Finished: June 5, 2025
Why I read this
A few years ago I read Why We’re Polarized by Ezra Klein and I was shocked at the interest a modern book on politics could instill in me. Throughout college I never cared much for politics or who was president. I didn’t follow the news or try to understand current events, I kind of just floated through life. Obviously that has changed as I have grown older and more mature, and more than a bit of my tempered scrolling time (I’ve replaced Instagram with google news, which is honestly not much better for the brain) is spent on seeing what is happening around the world, and keeping a close line on what’s going on back home. So when I read Why We’re Polarized it opened up a new perspective for me on politics and our engagement with it and Klein’s inquisitive prose gave me tools and references to discuss politics in a different way. It was from this view that I wanted to explore Abundance to see if Klein could again fully capture my interest, especially when the subject fell closer to home.
What I learned
Recently I have had a growing sense that I am purchasing books with which I already agree and I’m highly confident that here I continued that trend, however treacherous it may be, with Abundance. The opening pages challenge the reader to imagine a world where we live in abundance everywhere. Plentiful housing, productive transport, and unlimited energy can give us the world we dream of, yet why don’t we achieve it? Why are we stuck with gridlock legislation spending years, if not decades, arguing over problems that are not complicated. Want to solve the housing crisis? Build houses! Too many people are poor? Give them money! Don’t even get me started on the problems that cheap and abundant energy could solve! Here Klein and Thompson embark on an adventure reminiscent of Rutger Bregman’s Utopia for Realists in that they claim the vision of most ordinary people does not go far enough, and that the solution for progress lies heavily in simplifying our processes, concentrating on what matters, and just getting to work.
So often today we focus on consumerism. Instagram has launched a profession of making people feel bad about what they have so that they will go out and buy more. Even the economy is judged primarily based on consumerist ideas. The GDP goes up as people consume. The market is doing better because people have more free money and will increase consumption. Everywhere we turn we are concentrated on the consumption side of things, and rarely do we focus on the production. That is what Klein and Thompson have focused on primarily here in this book. Why can’t we produce enough housing? Why can’t we build abundant energy infrastructure? For such simple questions, the hypotheses that were presented for answers were compelling and frightening.
Klein and Thompson built on the theory that in the Post-War era we were a nation that builds, and by all accounts we were. In this period we built the interstate highway system, we rolled out our nuclear infrastructure, we built housing (I remember visiting my sister who lived in Stuy Town which contains 11,200 apartments in New York city which was built in the post war boom, imagine what a city could do with housing for an additional tens of thousands of people?), we built everything. We got so good at building so quickly that it lead to abuses elsewhere. Environmentally (not even considering the corruption of this era) our expanded consumerism was a disaster, and the new factories to support our expanded infrastructure began to pollute at unprecedented levels. With the release of Silent Spring and the empowerment of Nader’s Raiders, several of the most important environmental acts to ever be put in place were passed, and protecting the environment became a priority. No one is questioning the value of these protections, but the analysis of Klein and Thompson shows that these protections hamstringed our ability to champion major projects and changed our culture from one of builders to one of lawyers.
Throughout the book Klein and Thompson show this shift with concrete examples. The most stunning of which is California’s inability to construct a high speed rail system. Living in France now I see every day the value of the countries TGV (Train Grand Vitesse, or very fast train) system. We have several employees in our offices in Paris that live in Lyon or Bordeaux and commute to the office each week with a simple and direct two hour train ride that covers 600 kilometers (or 375 miles) which is not much less than a ride from my hometown of Raleigh to New York City which takes over 10 hours by train or 8 hours by car (if you have incredible luck with traffic). The fast train lines allow for interconnectivity, mobility, and improves the national identity by connecting regions that were once difficult to reach. Preliminary studies in California show that the heavily and densely population regions in the South of the state could benefit heavily from a train line such as the TGV. Yet, with over 20 years of investment, planning, engineering, the project has yet to take off and is still years if not decades away from welcoming its first customers. In the same time period China put in place tens of thousands of kilometers of high speed rails. Why can’t we build something that is widely accepted in first world countries and has clear economic benefit? It’s because we have created a maze of red-tape regarding permitting, environmental protections, eminent domain challenges, building codes, impact studies, public interest studies, on and on. All of these things make any major infrastructure project a nightmare that takes multiples of time, energy, and money than strictly required to put in place.
To further highlight this is the example of the bridge collapse of I-95 near Philadelphia in 2023. After an oil tanker took out a bridge segment and closed an artery of American commerce, the impact was expected to be astronomic. Estimations put the repairs at several years and the resulting effects on commerce in the billions of dollars range. In reaction to this the governor of PA declared a state emergency and bypassed many regulations in the interest of public need. He skipped bidding laws, he bypassed environmental studies, he supplied materials with speed of delivery as the only criteria. All of this resulted in a functional interstate bridge restoring normal traffic volumes in under two weeks.
The enormous juxtaposition of these two examples highlights the problematic inability of America to build any longer. It is certain that the way we built in the past was unsustainable, and that many of the laws and regulations in place have their purpose and need to remain. However, it is heartbreaking to see the lack of progress towards initiatives that matter and need to be built based on maddening red tape and unending permitting. It is a small personal anecdote, but my parents living near the beach spent almost 6 months to do landscaping on a quarter acre lot because the town shut down their worksite (and worksite is a large word for planting so shrubs and placing some pavers) because of bureaucratic nonsense. A stoppage of several weeks and a payment of something like 100 dollars was put in place for a “paver permit” which had never been heard of by any other official than the town permitting office. On a larger scale, we see projects in the US or France for integration of GW’s of clean energy being delayed or even cancelled with years of environmental studies and impact studies. In countries where the demand for energy is growing this means using more fossil fuels while the net zero projects are delayed interminably. To protect 4 acres of wetlands we allow thousands of additional tons of carbon emissions to continue to meet our growing energy needs instead of championing the projects needed to reach global and national carbon initiatives.
Many people might ask do we need to build? Can’t we get by with what we have? Looking at the problems which exist in the world and in the United States I think it is naive and impractical to think that reduction is the only solution. Energy bills are going up faster than salaries, homelessness is pushed up by a never ending housing crisis, costs are rising astronomically on every project to meet never ending regulatory requirements. Even if we are optimistic and we believe that we can reduce human consumption, how much do we think we could succeed on average? Some people might be able to live with much much less, but people reducing by 50% or more would be rare. Most people might be able to stagnate, or reach a reduction of 10-20% of consumption through lifestyle changes, but the US energy need will grow by 50% between now and 2050. If we want to meet the challenges of today we need to build, not stagnate. As Bill Gates said in How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, “we aren’t going to solve the climate crisis problem by telling people not to eat toast.”
What I didn’t like
As is usually the case with things like this the problems are detailed to a fine point and explained in detail, then the last chapter is a “what do you do now” summary of all the problems and extremely high level solutions on how to fix them. The suggestion of “let’s do away with some red tape”, or “let’s follow the lead for this one specific case where we built a bridge quickly due to specific conditions” are not easy suggestions for a normal person to follow in their daily lives. What I learned was super interesting, and very relevant. I agree fully with the ideas presented in the book, but the lack of applicability is a seriously missed opportunity.
Questions I asked
What is the right balance between development for human good and protection of nature?
How could we implement a system where priorities are balanced for major developments? Where a project for good will not be abandoned for the sake of the perfect?
Are Americans generally aware of this problem? In France in talking about this book I am often reminded that France can be even worse on this topic and the French people are surprised the US is the same. If my Europrean friends are not aware of the problem in the US, are my America friends or colleagues better placed?
My Favorite Quote
“It is tempting to assume we in the United States sit at the terminus of what energy can achieve and all that is left is for the rest of the world to catch up. We do not.”
Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson
Books I liked like this one
Why We’re Polarized : Ezra Klein (for a fair reflection of the current state of affairs without overly criticising)
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: Bill Gates (for refreshing techno-optimism with at least some tethering in reality)
Book Reviews for Mom 