Eco-nomist

Re “Bleak Friday,” Opinion, Nov. 28

As I read professor Juliet Schor’s essay, I wondered how she could express fear of “an economic collapse steeper, more widespread and potentially far longer lasting than anything experienced since the 1930s” and simultaneously suggest that we all pitch in to make it worse by curtailing our normal spending.

After a few paragraphs of statistical stew and Church of Stop Shopping silliness, the answer appeared.

Schor is a practitioner of environmental monasticism who sees virtually all consumption as undesirable. Because “by the late 1970s, humans had begun to draw down stocks of ‘natural capital’ -- that is, degrade the Earth’s ecosystems. We’re turning arable land into deserts, transforming ocean areas into chemically induced dead zones and heating up the climate.”

Essays like this should come with a warning label about the dangers of taking economic advice from a sociology professor.

William R. Snaer

Lake Arrowhead