{"id":29275,"date":"2017-12-31T09:35:07","date_gmt":"2017-12-31T14:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=29275"},"modified":"2017-12-31T09:35:07","modified_gmt":"2017-12-31T14:35:07","slug":"having-your-bit-of-cake-and-eating-it-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=29275","title":{"rendered":"Having Your Bit of Cake and Eating it Too?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"post-thumbnail\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.worldwatch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/downsizing-movie-vodka-bottle-672x372.png\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 672px) 100vw, 672px\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blogs.worldwatch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/downsizing-movie-vodka-bottle-672x372.png 672w, http:\/\/blogs.worldwatch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/downsizing-movie-vodka-bottle-1038x576.png 1038w\" alt=\"\" width=\"672\" height=\"372\" \/><\/div>\n<header class=\"entry-header\">\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.worldwatch.org\/downsizing\/\">HAVING YOUR BIT OF CAKE AND EATING IT TOO?<\/a><span style=\"color: #333333; font-size: 16px;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p><em>Downsizing<\/em>, the film by Alexander Payne, which follows Paul Safranek (Matt Damon) as he decides to shrink himself to 5 inches tall and moves to the downsized colony of Leisureland, had great promise as a conversation starter about sustainability, and in some ways it succeeded, but in many ways it reinforced the same myths society regularly perpetuates.<\/p>\n<p>The film starts as Norwegians successfully shrink living things to just a percentage of their size. Why? It turns out\u2014as the lead scientist Dr. Andreas Jacobson explains in his lecture \u201cHuman Scale and Sustainability\u201d\u2014the experiment was conceived in the 1950s in order to deal with overpopulation. They determined that downsizing was the \u201conly practical and humane solution to humanity\u2019s greatest problem.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><center><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/41juXbAJ7JI?rel=0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/center>Any time sustainability and population play a lead role in a movie\u2014I\u2019m excited. But the film failed in several key ways. Let\u2019s explore how:<strong>Rebound Effect<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>First off, there\u2019s the classic problem of the rebound effect. If a person moves to an area where he can sell off his car and get around by bike, his ecological footprint will shrink. Except, now that he spends less on transportation, he ends up spending those savings on other goods, and in the end may have an even larger ecological impact. This is known as the rebound effect.<\/p>\n<p>In shrinking down to 5\u201d, we\u2019re talking about a reduction in consumption by a factor of 14, assuming Paul Safranek started at about 5\u2019 10\u201d. This is even better than the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Factor_10\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Factor Ten reduction<\/a> called for in the 1990s. Of course, that\u2019s the ideal, not the reality. As people shrink down, their desires grow significantly\u2014in part primed by the marketing of becoming small in order to live large.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>HAVING YOUR BIT OF CAKE AND EATING IT TOO?\u00a0 Downsizing, the film by Alexander Payne, which follows Paul Safranek (Matt Damon) as he decides to shrink himself to 5 inches tall and moves to the downsized colony of Leisureland, had great promise as a conversation starter about sustainability, and in some ways it succeeded, but [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[162,17718,16162,17719,769,17717],"class_list":["post-29275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-consumption","tag-downsizing","tag-erik-assadourian","tag-rebound-effect","tag-sustainability","tag-world-watch-institute"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29275"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29275\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29276,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29275\/revisions\/29276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}