tank. Others include following: dont invest in fussil fuels or meat production companies, become an activist, urge politicians to make policy change, etc...
The book mostly deals with OECD countries, especially the United States, because the author's an American, and because the United States has the highest historical carbon emmisions record and by far the highest carbon emission per Capita to date. However, climate change is a global problem that needs global solutions. For the question of who should be more responsible for the climate crisis, I find this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipVxx... by Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell.
Every person's every effort counts, which I agree. However, I am yet to read a book on climate crisis that exams national and global policy changes required.
Quotes:
"Convincing people to exam their engergy use is like trying to let them quit smoking or eat more healthily. They already know they should do it but there is a billion dollor industry working around the clock, inventing new ways to make sure they don't."
"Somewhere along the way, however, we began to hope scientists where different that they could be right all the time, and because they are not, we kind of stopped listening. "
January 1, 2021
man, i loved her other book but i couldn't wait for this one to end. it honestly feels like a long explanation of everything that has to do with climate change ever (biodiversity, agriculture, sea levels, ocean acidification, alternative energy....), and maybe i spent too much time in high school on debate but basically none of this was new info to me (and I don't think this would really be new info to anyone who is fairly aware about climate change?). also, she writes with the same tone of awe and wonder as she did in lab girl but that really doesn't work nearly as well for like, planetary destruction as it did for ~the miracle of life~.
my main substantive gripe with the story of more is the huge overemphasis on individual action/choices. the thesis of the story of more is quite literally about climate change being the story of more consumption; the message, both implicitly and explicitly, is that maybe if we simply ate less sugar, ate less meat, took fewer flights, bought a better car, then the rest of the world could have enough to eat and not lose their coastlines to the ocean. how do you bemoan the fact that climate change has become politicized and yet say nothing about..... political action or the exigency of demanding a new economic system??
i truly do not understand the overwhelmingly positive reviews here....
my main substantive gripe with the story of more is the huge overemphasis on individual action/choices. the thesis of the story of more is quite literally about climate change being the story of more consumption; the message, both implicitly and explicitly, is that maybe if we simply ate less sugar, ate less meat, took fewer flights, bought a better car, then the rest of the world could have enough to eat and not lose their coastlines to the ocean. how do you bemoan the fact that climate change has become politicized and yet say nothing about..... political action or the exigency of demanding a new economic system??
i truly do not understand the overwhelmingly positive reviews here....
February 15, 2021
3,8*
"All species will go extinct eventually, even our own: it is one of nature's few imperatives. As of today, however, that train has not quite left the station. We still have some control over our demise-namely, how long it will take and how much our children and grandchildren will suffer. If we want to take action, we should get started while it still maters what we do."
Mano galva, mes jau pavėlavom į traukinį, bet gal aš klystu...
"All species will go extinct eventually, even our own: it is one of nature's few imperatives. As of today, however, that train has not quite left the station. We still have some control over our demise-namely, how long it will take and how much our children and grandchildren will suffer. If we want to take action, we should get started while it still maters what we do."
Mano galva, mes jau pavėlavom į traukinį, bet gal aš klystu...
April 8, 2021
Recommended reading for everyone, even those avoiding the issue or in denial. If it were not for the pressures of our materialistic culture, this book would be a required reading in all post elementary schools. A myrid of facts with statistics and data that bear them out are presented, together with how various opposing arguments can be both right and wrong, and the drawbacks of proposed solutions, so read carefully. It is the author's intention to inform, not scare, the reader.
Far too many humans ignore, even deny, the reality of climate change in their subjective avoidance of inconvenient issues affecting their lifestyle and/or aspirations. To me, this is equivalent to burying one's head in the sand with a tsunami on the horizon.
With the author's personal touches, this book presents the facts of how humanity has effected, and is accelerating, climate change via global warming. It also dips into tangential issues with surprising statistics and where such are leading — e.g. trophic cascades, and poisoning the soil, water, and air. In reading this book, keep in mind that climate change is both a symptom of and a contributor to the deteriorating biosphere conducive to human existence. At the end the author presents thoughts on how we might alter our self-destructive course, and notes how readers can verify the many presented facts.
While it's true that major shifts in climate have occurred many times over Earth's history, they have commonly occurred over geologic time frames. Now we are seeing the effects of climate change within our lifetimes. For example, in the two million years prior to human causes, average global temperatures varied at a rate of about one degree per thousand years. Since the pre-industrial era though, the rate has roughly doubled on an upward spike. Now, on the course we are on, with positive feedback loops kicking in (e.g. thawing tundra releasing methane), it is estimated that the rate of change could increase twenty fold within a century.
As to the possible fate of humankind, I'm compelled to note that microorganisms tend to be capable of a relatively fast rate of evolution, whereas multicellular animals like ourselves are less successful due to the functional complexity of cellular interactions (between some thirty trillion cells in the human body, not to mention the approximately thirty-eight trillion bacteria in and on our bodies that help to keep us alive). Given what we know from the fossil record, the average species exists approximately ten million years. Homo sapiens have thus far existed only two to three hundred thousand years.
“All species will go extinct eventually, even our own: it is one of nature’s few imperatives. As of today, however, that train has not quite left the station. We still have some control over our demise—namely, how long it will take and how much our children and grandchildren will suffer. If we want to take action, we should get started while it still matters what we do.”
Far too many humans ignore, even deny, the reality of climate change in their subjective avoidance of inconvenient issues affecting their lifestyle and/or aspirations. To me, this is equivalent to burying one's head in the sand with a tsunami on the horizon.
With the author's personal touches, this book presents the facts of how humanity has effected, and is accelerating, climate change via global warming. It also dips into tangential issues with surprising statistics and where such are leading — e.g. trophic cascades, and poisoning the soil, water, and air. In reading this book, keep in mind that climate change is both a symptom of and a contributor to the deteriorating biosphere conducive to human existence. At the end the author presents thoughts on how we might alter our self-destructive course, and notes how readers can verify the many presented facts.
While it's true that major shifts in climate have occurred many times over Earth's history, they have commonly occurred over geologic time frames. Now we are seeing the effects of climate change within our lifetimes. For example, in the two million years prior to human causes, average global temperatures varied at a rate of about one degree per thousand years. Since the pre-industrial era though, the rate has roughly doubled on an upward spike. Now, on the course we are on, with positive feedback loops kicking in (e.g. thawing tundra releasing methane), it is estimated that the rate of change could increase twenty fold within a century.
As to the possible fate of humankind, I'm compelled to note that microorganisms tend to be capable of a relatively fast rate of evolution, whereas multicellular animals like ourselves are less successful due to the functional complexity of cellular interactions (between some thirty trillion cells in the human body, not to mention the approximately thirty-eight trillion bacteria in and on our bodies that help to keep us alive). Given what we know from the fossil record, the average species exists approximately ten million years. Homo sapiens have thus far existed only two to three hundred thousand years.
“All species will go extinct eventually, even our own: it is one of nature’s few imperatives. As of today, however, that train has not quite left the station. We still have some control over our demise—namely, how long it will take and how much our children and grandchildren will suffer. If we want to take action, we should get started while it still matters what we do.”
September 20, 2020
+I guess this could be a decent introduction to climate change if you've never heard of it before
-very surface level approach to understanding climate change,
-incredibly formulaic chapter structure of 4-ish paragraphs of anecdote, followed by 6-ish pages that might as well be a series of graphs,
-very much focused on the USA yet does not delve into anything specific about USA politics, history, or culture.
-seems to really minimize the systemic components of climate change, instead opting for the disappointing conclusion of "carpool more." Just for one example: look at how the world is already shifting away from animal products: in dairy. Dairy alternatives have never been more popular, yet dairy farmers have lobbied to ban the use of the word "milk" on alternative products to dissuade consumption and have had billions of dollars of subsidies from their failing industry. Hope Jahren's simplification of cause and effect is not useful here.
-very surface level approach to understanding climate change,
-incredibly formulaic chapter structure of 4-ish paragraphs of anecdote, followed by 6-ish pages that might as well be a series of graphs,
-very much focused on the USA yet does not delve into anything specific about USA politics, history, or culture.
-seems to really minimize the systemic components of climate change, instead opting for the disappointing conclusion of "carpool more." Just for one example: look at how the world is already shifting away from animal products: in dairy. Dairy alternatives have never been more popular, yet dairy farmers have lobbied to ban the use of the word "milk" on alternative products to dissuade consumption and have had billions of dollars of subsidies from their failing industry. Hope Jahren's simplification of cause and effect is not useful here.
November 7, 2021
A very well documented and accessible book about climate change.
It is one of the books that has moved me to take personal and community action.
It is one of the books that has moved me to take personal and community action.
May 9, 2021
I’ve read a lot of books like this recently and I’m starting to get a bit numb.
There are too many of us. We are consuming too much. We are burning too much fossil fuel so that we can fly too much, travel by private car too much and use too much electricity. We are eating too much meat and growing too many crops that are fed to the meat or discarded rather than feeding the 800 million people who are still starving. We are fishing too much. We are throwing too much away and using too much plastic. We are chopping down too much rainforest and using too much palm oil. The earth is warming and getting stormy. The ice is melting and the seas are rising.
“Alexa, are we doomed?”
“Pretty much, Beth. Pretty much.”
Hope Jahren is an engaging writer who often uses humour to make her point. Nevertheless, she admits that every scientist she knows across the world is in a state of barely concealed panic, unlike their respective governments. Anxiety and depression loom if one dwells on this too much because when only one out of the 195 nations that signed up for the Paris Agreement in 2015 met their five-year targets (India – and only because they haven’t built all those coal mines yet) optimism is a bit of a struggle. Does my little bit of recycling or turning down the thermostat matter a damn?
This is a very readable book, and Jahren does her best to keep it positive:
I agree because I am tired of the hell-in-a handcart message. We have to believe there is a chance of nursing our poor, beautiful earth back to health because despair and near-panic will solve nothing.
3.5 rounded down
There are too many of us. We are consuming too much. We are burning too much fossil fuel so that we can fly too much, travel by private car too much and use too much electricity. We are eating too much meat and growing too many crops that are fed to the meat or discarded rather than feeding the 800 million people who are still starving. We are fishing too much. We are throwing too much away and using too much plastic. We are chopping down too much rainforest and using too much palm oil. The earth is warming and getting stormy. The ice is melting and the seas are rising.
“Alexa, are we doomed?”
“Pretty much, Beth. Pretty much.”
Hope Jahren is an engaging writer who often uses humour to make her point. Nevertheless, she admits that every scientist she knows across the world is in a state of barely concealed panic, unlike their respective governments. Anxiety and depression loom if one dwells on this too much because when only one out of the 195 nations that signed up for the Paris Agreement in 2015 met their five-year targets (India – and only because they haven’t built all those coal mines yet) optimism is a bit of a struggle. Does my little bit of recycling or turning down the thermostat matter a damn?
This is a very readable book, and Jahren does her best to keep it positive:
I stress one thing above all else: Having hope requires courage. We risk our own paralysis with the message that we have poisoned the earth and so the earth rejects us. I warn my students: Do not be seduced by lazy nihilism.
I agree because I am tired of the hell-in-a handcart message. We have to believe there is a chance of nursing our poor, beautiful earth back to health because despair and near-panic will solve nothing.
3.5 rounded down
October 1, 2020
3.5 Stars
My issue with The Story of More is my issue with most books about climate change, the focus is on individual contribution and the onus is put on the individual to solve the problems that no band of ordinary citizens can solve.
The Story of More is a well-written, informative book. I loved the way that Jahren broke different subjects down and I really enjoyed all the data points included. What I don't feel like pans out is the overall messaging. Jahren wants us to not feel fatalistic about the future of our planet, and I think that's a laudable goal. If we believe that this is the end of our species and that there is nothing we can do to stop that, then we really have no incentive to try to do better. I can appreciate that. It is psychically exhausting to listen to the endless litany of unsolvable problems we are facing in the world today.
The issue however, is that while we are all capable of trying to do better, it is industry in this world that would have to reform to make any kind of meaningful strides towards limiting the effects of climate change. Jahren touches on this. She uses the idea of "more" and "less" to say that our rapacious culture that is never content to steadily move along but that expects to grow, grow, grow all the time is the root of climate change and that our acceptance of less as the new normal, moving backwards, is the only way to staunch the climate change bleeding. She gets that climate change intervention would need to be philosophical. If Jahren understands that global capitalism is the root of climate change, how can she suggest that we address it with mere changes to our consumption?
I agree with Jahren that anything we can do is a net positive. Reducing consumption we don't truly need is a good goal. It will not stop climate change though, not even if we all individually participate. Beyond that, Jahren's suggestions for how we reduce our consumption fail to acknowledge the expense behind those solutions.
For an economically underprivileged individual living in substandard housing, they don't have control over what kind of water heater or refrigerator is in their home. They don't have energy efficient windows and they probably have cracks in their walls, things that make their heating/cooling units work less effectively, using more energy. Since we know that the cost of living has skyrocketed while wages have stagnated over the past 50 years, we know that many working class individuals must work multiple jobs to make ends meet, using more energy to get back and forth from work. They may not have time to cook healthy, meatless meals at home. They may not even have time to cook at home, relying on convenience foods (heavily packaged) or fast-food (energy intensive and heavily packaged). If slowing climate change falls into the "individual responsibility" sector, how do we suggest the working poor in the US truly decrease their consumption? I recognize that Jahren admits that the wealthy in this world are the consumers and that the poor suffer the effects but since she is speaking of the global poor, that fails to address the working poor of the US, who are still much better off than their counterparts worldwide and still consume much more energy.
The economically priveleged in our society could absolutely do these things to reduce their energy consumption, but they could also live in higher density living spaces, decreasing contribution to urban sprawl, use public transportation instead of personal vehicles, and more importantly invest in better/more efficient public works systems/infrastructure through taxation instead of donating their money to a cause of their choosing so as to avoid their tax bill. The economically priveleged could recognize that their want of "more" is truly the root of the problem. Why, when we talk about "personal responsibility," do we never call out that the ultra-wealthy must bear a much bigger portion of the burden?
Jeff Bezos is currently running Amazon TV ads that say he will have his delivery fleet carbon-net-zero by year XXXX, but are we to believe that a man with 175.3 billion dollars could not do anything he wanted, if not today, within a matter of months if the technology existed? There is a lack of incentive for the ultra-wealthy to truly deal with climate change because they can (for a certain period of time) buy their way out of suffering. In 2018, when the Kardashians' homes were surrounded by the worst wildfire California had ever seen, they could afford to pay for private fire fighters to spend more time and energy just to save their properties, using all that carbon dioxide creating energy not to stop the fires but to protect things that are considerable valuable to people who will not be homeless if the entire house burns down. Peter Thiel is going to build himself an island nation where there are no laws and where supplies/services are boated in by poor locals who could never afford to live in his island nation, because if his island is wiped out by sea level rise, he can just relocate somewhere else. The stakes (temporarily) are not high for the ultra-wealthy. Even these ultra-wealthy simply changing their personal behaviors would not offset climate change, but rather the industries that make them ultra-wealthy would need to be so entirely rethought that they would essentially have ceased to exist. If you are not afraid of the consequences of climate change because you can buy/build anything you want, anywhere you want, why would you direct your corporation to change its behavior?
I admire Jahren's effort. She really tried to provide you a positive spin on a pretty bitter pill to swallow. She gave you lots of data to backup her points. She wrote a really interesting book. I don't think that gets us one millimeter closer to addressing climate change though, and that begs the question--if every book on climate change comes out and simply says "use less energy," was the energy consumption used to write, print, distribute, sell those books even worth it in a cost/benefit analysis?
My issue with The Story of More is my issue with most books about climate change, the focus is on individual contribution and the onus is put on the individual to solve the problems that no band of ordinary citizens can solve.
The Story of More is a well-written, informative book. I loved the way that Jahren broke different subjects down and I really enjoyed all the data points included. What I don't feel like pans out is the overall messaging. Jahren wants us to not feel fatalistic about the future of our planet, and I think that's a laudable goal. If we believe that this is the end of our species and that there is nothing we can do to stop that, then we really have no incentive to try to do better. I can appreciate that. It is psychically exhausting to listen to the endless litany of unsolvable problems we are facing in the world today.
The issue however, is that while we are all capable of trying to do better, it is industry in this world that would have to reform to make any kind of meaningful strides towards limiting the effects of climate change. Jahren touches on this. She uses the idea of "more" and "less" to say that our rapacious culture that is never content to steadily move along but that expects to grow, grow, grow all the time is the root of climate change and that our acceptance of less as the new normal, moving backwards, is the only way to staunch the climate change bleeding. She gets that climate change intervention would need to be philosophical. If Jahren understands that global capitalism is the root of climate change, how can she suggest that we address it with mere changes to our consumption?
I agree with Jahren that anything we can do is a net positive. Reducing consumption we don't truly need is a good goal. It will not stop climate change though, not even if we all individually participate. Beyond that, Jahren's suggestions for how we reduce our consumption fail to acknowledge the expense behind those solutions.
For an economically underprivileged individual living in substandard housing, they don't have control over what kind of water heater or refrigerator is in their home. They don't have energy efficient windows and they probably have cracks in their walls, things that make their heating/cooling units work less effectively, using more energy. Since we know that the cost of living has skyrocketed while wages have stagnated over the past 50 years, we know that many working class individuals must work multiple jobs to make ends meet, using more energy to get back and forth from work. They may not have time to cook healthy, meatless meals at home. They may not even have time to cook at home, relying on convenience foods (heavily packaged) or fast-food (energy intensive and heavily packaged). If slowing climate change falls into the "individual responsibility" sector, how do we suggest the working poor in the US truly decrease their consumption? I recognize that Jahren admits that the wealthy in this world are the consumers and that the poor suffer the effects but since she is speaking of the global poor, that fails to address the working poor of the US, who are still much better off than their counterparts worldwide and still consume much more energy.
The economically priveleged in our society could absolutely do these things to reduce their energy consumption, but they could also live in higher density living spaces, decreasing contribution to urban sprawl, use public transportation instead of personal vehicles, and more importantly invest in better/more efficient public works systems/infrastructure through taxation instead of donating their money to a cause of their choosing so as to avoid their tax bill. The economically priveleged could recognize that their want of "more" is truly the root of the problem. Why, when we talk about "personal responsibility," do we never call out that the ultra-wealthy must bear a much bigger portion of the burden?
Jeff Bezos is currently running Amazon TV ads that say he will have his delivery fleet carbon-net-zero by year XXXX, but are we to believe that a man with 175.3 billion dollars could not do anything he wanted, if not today, within a matter of months if the technology existed? There is a lack of incentive for the ultra-wealthy to truly deal with climate change because they can (for a certain period of time) buy their way out of suffering. In 2018, when the Kardashians' homes were surrounded by the worst wildfire California had ever seen, they could afford to pay for private fire fighters to spend more time and energy just to save their properties, using all that carbon dioxide creating energy not to stop the fires but to protect things that are considerable valuable to people who will not be homeless if the entire house burns down. Peter Thiel is going to build himself an island nation where there are no laws and where supplies/services are boated in by poor locals who could never afford to live in his island nation, because if his island is wiped out by sea level rise, he can just relocate somewhere else. The stakes (temporarily) are not high for the ultra-wealthy. Even these ultra-wealthy simply changing their personal behaviors would not offset climate change, but rather the industries that make them ultra-wealthy would need to be so entirely rethought that they would essentially have ceased to exist. If you are not afraid of the consequences of climate change because you can buy/build anything you want, anywhere you want, why would you direct your corporation to change its behavior?
I admire Jahren's effort. She really tried to provide you a positive spin on a pretty bitter pill to swallow. She gave you lots of data to backup her points. She wrote a really interesting book. I don't think that gets us one millimeter closer to addressing climate change though, and that begs the question--if every book on climate change comes out and simply says "use less energy," was the energy consumption used to write, print, distribute, sell those books even worth it in a cost/benefit analysis?
June 7, 2020
The Story of More traces the impacts of climate change through the lens of human's desire for excessive consumption. The facts are personalised with Jahren's own experiences, demonstrating how every attitude we have towards our planet is inseparable from our own attitudes towards our lifestyle choices.
This book works decently as an introduction to climate change. The chapters are organised well by the things that we consume: the food we eat, the energy we waste, and the earth we've simultaneously ravished.
Personally, an introduction to climate change is not what I really want out of a book on climate change at this point in time. The Story of More read too much like a university introduction course (because, for the most part, it began that way), filled to the brim with facts and perhaps not enough personal insight and perspective. I've heard these facts before.
Furthermore, the conclusion and proposed solution were really too flimsy and all-encompassing for my liking. For someone who may be more pessimistic towards the hopes of legitimate effort being committed towards the environment, Jahren doesn't really offer anything new to the discussion.
So, should you read this book? If you're someone who wants to know the fundamentals of how climate change is affecting the planet: sure. But if you need a bit more perspective on climate change issues, I might give this one a miss. Personally I found The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming more compelling.
This book works decently as an introduction to climate change. The chapters are organised well by the things that we consume: the food we eat, the energy we waste, and the earth we've simultaneously ravished.
Personally, an introduction to climate change is not what I really want out of a book on climate change at this point in time. The Story of More read too much like a university introduction course (because, for the most part, it began that way), filled to the brim with facts and perhaps not enough personal insight and perspective. I've heard these facts before.
Furthermore, the conclusion and proposed solution were really too flimsy and all-encompassing for my liking. For someone who may be more pessimistic towards the hopes of legitimate effort being committed towards the environment, Jahren doesn't really offer anything new to the discussion.
So, should you read this book? If you're someone who wants to know the fundamentals of how climate change is affecting the planet: sure. But if you need a bit more perspective on climate change issues, I might give this one a miss. Personally I found The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming more compelling.
February 5, 2021
Originally published on my book blog, TheBibliophage.com.
Hope Jahren developed the crux of The Story of More: How We Got to Climate Change and Where We Go from Here as an introductory class for college students. And fundamentally, it reads this way. There’s a lot of science, some history, a bit of humor, and a smattering of opinion. Is it the best book I’ve read on climate change? No. But if I wanted a book that was fairly short and clearly explained the concepts, this is a good choice.
Jahren covers all the relevant issues, divided in four main sections: Life, Food, Energy, Earth. Within each section are topics such as how we grow grain, raise meat, and find fish. Plenty of the topics center on the “How We Got Here” part of her title, including the way we use electricity, oil, and gas.
The theme in this book is the constant need for more—stuff especially, but also activities that generate carbon dioxide, trash, and other components of climate change. Jahren shines a light on how needing more and more is leading Earth further down the path of climate change. Her premise is that if we just “use less and share more,” we can make a positive impact on our environment. That sounds simple, but she makes it clear it isn’t.
Another through line is her upbringing in the Midwest. Jahren regularly refers readers back to locations—whether a cornfield or a particular city—in that region. This worked for me because I’ve lived in both Missouri and Illinois, among iconic regional places as well as cornfields. I’ll venture to guess that it might not be so easy for someone from another part of the world to relate.
My conclusions
I loved Hope Jahren’s earlier book, the memoir called Lab Girl. That was a very personal and affecting book. This book is a lecture from her professorial self. Jahren has moments of lightness, but more often she is explaining and quoting statistics.
One of her odd quirks is the tendency to quantify things using familiar places. For example, she says, “Fifty years ago, a plot of land the size of a basketball court was required to produce one bushel of corn; today, all that is needed is two parking spaces.” Or another, “This year, the United States will import enough refined table sugar to fill Yankee Stadium three times over.” Some choices will be more relatable to the average reader than others.
Jahren also has opinions about everything, from cars (which she thinks are “a murderous joy-sucking plague on the human species”) to organic foods. But her reactions to various common behaviors don’t make this more of a personal book. Instead, they make me feel judged and weary of her sense of superiority.
One thing I’m curious about too is how Jahren’s experience as a resident of Norway has changed her perspective on climate change. But she only throws in a sentence here and there about the Norwegian way of handling the issue of “more.” Perhaps it’s another book entirely, but it’s one I’d consider reading.
All in all, this wasn’t a captivating book for me and I struggled to finish. It was mostly introductory in nature and tries to cover a plethora of subjects in relatively few pages. I preferred The End of Ice by Dahr Jamail because it has more of a personal feel while still following science. Perhaps the two would work in a pair.
Hope Jahren developed the crux of The Story of More: How We Got to Climate Change and Where We Go from Here as an introductory class for college students. And fundamentally, it reads this way. There’s a lot of science, some history, a bit of humor, and a smattering of opinion. Is it the best book I’ve read on climate change? No. But if I wanted a book that was fairly short and clearly explained the concepts, this is a good choice.
Jahren covers all the relevant issues, divided in four main sections: Life, Food, Energy, Earth. Within each section are topics such as how we grow grain, raise meat, and find fish. Plenty of the topics center on the “How We Got Here” part of her title, including the way we use electricity, oil, and gas.
The theme in this book is the constant need for more—stuff especially, but also activities that generate carbon dioxide, trash, and other components of climate change. Jahren shines a light on how needing more and more is leading Earth further down the path of climate change. Her premise is that if we just “use less and share more,” we can make a positive impact on our environment. That sounds simple, but she makes it clear it isn’t.
Another through line is her upbringing in the Midwest. Jahren regularly refers readers back to locations—whether a cornfield or a particular city—in that region. This worked for me because I’ve lived in both Missouri and Illinois, among iconic regional places as well as cornfields. I’ll venture to guess that it might not be so easy for someone from another part of the world to relate.
My conclusions
I loved Hope Jahren’s earlier book, the memoir called Lab Girl. That was a very personal and affecting book. This book is a lecture from her professorial self. Jahren has moments of lightness, but more often she is explaining and quoting statistics.
One of her odd quirks is the tendency to quantify things using familiar places. For example, she says, “Fifty years ago, a plot of land the size of a basketball court was required to produce one bushel of corn; today, all that is needed is two parking spaces.” Or another, “This year, the United States will import enough refined table sugar to fill Yankee Stadium three times over.” Some choices will be more relatable to the average reader than others.
Jahren also has opinions about everything, from cars (which she thinks are “a murderous joy-sucking plague on the human species”) to organic foods. But her reactions to various common behaviors don’t make this more of a personal book. Instead, they make me feel judged and weary of her sense of superiority.
One thing I’m curious about too is how Jahren’s experience as a resident of Norway has changed her perspective on climate change. But she only throws in a sentence here and there about the Norwegian way of handling the issue of “more.” Perhaps it’s another book entirely, but it’s one I’d consider reading.
All in all, this wasn’t a captivating book for me and I struggled to finish. It was mostly introductory in nature and tries to cover a plethora of subjects in relatively few pages. I preferred The End of Ice by Dahr Jamail because it has more of a personal feel while still following science. Perhaps the two would work in a pair.
April 28, 2021
If there’s a single book that can explain what’s happening in the climate change frontier, Hope Jahren accomplished that task with The Story of More. More importantly, she’s done so without useless sentiments or false optimism. It’s full of facts and meticulously collected numbers on humanity’s impact and damage on earth which paints a bleak outlook that I felt despaired throughout much of the book. However, as stated in the book, her purpose is not to frighten us (a scared person doesn’t make radical decisions), but to educate us and provide factual and true information. In her words, “Knowledge is responsibility”. She ends the book with a reasonably ‘hopeful’ message calling the seven billion of us to step up and change ourselves in pursuit of less.
“As a solution, energy conservation by its very definition requires the least effort of any approach. It is a strong lever by which we could pull ourselves back into alignment with a future that our grandchildren might survive. There’s only one problem: driving less, eating less, buying less, making less, and doing less will not create new wealth. Consuming less is not a new technology that can be sold or a new product that can be marketed, and acting as if can be is absurd”
“Each one of us must privately ask ourselves when and where we can consume less instead of more, for it is unlikely that business and industry will ever ask on our behalf”
“Do not be seduced by lazy nihilism: It is precisely because no single solution will save us that everything we do matters. Every meal we eat, every mile we travel, and every dollar we spend presents us with a choose between using more energy than we did last time or less. You have power. How will you use it?”
“As a solution, energy conservation by its very definition requires the least effort of any approach. It is a strong lever by which we could pull ourselves back into alignment with a future that our grandchildren might survive. There’s only one problem: driving less, eating less, buying less, making less, and doing less will not create new wealth. Consuming less is not a new technology that can be sold or a new product that can be marketed, and acting as if can be is absurd”
“Each one of us must privately ask ourselves when and where we can consume less instead of more, for it is unlikely that business and industry will ever ask on our behalf”
“Do not be seduced by lazy nihilism: It is precisely because no single solution will save us that everything we do matters. Every meal we eat, every mile we travel, and every dollar we spend presents us with a choose between using more energy than we did last time or less. You have power. How will you use it?”
November 3, 2020
*118th Climate Book*
I loved Lab Girl, so I was really looking forward to Jahren's climate book. Unfortunately it was just ok. It is an effective introductory climate book, but if you have in your life already read two books or more on the climate crisis, you can pass this one by.
The good: Jahren is an indisputably brilliant writer. The prose is amazing. It is clearly written and flows beautifully. Her central thesis -- that we need to "use less and share more" -- is true and she marshals a number of facts in support of it. Parts of it were genuinely funny and entertaining, and I genuinely appreciated her slight takedown of climate "activists" whose primary way of engaging with the issue is to yell at deniers on twitter. This applies to most of the book, so if you haven't previously read on climate, I think you will enjoy it.
The ok: The facts she chooses are widely available in the mainstream press. That is, she writes about the climate and environmental impacts of food, buildings, and transportation, using the same statistics and same kinds of visualizations you'll have seen elsewhere, if you're in the habit of reading news stories on environment. Her own scientific research makes few appearances. I found myself skipping a good chunk of the chapters in the first two sections, because after 25 years or so of working in the environmental field and the reading I've already done, I don't have much need or desire to revisit the impacts of livestock or coal power generation. YMMV.
The bad: She is often wrong about subjects outside her own area of expertise (biogeology), at least in part due to the introductory nature of the book. That is: she'd give a very brief and partial summary of some key facts, but not develop it to make a complete picture. The chapter on electricity was maddening: she correctly summarized the challenges of using renewable energy to power the American building and industrial stock as it is, but failed to so much as mention how to address them (if you're curious: renewable technologies are evolving; energy storage is a thing and it's becoming cheaper and easier to store electricity; and this is why there's a global push for deep energy building retrofits, Jahren. To reduce the demand, with some processes by over 90%). Instead she frets like a 1970s parent about turning down the thermostat and putting on a sweater.
Basically, in the framework of her thesis of "use less and share more," she neglects to consider that "using less" means both a reduction in consumption from current levels AND the development of technologies and facilities that require less as a baseline state. That is a pretty fundamental failing, given that this framework is what the entire book rests on.
Her recommendations are entirely individualistic and contain nothing you haven't seen elsewhere: take transit more, use a/c less, talk to your workplace or school. They're not bad, but again, they're extremely introductory. You won't see anything here you haven't seen in any WWF report or Greenpeace campaign (except that they do also ask you to participate in the political process and/or protests, which is a step too far for Jahren, it seems).
She also doesn't even begin to discuss climate until p. 132 out of a 200-page book, which is, as other reviewers have noted, at the very least distinctly odd. Up to then, it's mostly about other sustainability issues. And I want to briefly take exception to her claim that if you call up a Canadian and ask them what worries them about climate change, they'll talk about melting ice. This is ridiculous, on par with stereotypes of all of us living in igloos. Almost the entire Canadian population is clustered along the southern border; almost no people live in the North where melting glaciers or permafrost would be a pressing daily issue; where I live, in the GTHA and where about 1/5 Canadians live, the main concern is extreme heat. Because yes, winters are getting warmer, but what's hurting us is that our existing building stock was created for those cold winters, and we're utterly unequipped for hot summers since all of our houses and apartment buildings trap heat.
The Story of More is an ok place to start your climate journey, but please don't stop here. The other 117 climate books I've read so far are tagged on a climate shelf and there's lots there to recommend to continue learning about the climate crisis and how to address it.
I loved Lab Girl, so I was really looking forward to Jahren's climate book. Unfortunately it was just ok. It is an effective introductory climate book, but if you have in your life already read two books or more on the climate crisis, you can pass this one by.
The good: Jahren is an indisputably brilliant writer. The prose is amazing. It is clearly written and flows beautifully. Her central thesis -- that we need to "use less and share more" -- is true and she marshals a number of facts in support of it. Parts of it were genuinely funny and entertaining, and I genuinely appreciated her slight takedown of climate "activists" whose primary way of engaging with the issue is to yell at deniers on twitter. This applies to most of the book, so if you haven't previously read on climate, I think you will enjoy it.
The ok: The facts she chooses are widely available in the mainstream press. That is, she writes about the climate and environmental impacts of food, buildings, and transportation, using the same statistics and same kinds of visualizations you'll have seen elsewhere, if you're in the habit of reading news stories on environment. Her own scientific research makes few appearances. I found myself skipping a good chunk of the chapters in the first two sections, because after 25 years or so of working in the environmental field and the reading I've already done, I don't have much need or desire to revisit the impacts of livestock or coal power generation. YMMV.
The bad: She is often wrong about subjects outside her own area of expertise (biogeology), at least in part due to the introductory nature of the book. That is: she'd give a very brief and partial summary of some key facts, but not develop it to make a complete picture. The chapter on electricity was maddening: she correctly summarized the challenges of using renewable energy to power the American building and industrial stock as it is, but failed to so much as mention how to address them (if you're curious: renewable technologies are evolving; energy storage is a thing and it's becoming cheaper and easier to store electricity; and this is why there's a global push for deep energy building retrofits, Jahren. To reduce the demand, with some processes by over 90%). Instead she frets like a 1970s parent about turning down the thermostat and putting on a sweater.
Basically, in the framework of her thesis of "use less and share more," she neglects to consider that "using less" means both a reduction in consumption from current levels AND the development of technologies and facilities that require less as a baseline state. That is a pretty fundamental failing, given that this framework is what the entire book rests on.
Her recommendations are entirely individualistic and contain nothing you haven't seen elsewhere: take transit more, use a/c less, talk to your workplace or school. They're not bad, but again, they're extremely introductory. You won't see anything here you haven't seen in any WWF report or Greenpeace campaign (except that they do also ask you to participate in the political process and/or protests, which is a step too far for Jahren, it seems).
She also doesn't even begin to discuss climate until p. 132 out of a 200-page book, which is, as other reviewers have noted, at the very least distinctly odd. Up to then, it's mostly about other sustainability issues. And I want to briefly take exception to her claim that if you call up a Canadian and ask them what worries them about climate change, they'll talk about melting ice. This is ridiculous, on par with stereotypes of all of us living in igloos. Almost the entire Canadian population is clustered along the southern border; almost no people live in the North where melting glaciers or permafrost would be a pressing daily issue; where I live, in the GTHA and where about 1/5 Canadians live, the main concern is extreme heat. Because yes, winters are getting warmer, but what's hurting us is that our existing building stock was created for those cold winters, and we're utterly unequipped for hot summers since all of our houses and apartment buildings trap heat.
The Story of More is an ok place to start your climate journey, but please don't stop here. The other 117 climate books I've read so far are tagged on a climate shelf and there's lots there to recommend to continue learning about the climate crisis and how to address it.
June 27, 2020
Well-researched, well-written, and full of useful, interesting, and somewhat terrifying information. Unlike many climate change books that focus on the problem, Hope Jahren lays it all out but also provides very specific, actionable changes that we, as readers, can implement relatively easily. You can tell she's a professor in the way she writes and communicates. Highly recommended for anyone who is interested in climate science or who wants to know what we, as individuals, can do.
October 29, 2020
In The Story of More, Hope Jahren summarizes a Climate Change 101 course. I love books like this because they offer so much to casual readers. The best way to represent the value of Jahren's "Story of More" is to juxtapose it against other primers.
Many of these climate primers begin with the idea of a planet—without people. Al Gore, for example, shows the Blue Marble picture in his presentations and books. In The Weather Makers, Flannery begins with a graph of CO2 seasonally rising and falling as trees take in C02. It's like watching the planet breathe, explains Flannery with an appropriate sense of awe. Flannery's depiction is similar to Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis, which understands the planet as a complex set of interlocking systems. Climate change, in this framework, suggests that 1) people are unnatural or 2) that we're a jumped up system that has outgrown its natural role—not so different from an invasive species. We need to think less about human needs and more about planetary systems because the planet has intrinsic value.
Economists almost never think of the planet this way, perhaps because value is assigned by human choices. If the waters rise, and if we lose Miami (and other coastal cities), and if we come out ahead, financially, that's a win. Don't be such a conservative NIMBY, protecting historical coastal cities. Be innovative and dynamic! The species that go extinct in this scenario are invisible on the ledger unless they've become commodities. But, even if they do go extinct, we come out ahead so long as we find other commodities as (or more) lucrative. Economists like Thomas Schelling or Tyler Cowen or William Nordhaus look at rising standard of living indices and melting ice and mass extinctions of non-human animals and, more or less, conclude "if it wasn't worth it we wouldn't do it." I don't want to dismiss this position. Progress, YIMBY, and innovation are often great. Still, it worries me that this analysis's best advice on climate change is to assign a carbon tax, which attempts to make CO2 emissions something visible rather than invisible to our ledgers. I further worry that their analysis will nearly always gloss over (or, more charitably, underestimate) the costs of climate change.
Jahren is a scientist, like Flannery and Lovelock, but her story reads a bit more like the economists' tale. In this moment, I suspect her perspective is closer to the average person. How many tears do we really shed for frog populations that die out in a year? (Frogs are very susceptible to pollution, acidification, and temperature changes.) It is, perhaps, also the scientific position if one takes the idea of the Anthropocene seriously. In Jahren's telling, climate change is less a story of a breathing planet and more a story of what people want. Here is the summary: We want more. We want a higher standard of living, which often means more food and more energy and more options and experiences in distant places. (Air travel produces a lot of emissions, sorry.) We want enough food to get fat and then we want to waste a bunch more of it. We want enough energy that we can waste it, too. So "the story of more" is mostly about how we have realized these aspirations.
For Flannery, climate change is at best an inadvertent catastrophe and at worst the consequence of a corrupt and callous culture. For both Jahren and the economists, climate change can be read as a story of trade-offs. For economists, the Arctic is melting but we've reduced infant mortality nearly everywhere and will probably continue to make progress on this front and others. For Jahren, most marine life is dying out, and for that we've gained some nice things and also the ability to throw as much as 40% of our food away in the developed world.
If a tree falls in the woods but it's not on our ledgers, does it matter? Maybe it does to its ecosystem but doesn't to us. So I found Jahren's analysis clear eyed. And yet, I worry that her conclusions mostly encourage people to reduce their consumption. She suggests in the conclusion that Americans could reduce their per capita consumption to the level of the Swiss in the 1960s. And weren't people happier then? All the indices say our affluence has led to affluenza. "If this is sensible, why does it feel like a tough sell?" I thought, driving home today in the middle of a pack of SUVs in a place where it snows for less than a week annually. Maybe both the economists and ecologists like Flannery are uncomfortably right in their understanding of human behavior.
Many of these climate primers begin with the idea of a planet—without people. Al Gore, for example, shows the Blue Marble picture in his presentations and books. In The Weather Makers, Flannery begins with a graph of CO2 seasonally rising and falling as trees take in C02. It's like watching the planet breathe, explains Flannery with an appropriate sense of awe. Flannery's depiction is similar to Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis, which understands the planet as a complex set of interlocking systems. Climate change, in this framework, suggests that 1) people are unnatural or 2) that we're a jumped up system that has outgrown its natural role—not so different from an invasive species. We need to think less about human needs and more about planetary systems because the planet has intrinsic value.
Economists almost never think of the planet this way, perhaps because value is assigned by human choices. If the waters rise, and if we lose Miami (and other coastal cities), and if we come out ahead, financially, that's a win. Don't be such a conservative NIMBY, protecting historical coastal cities. Be innovative and dynamic! The species that go extinct in this scenario are invisible on the ledger unless they've become commodities. But, even if they do go extinct, we come out ahead so long as we find other commodities as (or more) lucrative. Economists like Thomas Schelling or Tyler Cowen or William Nordhaus look at rising standard of living indices and melting ice and mass extinctions of non-human animals and, more or less, conclude "if it wasn't worth it we wouldn't do it." I don't want to dismiss this position. Progress, YIMBY, and innovation are often great. Still, it worries me that this analysis's best advice on climate change is to assign a carbon tax, which attempts to make CO2 emissions something visible rather than invisible to our ledgers. I further worry that their analysis will nearly always gloss over (or, more charitably, underestimate) the costs of climate change.
Jahren is a scientist, like Flannery and Lovelock, but her story reads a bit more like the economists' tale. In this moment, I suspect her perspective is closer to the average person. How many tears do we really shed for frog populations that die out in a year? (Frogs are very susceptible to pollution, acidification, and temperature changes.) It is, perhaps, also the scientific position if one takes the idea of the Anthropocene seriously. In Jahren's telling, climate change is less a story of a breathing planet and more a story of what people want. Here is the summary: We want more. We want a higher standard of living, which often means more food and more energy and more options and experiences in distant places. (Air travel produces a lot of emissions, sorry.) We want enough food to get fat and then we want to waste a bunch more of it. We want enough energy that we can waste it, too. So "the story of more" is mostly about how we have realized these aspirations.
For Flannery, climate change is at best an inadvertent catastrophe and at worst the consequence of a corrupt and callous culture. For both Jahren and the economists, climate change can be read as a story of trade-offs. For economists, the Arctic is melting but we've reduced infant mortality nearly everywhere and will probably continue to make progress on this front and others. For Jahren, most marine life is dying out, and for that we've gained some nice things and also the ability to throw as much as 40% of our food away in the developed world.
If a tree falls in the woods but it's not on our ledgers, does it matter? Maybe it does to its ecosystem but doesn't to us. So I found Jahren's analysis clear eyed. And yet, I worry that her conclusions mostly encourage people to reduce their consumption. She suggests in the conclusion that Americans could reduce their per capita consumption to the level of the Swiss in the 1960s. And weren't people happier then? All the indices say our affluence has led to affluenza. "If this is sensible, why does it feel like a tough sell?" I thought, driving home today in the middle of a pack of SUVs in a place where it snows for less than a week annually. Maybe both the economists and ecologists like Flannery are uncomfortably right in their understanding of human behavior.
August 4, 2021
Not that I've read a pile by now, but if you're also in your own journey of learning about climate change, I would say The Story of More sits hopeful with other introductory reads under the 'science' shelf. No perplexing, inscrutable science terms, it was written to reach everyone. 'More' pertains to the world's tedious labor to produce more because of our insatiable desire to consume and take instead of to share.
Every chapter begins poetically with the author relating slices of her personal life using a conversation with a family member, a memory, or an object as pivot to segue to an aspect of climate science needing emphasis. It is smart and effective because what most similar books fall short in or not consider enough is mention directly what form do the causes of this environmental problem look like in everyday life: Is it my whim of switching on the air-conditioner even if it's not unbearably warm? For that, I appreciate it most when it parts with sets of specific, realistic actions an individual can start with.
Fyi, it is not until the final part that the author particularly addresses people from OECD member countries to use their lever to bring change. Reason being that they form one-sixth of the global population while having outsized (one-third to a half of the world's) use or consumption of, and contribution to the causes of the climate crisis: energy, meat, sugar, electricity, waste, carbon dioxide emissions. Yet, they are the same population who are least to immediately bear the repercussions.
Before I close this, here are incredible proposals –cited within– to prevent constant warming of the Earth that had amused me:
Every chapter begins poetically with the author relating slices of her personal life using a conversation with a family member, a memory, or an object as pivot to segue to an aspect of climate science needing emphasis. It is smart and effective because what most similar books fall short in or not consider enough is mention directly what form do the causes of this environmental problem look like in everyday life: Is it my whim of switching on the air-conditioner even if it's not unbearably warm? For that, I appreciate it most when it parts with sets of specific, realistic actions an individual can start with.
Fyi, it is not until the final part that the author particularly addresses people from OECD member countries to use their lever to bring change. Reason being that they form one-sixth of the global population while having outsized (one-third to a half of the world's) use or consumption of, and contribution to the causes of the climate crisis: energy, meat, sugar, electricity, waste, carbon dioxide emissions. Yet, they are the same population who are least to immediately bear the repercussions.
Before I close this, here are incredible proposals –cited within– to prevent constant warming of the Earth that had amused me:
"We are all part of what is happening to the world, regardless of how we feel about it, regardless of whether we personally "believe" or "deny." Even if you consider yourself on the right side of environmental issues and a true believer in climate change, chances are that you are actively degrading the earth as much as, or more than, the people you argue with. An effort tempered by humility will go much further than one armored with righteousness."
September 7, 2020
RECOMMENDED
As if I couldn't love Hope Jahren even more! This incredibly readable explanation of how the world has changed since 1969 (the year of her birth) is informative and invigorating. It's not a battleaxe or a guilt trip about turning off the lights when you're not in the room; it's a clear-eyed reporting of our current state of environmental affairs and how we got here. I could not stop reading it. And, even if the environment is not your thing (which, come on, the Earth is all of our thing, everybody), her approach toward change and advocacy (AND RESEARCH) is really helpful, too. I need to purchase my own copy of this book, and you should definitely read it.
ALSO, I need to reread Lab Girl, maybe on audio this time?
---
... all of the want and suffering in the world - ALL of it - arises not from the earth's inability to produce but from our inability to share. What was only a faint drumbeat as I began to research this book now rings in my head like a mantra: Use Less and Share More. (88, Keeping the Lights On)
It's not time to panic, it's not time to give up - but it is time to get serious. (141, Warming Weather)
America has become that unhappy couple who is mired in fights about dishes and laundry because both partners are too terrified to earnestly examine any sort of change. (153, Rising Waters)
As if I couldn't love Hope Jahren even more! This incredibly readable explanation of how the world has changed since 1969 (the year of her birth) is informative and invigorating. It's not a battleaxe or a guilt trip about turning off the lights when you're not in the room; it's a clear-eyed reporting of our current state of environmental affairs and how we got here. I could not stop reading it. And, even if the environment is not your thing (which, come on, the Earth is all of our thing, everybody), her approach toward change and advocacy (AND RESEARCH) is really helpful, too. I need to purchase my own copy of this book, and you should definitely read it.
ALSO, I need to reread Lab Girl, maybe on audio this time?
---
... all of the want and suffering in the world - ALL of it - arises not from the earth's inability to produce but from our inability to share. What was only a faint drumbeat as I began to research this book now rings in my head like a mantra: Use Less and Share More. (88, Keeping the Lights On)
It's not time to panic, it's not time to give up - but it is time to get serious. (141, Warming Weather)
America has become that unhappy couple who is mired in fights about dishes and laundry because both partners are too terrified to earnestly examine any sort of change. (153, Rising Waters)
April 22, 2020
I had the great privilege of reading The Story of More by Hope Jahren over the same course of days as reading We are the Weather by Jonathan Safran Foer, and finishing them both on the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, which also would have been my mother's 81st birthday had she not dropped dead of a heart attack in 2009.
I actually stopped reading the Foer book to read the Jahren book because I was frustrated with the tone and the focus in the former. I had a good few days where I switched back and forth, marveling at the messages (similar), versus the rhetorical approaches (different). Jahren (50) and Foer (43) both draw upon their connections to the places that shaped them. While Jahren focuses more on her small agricultural town in Austin, Minnesota, Foer focuses on the life of his grandmother, a Holocaust survivor born in Poland. Both personal histories lend extraordinary weight to the arguments in each book.
For me the deal-breaking difference came in voice and tone—Jahren’s message calls for large scale solutions that embody empathy, innovation, education, and the redistribution of wealth and resources. Foer’s book is more of a collection of personal essays about his personal struggle with making small choices that could make tiny notches in the fight against climate change. For example, Foer obsesses over his desire to eat hamburgers. Solipsistic much? And isn’t solipsism a germ of the bigger problem?
My mother held degrees in Political Science and International Relations from Stanford (class of 1961) and became a leader in the Communist Party USA during the 1990’s. The distribution of wealth was a value she held close, and I believe she would have embraced Jahren’s notion that the pursuit of “more” has endangered not only our health and our ecosystems but our political and economic lives as well.
I’m thinking a lot about what Earth Day means, especially on this 50th anniversary, and especially in this age when Donald Trump (who is the very embodiment of solipsism), has taken so many steps to eradicate environmental protections—which obviously include public health protections.
I cannot overstate the impact of reading both of these books during the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic, when farmers in the United States are plowing crops under while over 800 million people are starving; when citizens are ignoring stay at home orders and attending protests with signs that read, “Give me liberty or give me COVID-19” and “Socialism Distancing”; when Trump’s base continues to make choices based on the economy and not humanity.
Both of these books are excellent and important reads. I imagine I have 3 more decades on this earth, and I am truly not sure that it will be habitable within that timeframe. Is it wrong for me to look at how we have all changed our behavior due to this pandemic, and wonder if it isn’t the only thing impactful enough to cause a paradigm shift? Will it, can it, could it be enough?
I actually stopped reading the Foer book to read the Jahren book because I was frustrated with the tone and the focus in the former. I had a good few days where I switched back and forth, marveling at the messages (similar), versus the rhetorical approaches (different). Jahren (50) and Foer (43) both draw upon their connections to the places that shaped them. While Jahren focuses more on her small agricultural town in Austin, Minnesota, Foer focuses on the life of his grandmother, a Holocaust survivor born in Poland. Both personal histories lend extraordinary weight to the arguments in each book.
For me the deal-breaking difference came in voice and tone—Jahren’s message calls for large scale solutions that embody empathy, innovation, education, and the redistribution of wealth and resources. Foer’s book is more of a collection of personal essays about his personal struggle with making small choices that could make tiny notches in the fight against climate change. For example, Foer obsesses over his desire to eat hamburgers. Solipsistic much? And isn’t solipsism a germ of the bigger problem?
My mother held degrees in Political Science and International Relations from Stanford (class of 1961) and became a leader in the Communist Party USA during the 1990’s. The distribution of wealth was a value she held close, and I believe she would have embraced Jahren’s notion that the pursuit of “more” has endangered not only our health and our ecosystems but our political and economic lives as well.
I’m thinking a lot about what Earth Day means, especially on this 50th anniversary, and especially in this age when Donald Trump (who is the very embodiment of solipsism), has taken so many steps to eradicate environmental protections—which obviously include public health protections.
I cannot overstate the impact of reading both of these books during the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic, when farmers in the United States are plowing crops under while over 800 million people are starving; when citizens are ignoring stay at home orders and attending protests with signs that read, “Give me liberty or give me COVID-19” and “Socialism Distancing”; when Trump’s base continues to make choices based on the economy and not humanity.
Both of these books are excellent and important reads. I imagine I have 3 more decades on this earth, and I am truly not sure that it will be habitable within that timeframe. Is it wrong for me to look at how we have all changed our behavior due to this pandemic, and wonder if it isn’t the only thing impactful enough to cause a paradigm shift? Will it, can it, could it be enough?
Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,311 reviews