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

The reader should take note of the key term OECD, as Jahren references it throughout the book. She uses the concept of the OECD to divide our global population into roughly two camps: the haves and the have-nots. The haves, people living in OECD countries, tend to consume the most resources but feel the least environmental effect for their choices. The have-nots, people living outside the OECD, consume the smallest amount of resources but pay the steepest price for global environment degradation.

Again, Jahren uses her birth year as a chronological benchmark: “When I was born in 1969, the great majority of people on Earth lived in rural areas” (21). It’s unclear if she believes that the rural-urban divide is a good or bad thing. She does wonder, “After the whole world moves to the city, who is left to run the farms? The answer: Almost nobody” (23). The discussion of the rural-urban divide that characterizes this chapter largely drops off in later sections, however. Instead, Jahren continues to rely on the OECD delineation to analyze which populations consume the most resources and which populations suffer the most. Though true in terms of net effects, this distinction is necessarily a simplification—arguably an oversimplification. In addition to overlooking those within OECD countries who personally contribute little to environmental destruction, the idea that those who do contribute more do so from a place of privilege is not necessarily true; urban “food deserts,” for example, tend to impact lower-income communities (often communities of color), forcing residents without the means to leave to rely on food that is unhealthy and neither sustainably nor ethically produced.