“We can’t stop shopping and yet we must stop shopping”

THE DAY THE WORLD STOPPED SHOPPING
by J.B. MacKinnon
On submission

THE DAY THE WORLD STOPPED SHOPPING intends to conduct a varied and probing investigation of the ever-expanding cycle of acquisitive demand that keeps the economies of the world churning at alarming, unsustainable rates. “We can’t stop shopping and yet we must stop shopping,”: there is an urgent need to resolve the consumer dilemma, and the dilemma is not inescapable, but neither is its resolution as straightforward as “living simply” or “going green.” THE DAY THE WORLD STOPPED SHOPPING is the first book to argue that reducing consumption is a challenge that will demand innovation and transformation on a scale as ambitious—and full of possibility—as the green and digital revolutions. This global dilemma is easy to shrink down to the personal level as the author will demonstrate by thinking through the tiers of consequence if the consumer carousel were to halt, abruptly. Would such an event represent an unchecked calamity? Or could we derive some (painful) benefits from a re-orientation of our generally thoughtless drive towards… more?

J.B. MacKinnon is the author of “Plenty” and “The Once and Future World”. He is contributor to the online edition of The New Yorker on consumer issues and ecology, and otherwise write for both legacy outlets such as National Geographic and Reader’s Digest, and vanguard publications such as Nautilus and Adbusters. He has won more than a dozen national and international journalism awards, among them the U.S. Green Prize for Sustainable Literature and Canada’s highest prize for literary nonfiction. His work has appeared in Best American Science and Nature Writing.