Newspaper Article

Zero Growth Instead of never-ending expansion,; McKibben makes a case for self-sustaining economies

the author, most recently, Elizabeth Kolbert is a staff writer at The New Yorker, of "Field Notes, Kolbert, Elizabeth

2007

Overview

In the fall of 2004, [Bill McKibben] undertook what he calls a \"modest experiment.\" He resolved to spend the next six months - months that included January, February, and March - eating nothing but locally grown food. Owing to the consolidation of American agriculture, and the fact that McKibben lives in central Vermont, the challenge was substantial. Not only did it mean no coffee, or bananas, or potato chips, or chocolate, it meant, in the middle of winter, no vegetables - save for root crops - that hadn't been frozen. (The challenge would have been even more daunting had it not been for a single farmer who still, stubbornly, grows wheat in the Champlain Valley.) The experiment had a twofold purpose. On the one hand, McKibben wanted to learn how much agricultural infrastructure was left in the region. On the other, he wanted to consider alternatives to the deracinated, globalized, chemically fertilized, microwave-on-high-for-one-minute ethos that underlies contemporary life. At the end of the period, he reports in his new book, \"Deep Economy,\" he probably had spent less money on food - eating a locally produced egg for breakfast turns out to be less expensive than, say, eating Cheerios - but a great deal more time on it. \"I've had to think about every meal, instead of wandering through the world on autopilot,\" he writes.

• Publisher: Boston Globe Media Partners, LLC
• Subject: Books-titles / Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future / Economic expansion / McKibben, Bill / Nonfiction