The Cheeseburger Manifesto

Why the Global Economy Needs a Revolution if We Want a Planet, Life on it, and Democracy Across it — Or, Why You Have to Pay the Real Cost of That Cheeseburger

There you are, eating your cheeseburger. You paid maybe five whole dollars for it. But how much does it cost? Ah, my friend. In the parable of that cheeseburger lies the future of the planet. Yes, really. It’s often said by well-meaning Westerners that the answer to climate change is…”eating less cheeseburgers!!” It is, and it’s not. There’s a grain of truth in there — just a grain — but to see that tiny speck clearly is perhaps the greatest challenge of now.

So there you are. You’re sitting in some air-conditioned grease shack, where you pay five whole bucks for that cheeseburger. How much does it really cost? Well, that depends on — and here’s the part where I reveal economics to be a sham — on what we want to “count” in the first place.

How does your cheeseburger end up costing five bucks, anyways? Because we don’t count any of the following. The costs of pollution, sustainable agriculture, keeping our water tables replenished, carbon, ecological depletion, inequality, living wages — to name just a tiny few.