Free yourself from the superfluous

In this advocacy book, Niko Paech draws the outlines of a sustainable and modern “post-growth” society. It demonstrates that if Western citizens enjoy a level of wealth in goods and mobility unprecedented in human history, it is at the cost of a devastation of natural resources. Disoriented, our consumer societies have lost all notion of temporal, geographical and bodily limits: they amass goods that they no longer even have time to consume and they cut corners without complex on the opportunities offered to future generations and other inhabitants. of the planet. The obvious is revealed: what if shedding the superfluous could also make us happier? Original title: Befreiung vom Überfluss (auf dem Weg in die Postwachstumsökonomie) Original publication: Oekom, 2012. Translated from German by Gabriel Lombard. “There are no technologies or sustainable objects per se: only lifestyles can be. »