Rating: 4
Inconspicuous Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Don't Know You Have
Tatiana Schlossberg | 2019
Although I’m semi-aware of my carbon footprint (I understand the consequences of flying, not recycling, etc.) I was excited to read a book that delved into the lesser-known environmental impacts made by people living in the modern world. Inconspicuous Consumption explains how our engagement with the Internet, food, fashion, and fuel contributes to climate change but fails to do much else. The topics and message are critically important for readers to understand, but I found the book to lack originality and influentiality. Schlossberg essentially just states facts from other sources and occasionally makes a parenthetical remark of her own. Regardless, the topic is interesting and it’s a good book to look to for further reading on hidden impacts at the individual level.
“Our actions and the problems they create are connected, all around the world. Goats in the Mongolian desert add to air pollution in California; throwing away a computer helps create an illegal economy that makes people sick in Ghana; a loophole in a treaty contributes to deforestation in the American South to generate electricity in England; our idea of the perfect carrot could mean that many others rot in the fields. We can’t pretend anymore that the things we do and wear and eat and use exist only for us, that they don’t have a wider impact beyond our individual lives, which also means that we’re all in this together.”