The Story of More: How We Got to Climate Change and Where to Go from Here

“We must learn to live together if we want to live well.”

The Earth currently has seven billion people, which is the smallest number of people it will have for the foreseeable future. Population growth, in other words, is here to stay. We cannot necessarily curb population growth as a means of protecting and improving the environment. The only real option going forward is to learn to reduce what we consume and share our resources more equally among regions.

“The more complicated problem, unique to our generation, is that the enormous consumption of food and fuel by just 10 percent of us is actively threatening Earth’s ability to produce the basics of life for the other 90 percent.”

This quote relates to one of the major themes in Jahren’s book: that there is a severe global geography of need. People living in wealthier regions have access to most of the resources, while people living in poorer regions do not. What’s more, the nature of resource consumption in OECD countries is a major driver of climate change.

“Death is known as the great equalizer, so it may not surprise you to hear that people die at about the same rate in every region, be it rich or poor or in between.”

Globally, the number one cause of death is illness. Although death by sickness is a “great equalizer,” the types of diseases that people die from vary by region and relate to their level of wealth or poverty. For wealthier people, lifestyle-related diseases including stroke and heart disease predominate, while poorer people tend to die from infectious or communicable diseases such as dysentery and malaria.

“With very, very few exceptions, every farm field on planet Earth produces at least twice as much food today compared with when I was a kid, and it’s a good thing too, as the planet contains twice as many people today compared with when I was a kid.”

Scientists and farmers have devised methods to increase the yield that each farm field can produce. In the United States, those primary crops are corn and soy. Using better irrigation systems, pesticides, fertilizers, and genetically modified plants, today’s farmers can produce more yield per acre than their grandparents were ever able to do.

“Our farm fields are now more drenched in pesticides than at any point in history.”

In monoculture fields, where farmers grow a single crop, scientists have designed genetically modified organisms (GMOs): crops that can specifically withstand heavy doses of pesticides. These toxic doses immediately kill the bugs and weeds, but not the crops. The pesticides are dangerous, however, as they do not stay within the confines of the agricultural field; they easily spread, infect, and kill the surrounding flora and fauna.

“About one million animals are slaughtered for food every hour in the United States.”

Americans have an insatiable appetite for meat. The meat industry, however, has a massive environmental footprint, requiring a significant amount of water, grain, land, and antibiotic resources to raise and process animals. Jahren implores her readers to eat less meat.

“Can I confess something? I am tired of debating the morality of animal slaughter, and I don’t tire easily.”

Jahren is using her hallmark wit and frankness, characteristic of much of her writing, to bring home a point: Whether the consumption of meat is inherently wrong or right is now beside the point. Humans have long consumed meat and will continue to do so. Instead, what Jahren encourages her readers to do is to eat less meat. Reduction, rather than abolition, is the smartest path forward.

“Starvation is caused by our failure to share what we produce, not by the earth’s ability to provide.”

Globally, around eight million people are undernourished. The cause of their undernourishment is not an overall lack of food, but instead the overconsumption of resources by other nations in the OECD. One-third of all grain produced around the world goes to feeding animals for slaughter rather than to the humans who are dying from starvation.

“Between 1990 and today, global seafood production has doubled, but the amount of fish pulled from the ocean has not changed.”

In 2020, aquaculture supplied 50% of the fish consumed globally. These fish are raised in underwater pens or tanks and not caught in the open ocean. Nevertheless, the practice of aquaculture has significant and sometimes harmful effects on marine ecosystems.

“The story of aquaculture is simply that of meat production, only underwater.”

Aquaculture has allowed fishermen to significantly increase their yield, just as advancements in agriculture have allowed farmers to produce more crops on the same square acreage of land.

“At present, three out of four of the food items that Americans purchase have had refined sugar added to them in order to make them more attractive to the consumer.

Sugar is derived from many products, including sugar cane and beets. In 2020, the most common source of sweetener was fructose corn syrup (HFCS), which is a product that comes from corn. HFCS is ubiquitous in American foods and can lead to health problems such as diabetes and heart disease.

“America’s bridges, railroads, sewers—they’re not in good shape.”

Americans produce a significant amount of waste, including urine, feces, food waste, and other household trash. We rely on infrastructure to swiftly move that waste away from homes and urban areas. Despite our dependence on sewage and trash systems, they are falling apart due to lack of updates and funding.

“Every day, almost one billion people go hungry, while a different billion people intentionally foul enough food to feed them.”

This quote relates to a major theme in Jahren’s book: There are people who have access to all the globe’s resources, and there are people who have access to almost none of them. The gap between the two is extreme and, as Jahren would argue, totally unnecessary.

“If you are reading this, you are already familiar with the portion of the world that uses too much energy, but you probably know less about the large part of the world that uses too little.”

Jahren assumes her reader is likely to belong to one of the OECD countries and thus to have easy access to electricity, clean water, meat, and transportation. Unfortunately, one billion people on the Earth do not have access to electricity—a gap that Jahren wants to close. The distinction Jahren draws is a bit of an oversimplification, as significant numbers of people lack access to resources like safe water even in countries like the US (though sometimes for different reasons than their counterparts in poorer nations).

“Curbing consumption will be the ultimate trial of the twenty-first century.”

Jahren does not believe that renewable energy or engineering solutions are the golden ticket that will save planet Earth from climate change. The main solution, as she sees it, is one of the hardest: for people living in OECD countries to consume less resources, including eating less meat, traveling less, and buying less.

“Routinely traveling very long distances has somehow become an ordinary thing, even though it was inconceivable to our grandparents.”

For Americans and others living in OECD countries, traveling by car and plane are commonplace activities. However, these forms of transportation use a substantial amount of fossil fuels. Jahren encourages her readers to travel less.

“If I have a single bias that I should reveal as the author of this book, it is that I hate cars.”

This quote showcases two things. The first is Jahren’s characteristic wit, which helps to lighten the tone of the book. Second, it delves into the trouble with cars: They are far more dangerous than other forms of travel, they consume fossil fuels, and they are expensive. Jahren goes so far as to call them a “social ill” (95).

“Coal, oil, and natural gas are the pressed, cooked, and cracked remains of the plants and animals (but mostly plants) that lived hundreds of millions of years ago.”

These cooked plant and animal remains are collectively called fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are considered nonrenewable resources because of the vast time scale over which they develop. From a human perspective, once these fuels are mined, burned, and converted into energy, they are gone forever.

“Nonetheless, humanity’s infatuation with fossil fuels may represent the greatest resource-based love story of all time.”

Humanity “loves” fossil fuels so much that we have almost completely depleted the Earth’s stores of them. Jahren estimates that at current consumption rates, we have 50 years before all natural gas and oil reserves are gone.

“It would be great if we could also harness the energy that we use to talk about renewables, for we tend to do it in gross disproportion to the amount of power they generate: wind and solar power, put together, provides less than 5 percent of the electricity used on planet Earth.”

Jahren’s argument in this quote is that renewable energy, while a positive resource, is not our best solution for fighting climate change and reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Instead, that goal requires reducing our intake of certain foods, travel, and consumer goods.

“For all the drawbacks associated with nuclear energy, there is one important by-product that it does not produce: carbon dioxide.”

Nuclear energy is a controversial form of energy production because it produces toxic industrial waste. Unlike fossil fuels, however, nuclear energy does not routinely emit toxic gas straight into the atmosphere. Jahren does not adopt a stance either in favor of or against nuclear power.

“Incidentally, the people of Bangladesh produced far less than 1 percent of the carbon dioxide emitted to the atmosphere during the last fifty years, yet they are poised to pay the highest price incurred by its effects. This is a common trend: the people benefitting from the use of fossil fuels are not the people who suffer the most from its excess.”

This quote relates directly to one of Jahren’s major themes: There is a great global imbalance between those who consume resources and those who suffer from that consumption. In this case, the Bangladeshi people are suffering from sea level rise, a byproduct of global warming.

“I can’t turn on my computer without hearing about climate deniers and their lack of brains and sophistication.”

This sentence is one of Jahren’s strongest in the entire book. In previous chapters, she straddles a middle line on ethical debates such as animal slaughter or the use of nuclear power. In this instance, however, she clearly disagrees with and even dislikes people who deny the reality of human-caused global warming.