Don Minimists

Hello everybody welcome to the Minimists podcast where we discuss what it means to live a meaningful life with less my name is Joshua Fields Millburn and today we're going to talk about whether reducing our consumption is enough to save the planet or whether we need to do more than just recycle share stuff and consume less we're also going to talk about the upsides and downsides of capitalism we're going to talk about the potential necessary changes that we need to make to

environmental policy and we're going to talk about some misconceptions about human progress and we're going to do all that with today's guest I'm here with MIT scientists Andrew McAfee and he thanks for joining us today. Hey thanks for having me on no relation to John right. No I used to kind of be upset about that and now I'm fairly glad I don't think I share a lot of genes with John McAfee. Check in on his Twitter account occasionally but it's only for fun and because you know

it's like it's like watching a train wreck in real time. Hopefully this will be a different experience. Well like me and you are an optimist how is your your at least from everything I can tell from from your new book which we'll be talking about your new book more from less and and you're definitely an optimist how is this current pandemic that we're going through challenging your optimism. Yeah pandemics are not good times for optimists right this is not the time to be exploring all kinds of

silver linings are telling people to look on the bright side we are fighting this really scary implacable foe that via evolution has figured out this you know devilish this insidious strategy for getting from body to body and is killing some of those bodies in its wake I am not going to sit here and try to put a happy face on a pandemic.

Yeah yeah although what I'll say is and we're going to get more into your book and what I like about about you is I don't know exactly where to place you there's not a box I often feel that that's quite a compliment thank you.

Well I mean I can't tell whether you're a libertarian or a progressive you're a liberal or conservative you're capitalist or a socialist a minimalist or a maximalist.

That's actually that's the nicest thing I've heard in a long time because very often we just we label somebody as something as a way of categorizing them and dismissing them oh that you know that guy's another.

Frothing at the mouth libertarian there's another bleeding heart liberal so if you find me a little hard to pin down I think that's that's fascinating and great news.

Well and I think the truth is that you are none of these labels and all of them at the same time there are ingredients from each of these sort of recipes or ideologies and we can talk about the dangers behind.

Certainly I think that's fair yeah thank you yeah and so this is a listener driven show but before we dive into our audiences questions would you please talk about a little bit about what motivated you to write more from less.

Yeah so I am not an environmental scientist and if you'd ask me a few years ago if I was going to write a book about the about the environment and I'm the human relationship with the planet earth I would have said you know no that that's not in my sweet spot at all.

Until I read this amazing essay published I think in 2015 by this wonderful scientist named Jesse Osabel and he said hey year after year in America we are now using fewer molecules fewer resources less tonnage of stuff to grow the overall economy and he was clear he said look this is not less tonnage per person per American this is less stuff year after year by all Americans put together.

And I'm reading this I'm like oh this poor guy's mistaken right this is not how growth works this is not how economies grow we grow our population we grow our economy thereby we grow our prosperity we get well it wealthier and aggregate over time but.

Duh you need to take more from the earth you need to take more resources minerals metals fertilizer water you need you need all these molecules to grow an economy year after year and so I looked at the references also about provided you wrote this lovely essay really throw a reference and I'm like this guy's right.

And it was weird for me because I study technological progress and how technology changes things and I didn't think I had that nailed but I kind of thought I knew the drill and this dematerialization was not part of my understanding so getting on top of that and then trying to extend Jesse's work and some other work and figure out why it was happening.

What's the what's the story here and what does this imply for things like growth and capitalism and our relationship with the planet earth it just was a project that could not walk away from.

We're going to dive a lot more into that I want to hop into some voice males from our audience real quick our first question today is from Mariah and Denver Colorado.

I personally fall into minimalism a few years ago after a cross country bike tour and I've been practicing my version of minimalism through my highest value of environmental conservation and their waste living.

I can tell you both care for the environment to your podcast and I would love to hear podcasts dedicated to environment and here you're taken how to practice minimalism through this lens.

So Andy it sounds to me like Mariah is asking this question about minimalism let me explain to you when Ryan and I talk about minimalism as the minimalist it's sort of this this idea of a lifestyle of thriving with less you know the average American household has somewhere around 300,000 items in it.

And while many of those are essential some of them are non essential and most of them are actually junk and we like to delineate between those three categories.

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