What We Need to Do Now: A Green Deal to Ensure a Habitable Earth
by Chris Goodall · 30 Jan 2020 · 154pp · 48,340 words
of this consumption consists of fossil fuels, and much of the rest is building materials. Metals make up the bulk of the remainder. RESOURCES AND PEAK STUFF Globally, an average of 18 kilos of sand per person are put to use each day, making it by far the most important single constituent
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that have been carelessly mined. A few years ago, I wrote a short book about sustainability and put forward a view – now sometimes called the ‘peak stuff’ hypothesis – that the world’s need for physical resources would decline as economies matured. For example, once China had built all the cities it needed
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makes about 50 per cent of the world’s tonnage of both commodities). I was both right and wrong. IKEA recently started using the phrase ‘peak stuff’ to explain the plateauing of its sales in developed markets. But, while Europe is probably using a smaller weight of materials, Asia is more than
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making up for this slowdown. ‘Peak stuff’ won’t save us from the climate crisis. CIRCULAR ECONOMY CHALLENGES Building a working global economy that minimises the need to constantly extract new resources
Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization
by Vaclav Smil · 16 Dec 2013 · 396pp · 117,897 words
.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2011-05/10/content_12480549.htm (accessed 19 June 2013). Clark, D. (2011) Peak Stuff: The Data. The Guardian (Nov 1, 2011), http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2011/nov/01/peak-stuff-consumption-data. CMI (Can Manufacturers Institute) (2012) Aluminum Beverage Cans, http://www.cancentral.com/pdf/AluminumBeverageCanFacts.pdf
Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World
by Jason Hickel · 12 Aug 2020 · 286pp · 87,168 words
flattened out over the past couple of decades. This data was picked up by journalists who were quick to announce that rich countries had reached ‘peak stuff’ and were now ‘dematerialising’ – proof that we can keep growing GDP for ever without having to worry about ecological impact. But ecologists have long rejected
Your Money: The Missing Manual
by J.D. Roth · 18 Mar 2010 · 519pp · 118,095 words
are more than comforts—they're luxuries, and they make you happy. They push you to the peak of the Fulfillment Curve. Overconsumption. Beyond the peak, Stuff starts to take control of your life. Buying a sofa made you happy, so you buy recliners to match. Your DVD collection grows from 20
Stuffocation
by James Wallman · 6 Dec 2013 · 296pp · 82,501 words
level of material goods is falling too. We have reached, as the man who discovered this, ex-McKinsey consultant and environmental analyst Chris Goodall, says, “peak stuff”. Goodall’s detailed analysis shows that Britain has been consuming less water, concrete, paper, cars, and clothes since 2003 at least. And he has also
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an easy introduction, see the video infographic “The iPhone Economy” at www.nytimes.com. For the definitive text on consuming fewer materials, read Chris Goodall, “Peak Stuff”, Carbon Commentary, 2011. And read Chris Goodall, Sustainability (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2012). Keep up with the latest news via Goodall’s excellent blog www.carboncommentary
Amazon: How the World’s Most Relentless Retailer Will Continue to Revolutionize Commerce
by Natalie Berg and Miya Knights · 28 Jan 2019 · 404pp · 95,163 words
Christmas gift in the US in 2016 was a plane ticket – and #2 was a hotel voucher.50 Meanwhile, Ikea believes that we’ve reached ‘peak stuff’51 and Boots CEO (ex-Dixons Carphone boss) Seb James thinks that ‘shoppers are now only grazing on ownership.’ Later in the book, we’ll
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1/7/2018] 29 Balch, Oliver (2016) Is the Library of Things an answer to our peak stuff problem? Guardian, 23 August. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/aug/23/library-of-things-peak-stuff-sharing-economy-consumerism-uber [Last accessed 1/7/2018]. 13 Retail fulfilment: winning the customer over
More From Less: The Surprising Story of How We Learned to Prosper Using Fewer Resources – and What Happens Next
by Andrew McAfee · 30 Sep 2019 · 372pp · 94,153 words
largely ignored data published annually by the Office for National Statistics,” as the Guardian put it. He summarized his findings in a 2011 paper titled “ ‘Peak Stuff’: Did the UK Reach a Maximum Use of Material Resources in the Early Part of the Last Decade?” Goodall’s answer to his own question
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nations are also now getting more from less. As we saw earlier in this chapter, Chris Goodall found that the United Kingdom is now past “peak stuff.” And data from the Eurostat agency show that countries including Germany, France, and Italy have generally seen flat or declining total consumption of metals, chemicals
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are now lightening our total consumption and treading more lightly on our planet. In America, the United Kingdom, and other rich countries, we are past “peak stuff” and are now using fewer total resources year after year. We’re accomplishing this because of the combination of technological progress and capitalism, which now
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’ve seen, ongoing innovation and contested markets full of competitors seeking to reduce the money they spend on materials have combined to bring us past peak stuff and let us get more from less. This process is accelerating as we move deeper into the Second Machine Age, since computers and their kin
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Our Consumption Falling?,” Guardian, October 31, 2011, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/oct/31/consumption-of-goods-falling. in a 2011 paper titled “ ‘Peak Stuff’ ”: Chris Goodall, “ ‘Peak Stuff’: Did the UK Reach a Maximum Use of Material Resources in the Early Part of the Last Decade?,” research paper, October 13, 2011, http
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://static.squarespace.com/static/545e40d0e4b054a6f8622bc9/t/54720c6ae4b06f326a8502f9/1416760426697/Peak_Stuff_17.10.11.pdf. US Consumption of Metals, 1900–2015: Data from the US Geological Survey. Data, calculation details, and sources are available at morefromlessbook
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, 42–43, 96, 152, 181 Pasteur, Louis, 23 Patagonia National Park, 260 patents, 19, 116, 232, 235 peak oil, 102–05 peak paper, 90, 113 “Peak Stuff” (Goodall), 76–77 pertussis, 227 Peru, 138 Petroleum Reitwagen, 27 phones, 168–69 Pinker, Steven, 37, 122, 176, 177, 179 Plain Cookery Book for the
More: The 10,000-Year Rise of the World Economy
by Philip Coggan · 6 Feb 2020 · 524pp · 155,947 words
60% in 1950 to around 36% in 2014, with services now comprising nearly two-thirds of the total. There is talk of Western societies reaching “peak stuff”.36 As developed economies have grown richer, a smaller proportion of consumer spending was devoted to food; the same process may now be happening with
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one when they need it. They will spend their money on “experiences”, like holidays or partying with friends. In contrast, there is little sign of “peak stuff” in the developing world. In China, new car sales rose from 12m in 201038 to nearly 25m in 201739 and there is a lot more
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/Research/CIG/DefiningHVM.pdf 35. Steve Lohr, “Huge payoff for IBM after a shift”, The New York Times, January 19th 2010 36. Ashling Withers, “Hitting peak stuff – is this the end of traditional consumerism?”, Marketing magazine, July 11th 2018 37. Kellie Ell, “Video game industry is booming with continued revenue”, https://www
Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice From the Best in the World
by Timothy Ferriss · 14 Jun 2017 · 579pp · 183,063 words
in several places and travel a lot, I always missed what I needed. Not only are electronic versions searchable, but—since we may have reached “peak stuff”—I’m participating in the great dematerialization of life, which will help the environment rebound. In the last five years, what have you become better
The Minimalist Home: A Room-By-Room Guide to a Decluttered, Refocused Life
by Joshua Becker · 18 Dec 2018 · 238pp · 67,971 words
to be just for the rich. Except what’s available to everybody now—in our affluent age when it is sometimes said we’ve reached “peak stuff”9—is a radical and amazing home makeover courtesy of minimalism. This is an idea whose time has come. Minimalism isn’t just for the
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.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2117987/Lost-today-Misplaced-items-cost-minutes-day.html. 9. Steve Howard, “IKEA Executive on Why the West Has Hit ‘Peak Stuff,’ ” interview by Ari Shapiro, National Public Radio, January 22, 2016, www.npr.org/2016/01/22/464013718/ikea-executive-on-why-the-west-has-hit
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-peak-stuff. 10. “Most Watched Movies of All Time,” IMDb, www.imdb.com/list/ls053826112/. Like The Wizard of Oz, E.T. is also about going home.
The Connected Company
by Dave Gray and Thomas Vander Wal · 2 Dec 2014 · 372pp · 89,876 words
when you have a truckload of stuff to lug along with you. A recent study found that Great Britain, where the industrial revolution began, reached “peak stuff” levels between 2001 and 2003—long before the 2008 recession—and material consumption has been declining ever since (it’s now down to the 1989
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. Working Paper, National Bureau of Economic Research, (March 2000): http://www.nber.org/papers/w7602. PEAK STUFF “A recent study found that Great Britain, where the industrial revolution began, reached “peak stuff” levels between 2001 and 2003…” “From Peak Stuff: Did the UK reach a maximum use of material resources in the early part of the
Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
by Steven Pinker · 13 Feb 2018 · 1,034pp · 241,773 words
demographic transition, densification, and dematerialization, we may have reached Peak Children, Peak Farmland, Peak Timber, Peak Paper, and Peak Car. Indeed, we may be reaching Peak Stuff: of a hundred commodities Ausubel plotted, thirty-six have peaked in absolute use in the United States, and another fifty-three may be poised to
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drop (including water, nitrogen, and electricity), leaving only eleven that are still growing. Britons, too, have reached Peak Stuff, having reduced their annual use of material from 15.1 metric tons per person in 2001 to 10.3 metric tons in 2013.39 These
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; Brand 2009; Bryce 2013. 37. Dematerialization of consumption: Sutherland 2016. 38. Dying car culture: M. Fisher, “Cruising Toward Oblivion,” Washington Post, Sept. 2, 2015. 39. Peak Stuff: Ausubel 2015; Office for National Statistics 2016. The equivalents in American units are 16.6 and 11.4 tons. 40. See, for example, J. Salzman
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Kuznets curve for, 124, 463n9, 463n35 landfills and garbage, 287 nuclear weapons test ban treaty, 133–4 oil spills, 131–2, 132 ozone layer, 134 Peak Stuff and, 135–6 as right-wing movement in former days, 382 species returns vs. extinctions, 130, 133, 463n32 Trump and, 335 utilitarian motives for, 417
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–6 as self-reinforcing, 164 See also Long Peace; war Peak Car, Carbon, Children, Coal, Paper, Timber, 144 Peak Farmland, 76, 144 Peak Oil, 135 Peak Stuff, 135–6 Peanuts (comic), 377 Pearl Harbor, 196 pedestrian deaths, 179–80, 179 Pelopidas, Benoît, 316 period (zeitgeist) effects, 224–5 happiness and, 272–4
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, 56, 73–4, 125–6, 125 fertility of religious believers, 436, 489n70 fertility rates as decreasing, 125–6 growth of, 125 Muslim, 126, 326 and Peak Stuff, 135–6 populism, 29, 333–4 age rolloff in support for, 341–2, 342 backlash against equal rights, 219, 221, 225 cultural backlash as primary
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happiness ranking of, 271, 475n30 life expectancy at birth, 58–9, 58 literacy in, 236 nuclear weapons and, 317, 317, 320 Optimism Gap and, 40 Peak Stuff, 135–6 populism and, 334, 338–9 secularization and, 436, 437 social spending in, 108, 483n39 and Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 419 woman as
Empire of Things: How We Became a World of Consumers, From the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-First
by Frank Trentmann · 1 Dec 2015 · 1,213pp · 376,284 words
’, in Economic Trends 619 (London: Office for National Statistics, 2005). 113. Goodall notes that Britons ate 4% less in 2007 than in 2000; Chris Goodall, ‘ “Peak Stuff”: Did the UK Reach a Maximum Use of Material Resources in the Early Part of the Last Decade?’, http://www.carboncommentary.com/wp-content/uploads
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/2011/10/Peak_Stuff_17.10.11.pdf, 2011. Compare the critique by George Monbiot in his blog: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2011/nov/03/peak
Adventures in the Anthropocene: A Journey to the Heart of the Planet We Made
by Gaia Vince · 19 Oct 2014 · 505pp · 147,916 words
-knacks? There are encouraging signs that our runaway gorging on new stuff is beginning to wane, in the West at least – that we’ve reached ‘peak stuff’, that people are eating less environmentally costly meat and that Americans are copying their European counterparts in adopting more fuel-efficient cars and driving less
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shopping malls in which the nouveau riche demonstrate their success and status by buying lots and lots of unnecessary stuff. We will reach a global ‘peak stuff’ eventually, in part because the rate of population growth is declining, so there will be fewer new consumers born to outweigh those who are dying
Prosperity Without Growth: Foundations for the Economy of Tomorrow
by Tim Jackson · 8 Dec 2016 · 573pp · 115,489 words
consumption in advanced economies, as measured by their ‘domestic material consumption’, have tempted optimistic observers to speak of rich countries soon reaching a state of ‘peak stuff’, a maximum level of resource throughput soon to be followed by a convenient decline.16 According to the OECD, there was both relative and absolute
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per cent over the same period. Some countries – notably the UK and Japan – have seen rather large absolute declines in domestic material consumption, suggesting that ‘peak stuff’ may already have arrived.17 But a couple of groundbreaking studies have cast serious doubt on this hypothesis. These studies pointed out that domestic material
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, there was barely any relative decoupling either. Once again, patterns of global trade and incomplete accounting practices had obscured an uncomfortable truth. The myth of ‘peak stuff’ has little basis in reality.19 Figure 5.4 shows a dip in both domestic material consumption and the material footprint towards the end of
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2016). Godley, Wynne and Marc Lavoie 2007. Monetary Economics – An Integrated Approach to Credit, Money, Income, Production and Wealth London: Palgrave Macmillan. Goodall, Chris 2011. ‘“Peak Stuff”. Did the UK reach a maximum use of material resources in the early part of the last decade?’ Online at http://static1.squarespace.com/static
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/545e40d0e4b054a6f8622bc9/t/54720c6ae4b06f326a8502f9/1416760426697/Peak_Stuff_17.10.11.pdf (accessed 4 January 2016). Goodwin, Michael 2012. Economix: How Our Economy Works (and Doesn’t Work) in Words and Pictures. New