Quick Reads: “Any Way You Slice It” by Stan Cox


Any Way You Slice It: The Past, Present, and Future of Rationing

By Stan Cox

THE NEW PRESS

In this lucid and lively book, Stan Cox, an environmental writer whose last book charted the effects of air conditioning on the American landscape, explains how “rationing” has become a dirty word. Through examples ranging from post-Hurricane Sandy gas shortages to China’s one-child policy, he depicts a society anxious about our right to consumer choice. “Whenever there’s a ceiling on available goods, no one is happy,” Cox writes. But sooner or later we’ll almost certainly have to ration food, water, and fossil fuels. “If rationing becomes unavoidable, the way it happens—justly or harshly—will depend very much on whether we have managed to build a more just society.”


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It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

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Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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