大象传媒

Our Fall 2021 issue tackled the existential question that undergirds so many of our current conversations, be they about wealth, food, health, justice, or war and peace: How much is enough?

The truth is, there are enough resources on this planet to support its human, animal, and plant inhabitants. But as Executive Editor Zenobia Jeffries Warfield and Senior Editor Chris Winters wrote in their letter from the editors:

鈥淎s a global society, we鈥檝e bought into the idea of scarcity鈥攜et that scarcity is a fabrication. Our problem is not that we don鈥檛 have enough, it is that the majority of us鈥攑articularly our most vulnerable鈥攄on鈥檛 have access to the abundance of resources Earth provides. And the hoarding of those resources by the wealthy reinforces a system of exploitation under which most humans on the planet live.鈥�

Many of those most vulnerable鈥攑eople, ecosystems, sociopolitical structures鈥攁re concentrated in what is often called the 鈥�,鈥� a moniker used primarily to recognize the regions of the world historically marginalized, colonized, and oppressed by colonial and empirical powers, which have been concentrated in the 鈥済lobal North.鈥�

In his article, Stan Cox points out that to arrive at enough for everyone, people in the global North will have to make change and sacrifice. This need not mean a life of misery and deprivation for those of us who have long enjoyed more than our fair share, but it does mean that it鈥檚 time to start rethinking the way we do things.

So we want to know: For readers based in the global North, what might these changes mean for you? What kinds of sacrifice or evolutions are you prepared to make? What might this mean for your community? And most importantly, what first steps can we start taking today鈥攃ollectively and individually?

Share your thoughts, reflections, and actions in the comments below.