Here is a link to Dr. Chip Colwell's So Much Stuff via Bookfinder. As I make progress through it this non-fiction research into human industry (my general term here to describe our business of making stuff) it feels more and more like a dystopian horror story. It's well worth the read, and if you ever needed a reason to declutter by sharing and selling existing materials, and to approach things in your household with a view to repairing before replacing, this is the book to set you on that path.

He illustrates the Industrial Revolution various parts as 1760 with mechanization with water and steam power and loom weaving; 1870 with assembly lines, mass production, and electrical power; 1914 with automation, plastics, and the vast scales of production. A fourth would be now - the computer revolution, AI, etc.

A paragraph on the bottom of page 189 makes the case for what came before and where we are now:

Up to World War I, factories in Europe and North America were producing more kinds of products, and more of each kind, each year. By one estimate, US industrial production increased by more than 1,000 percent between 1860 and 1914. Most people were having their basic needs met: food, water, clothing, shelter. A brief economic downturn in 1920 led companies to wonder if they were facing a crisis of overproduction. (They were.) Perhaps people simply did not need to consume more. So, companies turned to manufacturing not just goods but also the desire for them. . .

That is followed by a long quote from Edward Bernays in 1928 in Propaganda where he says a factory can't afford to wait till the public asks for its product, "it must maintain constant touch, through advertising and propaganda, with the vast public in order to assure itself the continuous demand which alone will make its costly plant profitable."

How does one push back at such wasteful and extravagant behavior? This is Capitalism illustrated, but changing minds of the world means putting a halt to so much production and waste. To reuse and repair. To taking "fashion" out of our vocabulary. I have about 50 pages left of the book, but as I read I realize that I've fought this struggle all my life - wanting the antique, the vintage furniture and equipment because of their beauty and function, I am an organic gardener to keep the lifecycle of plants and compost and fertilizer within this little bit of the ecosystem. I buy parts to repair things. I make things instead of buying them.

But you can see there is a problem. So many people have no thoughts about buying and discarding vast amounts of manufactured materials.

We on this thread are methodically decluttering, but we also buy new things as needed. I try to get stuff at the thrift store (small appliances, good pots and pans, glassware, etc.) This is the biggest environmental challenge ahead of us - if we stop all of this big industry, we stop pumping CO₂ into the atmosphere, but this only happens if all of the people employed in all of those industries find useful and satisfactory local employment growing, repairing, and offering services.

Thinking out loud (or with pixels) here. Feeling a sudden bigger push to really get this going, and somehow spread the word. And it isn't lost on me that as I change my diet to remove the processed foods (mostly carbohydrates) that that is another huge part of the problem.