Side by Side: Local and Global

At the forum at Utica College last night, the focus of Bill McKibben's book, Deep Economy, came up. In his book, he puts out the idea that economic growth should not be the only measure of happiness and success. If everyone on the planet had the same lifestyle and used as many resources as we currently do in this country, there would not be enough resources to support them. We see this in China today as more people have cars and from that, create more pollution and gridlock. McKibben proposes everyone being more dependent on local, not global, supply chains, which will ultimately result in less dependency on fossil fuels. It is an interesting book and I highly recommend it along with The World is Flat. They offer not really different, but a balanced perspective.