41 pages • 1 hour read
Hope JahrenThe Story of More: How We Got to Climate Change and Where to Go from Here
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Key Figures
Themes
Index of Terms
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaPart 4, Chapter 19-AppendixChapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 4: “Earth”
Part 4, Chapter 19 Summary: “Another Page”
In her final chapter, Jahren touches on the topic of engineering solutions to sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Like most scientists, the author is deeply skeptical about engineering proposals that offer a fast fix to a centuries-old, global problem. Engineering solutions are “incredibly risky” because they attempt to alter natural processes without knowledge of the outcomes. In other words, they could make the problem worse or create wholly new, unforeseen environmental issues. Nor is Jahren convinced by the campaigns to plant more trees and greenery, which will take centuries to achieve results.
Instead, Jahren encourages her readers to “Use Less” and “Share More.” Flying less, eating less meat, using less electricity, and purchasing fewer items will not reduce our quality of life, she argues. In fact, happiness levels often decrease with an increase in consumer products. The choice of a happy life, she argues, is up to us, and it does not begin at the shopping mall.
Appendix Summary: “The Story of Less”
I. The Action You Take
In this section, Jahren offers some short steps to reduce the individual’s climate footprint: 1) Examine your values; 2) Gather information; 3) Strive to make your personal activities consistent with your values; 4) Strive to make your personal investments consistent with your values; and 5) Strive to move your institutions toward consistency with your values.
II. The Difference You Make
Jahren states that most readers of this book will belong to one of the OECD countries, meaning they can wield some power: “Making a difference as to global change is often about finding the biggest lever, figuring out where to stand, and then pushing and pulling like hell” (185). Jahren suggests starting with home electricity usage and reducing energy consumption from there. Individuals could also begin by eating less meat or traveling less on an airplane.
III. An Environmental Catechism
This section provides a chronological list of environmental, population, and supply-chain facts from the year of Jahren’s birth, 1969, to present day.
IV. Sources and Suggested Reading
Here, Jahren discusses the kinds of sources she referenced during the research and writing of this book. Jahren notes that her research drew from global data sets to “discuss trends that are truly global in scale” (202). While statistics on global health, food, and energy appear throughout the book, The Story of More is predominantly a book about consumerism in the United States since 1969.
Part 4, Chapter 19-Appendix Analysis
Jahren concludes her book with a more positive tone, recounting stories of her family and father. For the reader who is depressed or scared by the hard facts Jahren delivered in the previous 18 chapters, the author effectively offers an olive branch: It’s still not too late, she says, to turn things around. Again, her marching orders focus on the individual: “Each 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” (170).
Jahren places a significant amount of responsibility to fight climate change on the individual consumer. She tells her reader to consume less, travel less, and care more. Yet many scholars who study climate change and society argue that it’s not the individual consumer who needs to alter their habits, but instead the relatively small cadre of corporations and industries that do the vast majority of the world’s polluting. In other words, what we need is structural change, not individual change. For scholars approaching climate studies from a structural standpoint, see Mary Wood’s Nature’s Trust, Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate, or Naomi Oreskes’s Merchants of Doubt.
