9 November/10 November 2019 ★ FT Weekend 11Books
A
ndrew McAfee isaware that
More From Less makes an
unfashionable argument.
“I’ve found that the book’s
fundamental concept —
that capitalism and tech progress are
now allowing us to tread more lightly on
the Earth instead of stripping it bare — is
hard for many people to accept,” he
admits right at the outset.
It seems intuitive that economic deve-
lopment places ever-greater strain on
the environment, depleting resources,
belching out pollution and eventually
contributing to catastrophic climate
change. But only up to a point, McAfee
contends. In the US and other advanced
economies a new process of “dematerial-
isation” is kicking in, allowing “more
from less” growth decoupled from the
resources that once powered it.
The US now consumes fewer comm-
odities such as aluminium and gold than
it did a few decades ago. Paper use is
declining. The average American car is
longer but more fuel-efficient; the aver-
age house is more spacious but lighter,
using fewer materials to build. Devices
such as Apple’s iPhone replaced a host of
cameras and calculators, saving the
resources needed to make them.
McAfee is best known for his work
with fellow MIT academic Erik Brynjolf-
sson, includingThe Second Machine Age,
a voguish 2014 collaboration onrobot-
ics andAI. In this latest work, herecog-
nises the intellectual tide turning
against him. Breezy books toutingtechnology and markets as ecological
solutions were once plentiful. Nowcam-
paigners have brought a sense of envi-
ronmental dread into the mainstream,
making such accounts look naive.
“We are at the beginning of a mass
extinction, and all you can talk about is
money and fairy tales of eternal eco-
nomic growth,” as Greta Thunberg put it
to the UN in September.From Extinc-
tion Rebellion on the streets and plastic
in the seas to fears offlygskam(“flight
shame”) in the sky, the notion that the
planet’s woes can be easily magicked
away seems ever more implausible.
To be fair, McAfee does not claim that
dematerialisation will solve climate
change. Even so, his evidence for the
trend remains thin, filling up only a few
dozen pages in a book thatwanders
around eclectically in defence of free
markets and innovation. He also admits
that dematerialisation holds for some
goods but not for others. Plastics use
keeps rising, for instance. The same is
true for water, where aquifers continueWhere McAfee risks excessive opti-
mism, Smil is known for dour realism,
for example his hard-headed appraisal
of the complexity of transitioning
between energy systems, including our
own faltering move to renewables.
Althoughan environmentalist of a sort,
he also reserves much of his sharpest
criticism for woolly-minded green
thinking, for instance Germany’s deci-
sion to invest in solar energy in a coun-
try with little sunshine.
Smil and McAfee both grapple with
similar material and ask similar ques-
tions. History has so far disproved the
18th-century British scholar Thomas
Malthus and his dire warnings about
relentless population growth. Much the
same is true of the influential 1972 Club
of Rome reportThe Limits To Growth,
which claimed, thus far incorrectly, that
ecosystem disintegration would inevit-
ably followunrestrained expansion.
Yet the enduring truth of this
“Malthusian trap” — the idea that
growth must have limits — remains
Smil’s basic contention. Continued
expansion based on ever-greater
resource use is “impossible” he writes.
Only limits on a “planetary scale” will
secure the survival of our civilisation.
Even while McAfee’s book makes too
much of dematerialisation, it should still
be commended for its defence of free
markets. Many green thinkers believe
that radical environmental change
is impossible without far-reachingchanges to capitalism. That may be true,
but it seems more likely that market
mechanisms are part of the answer,
including the kinds of carbon and pollu-
tion taxes that McAfee supports.
Smil’s analysis is the more convincing
of the two books, but offers frustratingly
little by way of solutions. He dismisses
the idea that dematerialisation can pro-
vide an escape from excessive resource
use, while also being doubtful that
emerging economies will be able to fol-
low a less destructive growth path than
richer countries that came before.
One sliver of optimism comes from
his admiration for Japan. Where many
view Japanese society as stagnating,
Smil seesa country that is learning to
make do with fewer people while con-
suming more efficiently and investing in
areas such as public transport.
Ultimately, the only solution isto
become radically less wasteful and con-
sumefar less, he writes. “Before it is too
late, we should embark in earnest on the
most fundamental existential (and also
truly revolutionary) task facing modern
civilisation, that of making any future
growth compatible with the long-term
preservation of the only biosphere we
have.” What he leaves unsaid is obvious:
that task is barely begun.James Crabtree is an associate professor
of practice at Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew
School of Public Policy and author of ‘The
Billionaire Raj’More From Less
by Andrew McAfee
Scribner $28/ Simon & Schuster
£20, 352 pagesGrowth:
From Microorganisms
to Megacities
by Vaclav Smil
MIT $39.95 / £32, 664 pagesA Palestinian fisherman on a boat made from some 700 waste plastic bottles —Mustafa Hassona/Getty ImagesGrowth pains
Is radical environmental change impossible without
far-reaching changes to capitalism? By ames CrabtreeJ
Five minutes
of horror
Anne-Sylvaine Chassany onthe harrowing memoir
of a survivor of the terrorist attack on Charlie HebdoI
t took a few days for Philippe
Lançon to start writing again.
In intensive care, infused with
morphine and prone to night-
mares, theCharlie Hebdocol-
umnist typed a letter describing
the minutes before the arrival of
the killers on January 7 2015.
That fateful morning in central
Paris, the satirical magazine’scar-
toonists and editors were discuss-
ing Michel Houellebecq’s latest
novel,Submission —a fable about
an Islamicised France that was
published the same day and had
already caused a stir. A grotesque
caricature of Houellebecq making
New Year predictions featured on
the magazine’scover (“In 2015 I
am losing my teeth, in 2022 I am
doing Ramadan”). On display
around the conference table was
the mixture of silliness, grand-
standing and grumbling that had
defined the satirical weekly’s tone
for decades. Then two masked
Islamist extremists with auto-
matic guns stormed in.
Lançon’s letter, published in
French newspaper Libération a
week after the massacre that killed
12, was the start of a long recovery
and the prelude to a book. InDis-
turbance —a literary sensation in
France when it was published last
year—thecritic documents, in
excruciating details, his physical
and emotional reconstruction to
understand the man he has
become. “The journalist, with his
Pavlovian discipline, was coming
to the aid of the wounded man, so
that the patient could express
himself,” Lançon writes.
ançon’s description of the car-L
nage — the first of a wave of deadly
Islamist attacks in France — isbru-
tally factual and impressionistic. It
has revived memories of an inci-
dent that has left the country in
shock and heightened tensions
with its large Muslim population.
Security measures introduced
under a state of emergency after
the attacks have partially been
incorporated in law. Another
Charlie Hebdo survivor, Laurent
Sourisseau, has also just published
his own account in French.
Lançon’s memoir, subtly trans-
lated by Steven Rendall, gives an
uneasy feeling of voyeurism at
times, such as when he depicts his
surroundings once silence fell on
the murder scene — the open skull
of his friend lying nearby; the dis-
covery of his own injuries; shreds
of flesh in place of his lower jaw.
And yet, amid the horrific images,literature arises. It is a process that
leaves thereader shaken and is
onethat Lançon admits he himself
fails to grasp. “Violence had per-
verted what it hadn’t destroyed.
Like a storm, it had sunk the ship.
Memories rose to the surface in
disorder... on the island where I
had washed up, in this little room
saturated with paper, blood, bod-
ies, and gunpowder,” he writes.
Later Lançon says: “If writing
consists in imagining everything
that is lacking, in substituting a
certain order for the void, I am not
writing: how could I create the
slightest fiction when I have been
myself swallowed up by a fiction?.. And yet, I’m writing.”.
Hishospital room becomes his
second “cradle” and the medical
Disturbance:
Surviving
Charlie
Hebdo
by Philippe
Lançon
translated by
Steven Rendall
Europa Editions
£14.99,
473 pagesThe notion that the
planet’s woes can be easily
be magicked away seemsever more implausible
W
hen a successful chief
executive of a global
corporation who has
been in his job for 14
years and is nearing
retirement writes a book about leader-
ship, alarm bells ring. It sounds like an
exercise in pomposity and personal
brand-building rather than anything of
value to others.
The twist is that Robert Iger’s account
of working his way to the top ofWalt Dis-
neyand leading it through giant merg-
ers and technology disruption is
thoughtful and well worth reading.
Iger’s studied amiability, forged over
years of getting the best out of talented
but capricious figures, conceals not only
an inner toughness but a wily talent for
strategic persuasion.
Like the priest or rabbi of the Magic
Kingdom,Iger reaches respect for oth-p
ers — “A little respect goes a long way
and the absence of it can be very costly,”
he writes. Some of the most striking
anecdotes inThe Ride of a Lifetime rea
about the people he disliked, and why.
All were powerful men who treated him
with contempt at moments when he was
vulnerable.
There was the executive who exposed
himself to Iger when he was a junior
assistant at ABC News to express his dis-
dain. Later, there was a headhunter who
called him to New York to talk about the
top job at Disney and left after 30 min-
utes to catch a private jet to a Florida
wedding. “I walked out of the interview
infuriated at the waste of time and lackof respect,” he writes. Yet much of Iger’s
success, atABCand then at Disney after
it took over the network, stemmed from
his ability to soothe and wrangle talent.
His early mentor was Roone Arledge,
who reinvented sports broadcasting by
telling athletes’ stories. Arledge was a
perfectionist whose motto was “Do
what you have to do to make it better”,
and who was intolerant of mistakes.
Having handled Arledge helped him
when trying to restore relations
between Disney and Apple after being
appointed CEO. It required getting on
the right side of Steve Jobs, and Iger’s
account of how he steadily won the trust
of the brilliant but capricious Apple
founder is fascinating. It culminated in
Disney acquiring Pixar, a deal that Iger
had to fight to get past his board.
The lesson that shines through this
account is how personal business is —
certainly the media industry and no
doubt others. A large amount rests on
personal chemistry rather than num-
bers — persuading and cajoling ornery
people to do what you want. Iger was not
worried about playing second fiddle,
knowing that he would profit by getting
others behind him.
Iger’s manic depressive father “had
trouble regulating his moods and would
often say things that got him into trou-
ble,” he writes. The father was a pessi-
mist but the son emerged as aneven-tempered optimist. It does not
take a psychoanalyst to see a parallel in
Iger’s toppling of Michael Eisner, his
mercurial and paranoid boss at Disney.
“He would literally say to me, ‘The sky is
falling,’” Iger writes of Eisner.
He pays tribute to Eisner, a consum-
mate auteur. “He taught me how to see
in a way I hadn’t been able to before...
Michael walked through the world with
a set designer’s eye.” But the heir had a
calmer style and more lucidity — “This
is where we want to be. This is how we’re
going to get there,” is his formula for
lowering “the overall anxiety of an
entire organisation”.
His most telling description is of
clashing with and overruling his old
mentor Arledge when he was the latter’s
boss. “I resorted to a kind of ‘soft auto-
cracy’, showing respect, but also com-
municating that this was going to hap-
pen, no matter what,” he writes. He was
often happy to negotiate, but at “other
times, you simply need to communicate
that you’re the boss.”
Iger’s career is notable for his balance
not only of amiability and ruthlessness,
but of stability and risk-taking. He made
a name at ABC by taking some “big
swings” when put in charge of itsprime
time line-up, such as airing David
Lynch’sTwin Peaks. He went on to spend
billions on buying Pixar, Marvel and
George Lucas’sStar Warsat Disney.
One of his first acts at the top of Dis-
ney was to slim down its all-powerful
and feared “strategic planning” unit,
staffed by 65 analysts with MBAs from
top business schools who ranstrategy
under Eisner. Nobody liked them and he
thought Disneyneeded to advance
faster. It was the act of a captain who was
comfortable with a bumpy ride.John Gapper is the FT’s chief business
commentatorKing of the castle
The story of life at the top
of Disney is a thoughtfultale of surviving disruption,
writesJohn Gapperto be depleted in emerging economies.
More disappointing is a brief section
on globalisation, which fails to tackle
the link between trade and resource use.
Industrial outsourcing from western to
emerging economies could well account
for a big chunk of the reason that some
US companies now use fewer metals and
minerals. In much the same way, sourc-
ing goods from poorer countries in part
explains the otherwise optimistic trend
of declining carbon emissions in coun-
tries such as the UK.
None of this disproves McAfee’s core
argument — but it does suggest that it is
less significant than he makes out. Most
importantly, dematerialisation does not
appear to hold in emerging economies,
whose growth will deplete global natu-
ral resources for decades to come. By
the timeIndia reaches the stage of
development where dematerialisation
could begin, our ability to control the
climate crisis willhave long passed.
So what would Greta Thunberg make
of all this? Not much, one suspects. She
might warm instead to the ideas of
Vaclav Smil, a Czech-Canadian acad-
emic known as a radical thinker on
energy and environmental issues.
Smil is a rare breed: a public intellect-
ual who appears rarely in public. He has
published roughly two dozenbooks
covering everything from energy and
material use to Japanese dietary habits.
His prose is hardly inviting.Growth
clocks in at more than 600 dense,
graph-strewn pages, about 100 of which
are references covering a bewildering
array of topics, from growth patterns in
bacteria tourban megacities. Yet for all
their forbidding complexity, Smil’s
ideas attract admirers: Bill Gates is
quoted on the cover saying: “There is no
author whose books I look forward to
more thanVaclav Smil.”staff the subjects of his affection.
Relatives, friends and lover all
offer their support, but the trauma
has caused a disconnect, which he
dissects with honesty. When his
distraught ex-wife confides she
could not acceptthat five minutes
of horror “could annihilate so
many years of memories”, he says
that he himself “could no longer
bear the idea that so many memo-
ries could survive a few minutes of
horror. Because at that point, those
minutes... constituted my life.”
Literature fferedo comfort and
wisdom. Franz Kafka’sLetters to
Milena, which recommend
extracting “all the sweetness”
from Hell, proves a revelation,
encapsulating what transpires
most in Lançon’s ordeal: sheer sur-
vival instinct.“I couldn’t eliminate
the violence that had been done to
me, or the violence that sought to
reduce its effects,” he writes.
“What I could do, on the other
hand, was to learn to live with it, to
domesticate it, by seeking, as
Kafka said, to draw from it as
much sweetness as possible. The
hospital had become my garden.”Anne-Sylvaine Chassany is the
FT’s world news editor and
former Paris bureau chiefThe Ride of
a Lifetime:
Lessons in
Creative
Leadership
by Robert Iger
Bantam £20
272 pagesNOVEMBER 9 2019 Section:Weekend Time: 11/20197/ - 17:44 User:paul.gould Page Name:WKD11, Part,Page,Edition:WKD, 11, 1