Less Moreness

A meditation on the things we don't replace, and how buying and owning less might address several big problems at once.

Dear friends,

I want to tell you about this pot I own. It’s a simple stainless-steel, 4-quart number. It’s the perfect size, really — unless you’re cooking for a group, or for the week. I remember the day I took the bus out to Clement Street, San Francisco’s other, more utilitarian Chinatown, in 1998 and spent $12 for it at the restaurant supply store. I had just finished college, lived with roommates, and had very few possessions. It was an early investment in my life as a person who cooks for myself and my friends and it has paid off 1,000-fold over the last 26 years. And yet I have also thought, many times, about replacing it with a sturdier, more attractive pot. The options are many. For less than $100 I could opt to upgrade to something elegant, multi-ply, or copper-bottomed. Something obviously superior.  

But I haven’t. Instead, I still use it to cook soup and rice and other warm, comforting foods the likes of which have gotten me through difficult and frightening moments like the one we’re facing now. This cheap-but-perfectly-adequate pot also represents a core part of my belief system that I am perpetually trying—and often failing—to understand and convey to other people.

The $12 stainless steel pot in question.

Because this question of what we have, what we are owed, and what we share with others seems core to both our current politics and our current planetary crisis and because many of my readers live in the coastal, so-called developed world, I’m going to spend some time thinking out loud about consumption and inviting you to think about it with me.

I am also thinking about the role that class played in last week’s election. And this statement from Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, a professor of African American studies at Princeton University, immediately after the results were tallied:

The Democratic Party really underestimated the extent to which lots of people in this country are in crisis. People making between $30,000 and $50,000, people making under $100,000 went to Trump. There’s [been] a rise in homelessness—[a] historically high rise in homelessness from 2023 to 2024, and on pace to exceed that this year. Rent is 20% higher today than it was in 2020. Hunger and food insecurity [are] on the rise compared to even just a year ago. …. In the first quarter of this year, Americans took on $17 trillion in personal debt. And so, this is completely unstable.

Here in the SF Bay Area, one of the most affluent parts of the country, I have felt at times like I can practically see the middle class shrinking. While so many low-income people have been displaced—pushed an hour or two out of the urban center—others are visibly struggling to feed themselves and their families, to remain housed.

On the other end of the spectrum—and literally the other end of town—are people who have more than they need. And that group often seems consumed by the focus and effort required to navigate the class ladder: perpetually replacing their objects with better ones, renovating their homes, receiving an endless stream of same-day deliveries. It can appear as if they are always ascending and descending that eye-bending square staircase in the M.C. Escher print.

And it’s not that I’m immune to those pressures, those aspirations. Twenty years after graduate school I am still chipping away at student debt after working for a series of under-funded organizations and publications that haven’t, mostly, flattened my soul. I married a person who has done more-or-less the same and we have lived together since then in a slightly ramshackle, poorly insulated 2-bedroom house. We will feel at least partially devastated whenever the owner decides to move in or to put it on the market because we will most likely be priced out of the community we call home.

As a younger person I didn’t have a choice but to live hand-to-mouth and parenting has made me more focused on earning something closer to living. But I still crave the kind of solidarity I used to have with friends who don’t—in the words of Sinead O’Connor—want what they haven’t got.

I came of age idealizing a certain kind of Bohemian lifestyle. I was never a punk anarchist, but I knew some, and I loved how they made a certain kind of refusal seem possible and appealing in part because they—dare I say we—did it together. I have no doubt that those early ideas about Bohemianism were mixed in with my white privilege. If there’s any choice involved, that’s privilege at work; and many of the folks I know who grew up without the sense they had no choice are the most staunchly assertive about their right to strive for an abundance of comfort. I don’t fault them for that.

And as this surreal, painful post-election period plays out I am keenly aware that many Americans are swimming in a class gulf that leaves them if not hungry than at least alienated and that—alongside a hefty dose of misinformation—can make a nation vulnerable to authoritarianism.

The same system has also made even middle and low-income people vulnerable to over-consumption—to the point where experts say we have now used almost twice as many of the resources that our planet can sustainably provide (1.7 earths worth, to be precise). That system has also normalized resource and opportunity hoarding, such that if we’re not doing it at the level of Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, it can be easy to let ourselves off the hook.

I have visited certain friends and acquaintance’s homes and before I realize I’m doing so I start making a list of the things I could replace and improve in my own home. And then I visit other homes—I’m thinking of one I saw on a reporting trip to a remote and forgotten community alongside the Salton Sea two weeks ago—and I am reminded that my life, filled as it is with mostly clean air, fresh produce, and moderate temperatures, is in fact luxurious. That I already have what I need and when I have more it feels extremely gratifying to share it. That the part of me who wants to trade up my objects can co-exist beside the part that knows I will not. And that doing so is at the root of a whole universe of other forms of refusal—from degrowth to mutual aid to library socialism.

It seems like the operative question is: Can we truly stand up for the people who’ve been left behind in this country—and there are millions of them who have—while spending our energy searching for the objects, outfits, electronics, or vacations that will somehow make us feel safer, better, or less mortal?

One of many things this election—and if we zoom out, the climate crisis—has to teach us is this: Consumption and the constant search for self-improvement is a hamster wheel. Stepping off that wheel requires patience, a strong sense of self (not to mention an enduring sense of humor), but it is worth the effort. And what’s more, it’s utterly necessary.

Climate News You Might Have Missed

Some Trump-climate hot take takeaways

There has been a great deal of speculation about how the climate crisis—and various efforts to mitigate and adapt to it—will play out during Trump’s second term. But I’m seeing consensus about some key aspects:

As the incoming administration is predicted to walk back the $350 billion Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), renewable energy production will likely lose its federal support. Many have pointed to the fact that the majority of the IRA dollars, and the bulk of the money focused on manufacturing in particular, has been spent in red states. So that might complicate the equation, and we may see state lawmakers push back against efforts to end the funding, even in Republican states.

Back in August, 18 House Republicans sent a letter to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson advising against prematurely repealing energy tax credits. At the time they argued that doing so, “would undermine private investments and stop development that is already ongoing. A full repeal would create a worst-case scenario where we would have spent billions of taxpayer dollars and received next to nothing in return.” But it’s not clear whether those lawmakers will have any real sway in this moment.

Regardless of what happens to the IRA, it’s clear that the privately-backed energy transition will continue to unfold in this country, as will the transition outside the U.S. As Princeton Professor Jess Jenkins wrote in an op-ed for Heatmap last week,

The U.S. is only responsible for about a 10th of global emissions, and China, not America, is now the world’s largest market (by far) for cars and trucks, electricity, and industrial commodities like steel and cement. Trump cannot wind back the clock on technological innovation or dampen the appetite for EVs and clean energy in the rest of the world.

And, as Bill McKibben put it,

America remains the world center of zeitgeist. Which means that the fact that California and Texas (the twin capitals of American dynamism, and the fifth and eighth largest economies on earth) are rapidly moving toward clean energy will help.

Federal agencies now have the task of moving as much of the remaining IRA money out the door before January as possible.  

And while oil and gas production has by no means ended under Biden— we’re still the leading producer of both! — the Trump administration is reportedly planning to engage in an all-out fossil fuel bonanza helmed by a group of active climate deniers. According to Jonathan Thomson over at the Land Desk:

Trump will work to implement his “drill baby drill” and “energy dominance” policies by opening up more public land to oil and gas leasing and removing regulations on public land drilling. He is likely to roll back Biden’s leasing reforms, which included higher royalty rates — to get a better deal for taxpayers — and stricter reclamation bond requirements to help ensure companies would clean up their messes. 

Meanwhile the Biden administration is shoring up what protections is can, in places like Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, where it last week moved to limit the drilling that was mandated under the first Trump administration. The Environmental Protection Agency also just finalized the administration’s rule aimed at preventing or at least reducing methane leaks in oil and gas production (a major source of potent climate warming pollution).  And while Trump will no doubt aim at the rule, the fact that it was mandated by the IRA could make it more difficult to dismantle.

Most of the news coverage has assumed that the Biden Administration has done a great deal to stem the climate crisis, and I found this contrarian take from Sarah Miller worthwhile for its brutal honesty. As Miller sees it, Biden’s commitments to make the U.S. a global leader on climate have fallen woefully short, and it’s now up to Americans to organize from the ground up prevent the worst-case climate scenario.

A flood of new information is changing in home buying patterns

Floods have been responsible for over $1 trillion in damages in the U.S. since 1980 and the number and severity of these events are only going to increase. None the less, very few Americans know their own level of flood risk.

With that in mind, a group of researchers from the University of Southern California, Columbia University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology worked with the real estate listing company Redfin to run a field experiment. They provided a randomized group of 17.5 million home buyers with First Street Foundation information about: each home’s flood risk score ranging from 1 to 10 and the predicted likelihood that the property would  flood in the next 30-years.

The researchers found that people typically opted for lower flood risk even if it meant giving up other appealing aspects of the homes. They also found that high risk homes had less competition in the bidding process, and the prices of less risky homes increased by around $4,000.

As information about climate risk becomes more widely available—and widely trusted—the researchers concluded, it will make it much more possible—notice I didn’t say easier!—for more people to pro-actively adapt to climate change. And that’s big. “As more sellers seek to offset their homes’ climate risk, this will create a new resilience market for goods ranging from better windows to shield the home from air pollution to protection from wildfires and anti-flooding strategies.” Tellingly, they also found that buyers in both Republican and Democrat counties changed their buying behavior when they were given access to the added information.

Private jets, long flights at the far end of the emissions equation

Private jets have become the ultimate symbol of excess, as they account for such a massive quantity of the emissions from air travel. But researchers have found that passengers in larger private jets caused more CO₂ emissions in an hour than the average person does in a whole year.

The ultra-wealthy appear to be treating their jets like taxis, taking short, highly polluting flights.  But for those of us who prefer to fly the old-fashioned way, wedged in beside strangers, there’s evidence that long-haul flights are still enormously impactful from a carbon perspective. According to another new study found that long-haul flights account for 39 percent of fuel burnt for only 5 percent of the flights.

The pushback

1. Students on campuses across the U.S. walked out of school last Friday. The walkout was organized by the Sunrise Movement and received news coverage in Amherst, Massachusetts, Charlottesville, VA, Bozeman, Montana, and elsewhere. High school students in Philadelphia joined in as well.

As Sunrise Movement executive director Aru Shiney-Ajay sees it, now is the time to step up the resistance to fossil fuels and double down on the calls for fossil fuel divestment many of these students have already been pushing for years. As Shiney-Ajay  told Emily Atkin at Heated, ”I think we can be a little audacious right now,” Shiney-Ajay told me prior to the call. “I think the situation that we are in is so bleak that nothing but the most audacious plan could possibly get us out of it.” Sunrise plans to continue to encourage students to walk out in the weeks and months ahead.

2. Liz Weil’s New York Magazine profile of a climate activist who has been arrested over 20 times for disruptive acts in museums and other cultural spaces is a worthwhile—if stark—exploration of the milieu. And, perhaps most important, it gives readers an intimate sense of the isolation many young people likely feel when they choose to prevent others from going about their daily lives in order to bring the full weight of the current moment to bare. In it Weil writes:

It all looked like so much showboating. So much chaos at such a critical time. Social-change theory, however, holds that when movements experience low points (one model calls this state “Perception of Failure”), radical flanks emerge. These diehards often seem undisciplined, myopic, maybe even stupid. But they are more strategic than they appear.

The stunts are meant to be polarizing. The point is to force the rest of us to pick a side. What do we care about more: decorum or a world in which fewer humans hear, about their homes, “Leave or you will die”?

On the brighter side

1. Voters rejected an effort by lawmakers in Washington to repeal a sweeping law that forces companies in the state to reduce their carbon emissions while raising billions of dollars for climate programs.

2. In California, voters backed a $10 billion climate bond that is designed to fund climate resilience, protecting clean drinking water, and preventing catastrophic wildfires.

3. The rate of Amazon Deforestation dropped to a nine year low, and is down 30 percent since 2023, according the Brazilian government.

4. After nearby disappearing in the U.S., bobcats are in the process of a large-scale recovery and now number in the millions, reports Mongabay. Because they eat rodents, their presence also lowers the risk of zoonotic disease (those passed from animals to humans).

5. Greenhouse gas emissions in the European Union fell by over 8 percent in 2023, due to rapid growth in renewable energy.

6. In his latest colorful piece for Smithsonian, Ben Goldfarb argues that old school animal tracking is experiencing a revival. And it could help revive efforts to preserve wildlife corridors in an era shaped by over-development and climate change.

The Visual

Mount Fuji remained snowless in early November for the first time in 130 years due to warmer than average temperatures. Snow finally fell on Novermber 6th.

On a final note, I joined the mass migration from Twitter to Bluesky this week—alongside millions of other journalists, scientists, and other climate communicators. Follow me there at @twyspy.bsky.social.