The Impossible Hamster is one of the most articulate treatises on economic growth and resource depletion we’ve ever seen.
At LifeEdited, we try to stay happily apolitical. We think living a less, but better way of life has self-evident benefits. Our lives are simpler, less expensive, more manageable and so on.
But there are global benefits as well. Not to over-simplify a complicated topic, but if every member of the world’s population started lining up his and her consumer behavior with actual needs and priorities, we might start a course-correction from the current trajectory of economic and environmental meltdown. The model of never-ending growth of consumption–whether that takes the form of consumer goods or housing or natural resources–will, in all probability, lead to a situation as dangerous as a 9 billion ton hamster.