Sustainability, Ch. 4

I read Chapter four, the part about consumption. What with her introduction focusing on connectivity of all issues, the work-watch-shop cycle introduced in the introduction, and the general tone of the chapter, I came to the conclusion that reading any similar chapter would have contained almost the same message. Throughout the novel, Leonard is adamant that she is not attacking big business, and she IS right about that…what she is really attacking is the triumvirate of big business, government and culture, the latter two heavily influenced by the former. In fact, she attacks the culture, and the consumers who buy into it, much more than she goes after Walmart or Exxon, and when she does go after business, she takes shots at the Cold War military industrial complex and 1920s ad gimmicks rather than present ivory towers. I found it interesting that she advocates for New Urbanism (especially a return to the pre-Industrial Revolution small town) without saying it outright very often.

--Charles Bennett