ABSTRACT
There is a very old joke about a country man asked by a townie in a car for directions to the city, who replies, ‘If I were you, I wouldn't start from here.’ What he is saying is that the best way to reach the particular destination is to start from a different place. There is a sad echo here of the path to fair share living. In the 1970s much was written about the need for society, particularly modern society with its focus on economic growth, to change direction and reorganise itself to live within the limits of the carrying capacity of the earth (Meadows et al., 1972; Goldsmith et al., 1972). Such a reorganisation involved replacing fossil fuel use with renewable energy from the sun and wind (Daniels, 1964; Golding, 1976); it involved rethinking food production so it was local and organic (Leach, 1975); it involved rethinking settlement patterns so that trade was local rather than international (Schumacher, 1973); and it involved rethinking the built environment so it was walkable and low- or zero-energy in life-cycle operation (Vale and Vale, 1975). Perhaps most importantly, it involved rethinking human values to emphasise community and doing things together with mutual local dependence (Boyle and Harper, 1976). This was a recipe for fair earth share living, and one that has been echoed by all the authors in this current book. Had we started from there and done all these things then, the world would be a very different place now. Achieving fair earth share living today is going to be a much harder task.
