After the first edition of Less is More was published in 2020, subsequent printings have included changes to add further relevant evidence, to expand on arguments, and to ensure specific empirical claims are updated and correct.
1) This list describes all of the studies cited in the sections on the climate and biodiversity crises in the Introduction, as of the last printing.
-A 2017 study found that flying insect biomass in protected areas in Germany declined by more than 75% over 27 years. C.A. Hallmann et al. “More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas.” PloS one, 12(10), 2017.
-In 2018, two studies reported bird population decline on farmland in France. Average numbers fell by one third over fifteen years. In some species it is worse: meadow pipits faced a 70% decline over this period and partridges declined 80% over 23 years. Reported in the Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/21/europe-faces-biodiversity-oblivion-after-collapse-in-french-bird-populations
-A global meta-analysis reveals the abundance of terrestrial insects has been declining by around 9% per decade. Roel Van Klink et al., 'Meta-analysis reveals declines in terrestrial but increases in freshwater insect abundances,' Science 368(6489), 2020, pp. 417-420. The study indicated that freshwater insect abundances were increasing, although these claims were questioned in the same journal: Marion Desquilbet et al., Science 370-6523, 2020."
-At least one in every ten insect species is now at risk of extinction. IPBES, Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, 2019.
-There are concerns about the possibility of 'cascading extinctions', whereby the destruction of one species may trigger the decline of others, exacerbating biodiversity loss in unpredictable ways. Rachel Kehoe et al. "Cascading extinctions as a hidden driver of insect decline," Ecological Entomology 46(4), 2021, pp. 743-756.
-In 2020, scientists published a 'warning to humanity' about the fate of insects. 'With insect extinctions, we lose much more than species', they wrote. We lose 'large parts of the tree of life', and such losses 'lead to the decline of key ecosystem services on which humanity depends.' Pedro Cardoso et al., "Scientists' warning to humanity on insect extinctions," Biological conservation 242, 2020.
-A 2021 symposium of experts on insect biodiversity produced a report that opened with the sentence: 'Nature is under siege'. David Wagner et al., "Insect decline in the Anthropocene: Death by a thousand cuts." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118(2), 2021.
-Under intensive agriculture earthworm biomass declined 83% compared to organic fertilization, and the organic content of soils declined by more than half. Robert Blakemore, "Critical decline of earthworms from organic origins under intensive, humic SOM-depleting agriculture." Soil Systems 2(2),2018.
-34% of fish stocks in the world's marine fisheries are now overfished and in decline - three times more than in the 1970s. FAO, The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture (UN Food and Agriculture Organization, 2020).
-In the UK, Haddock have fallen to 1% of their 19th century volume; halibut to one-fifth of 1%. Ruth Thurstan et al., 'The effects of 118 years of industrial fishing on UK bottom trawl fisheries,' Nature Communications 1(1), 2010.
-Fish catches are beginning to decline around the world. Pauly, Daniel, and Dirk Zeller. "Catch reconstructions reveal that global marine fisheries catches are higher than reported and declining." Nature communications 7(1), 2016.
-In the Asia-Pacific, exploitable fish stocks could decline to zero by 2048 if current trends continue. Reported in the Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/23/destruction-of-nature-as-dangerous-as-climate-change-scientists-warn
-On our present emissions trajectory, ocean pH will drop by 0.4 by the end of the century. Ocean acidification played a major role in the last extinction event, 66 million years ago, when ocean pH dropped by 0.25, wiping out 75% of marine species. Reported in the Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/21/ocean-acidification-can-cause-mass-extinctions-fossils-reveal
-Marine animals are disappearing at twice the rate that land animals are. ML Pinsky et al, “Greater vulnerability to warming of marine versus terrestrial ectotherms.” Nature, 569(7754), 2019.
-Extinctions are now occurring 1,000 times faster than the normal background rate. Jurriaan De Vos et al., 'Estimating the normal background rate of species extinction,' Conservation Biology 29(2), 2015.
-Around one million species are now at risk of extinction, many within decades. IPBES, Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, 2019.
-Scientists have described the current species extinction as “biological annihilation”. G. Ceballos et al. “Biological annihilation via the ongoing sixth mass extinction signaled by vertebrate population losses and declines.” Proceedings of the national academy of sciences, 114(30), 2017.
-Agricultural soil under conventional tillage is being lost more than 100 times faster than it is being formed. IPCC, Special Report: Climate Change and Land, 2018.
-Incidence of meteorological events such as storms has doubled since 1980. European Academies Science Advisory Council, 2018. https://easac.eu/media-room/press-releases/details/new-data-confirm-increased-frequency-of-extreme-weather-events-european-national-science-academies-urge-further-action-on-climate-change-adaptation/
-In 2019, it was estimated that a BAU trajectory would have the world on track for up to 4C warming by 2100, while national pledges had the world on track for up to 3.3C. As of November 2022, current policies have the world on track for up to 3.4C, while national pledges have the world on track for 2.5C. https://climateactiontracker.org/publications/massive-gas-expansion-risks-overtaking-positive-climate-policies/
-Even if the world meets the Paris goal of keeping temperature rises to no more than 2°C , sea levels are projected to go up another 30 to 90 cm by the end of the century. IPCC, Special Report: Global Warming of 1.5C, 2018. (A Google Earth simulator visualizes the effect of sea level rise on coastal cities; not mentioned in the book)
-NASA study finds carbon emissions could dramatically increase risk of U.S. megadroughts. Analysis of current greenhouse gas emission trends indicate that the Southwest and Central Plains have an 80% likelihood of megadroughts between the years 2050 and 2099. https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11773
-The impact of temperature rise on crops varies by species and by region, but on average, yields of major crops like wheat, rice, maize and soybean will decline by 3-7% per degree C. Chuan Zhao et al., 'Temperature increase reduces global yields of major crops in four independent estimates,' Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114(35), 2017.
-Warming more than 2 degrees is likely to cause ‘sustained food supply disruptions globally’. IPCC, Special Report on Climate Change and Land.
-Climate change is already affecting crop yields and reducing global food supplies. Deepak Ray et al. "Climate change has likely already affected global food production." PloS one 14(5), 2019.
-Marine ice-cliff instability means Antarctica could add another meter or more to sea level rise by 2100. In some scenarios, Larson C could be lost by the middle of the century. Robert DeConto and David Pollard. "Contribution of Antarctica to past and future sea-level rise." Nature 531(7596), 2016: 591-597.
-Heating to 2C could set in motion feedback loops that could lock the world into an uncontrollable “hothouse Earth” trajectory. Will Steffen et al. "Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115, no. 33 (2018).
2) In other parts of the book, several studies have been added or updated since the first edition.
-On the question of “green growth”. In 2020 scientists ran several meta-analyses: a review of 835 empirical studies finds that decoupling is not adequate to achieve climate goals; it requires what the authors themselves refer to as 'degrowth' scenarios (‘Helmut Haberl et al. “A systematic review of the evidence on decoupling of GDP, resource use and GHG emissions: part II: synthesizing the insights”, Environmental Research Letters, 2020).
-Another review of 179 studies finds 'no evidence of economy-wide, national or international absolute resource decoupling, and no evidence of the kind of decoupling needed for ecological sustainability' (T. Vadén et al., 'Decoupling for ecological sustainability: A categorisation and review of research literature,' Environmental Science and Policy, 2020).
-To feasibly decarbonize fast enough to achieve the Paris Agreement goals will require high-income nations to adopt post-growth pathways. For relevant evidence, see Jason Hickel, Paul Brockway, Giorgos Kallis, Lorenz Keyßer, Manfred Lenzen, Aljoša Slameršak, Julia Steinberger, and Diana Ürge-Vorsatz, 'Urgent need for post-growth climate mitigation scenarios." Nature Energy 6(8), 2021.
-To feasibly decarbonize fast enough to stay under 1.5C will require high-income nations to adopt degrowth strategies. Lorenz Keyßer and Manfred Lenzen, '1.5 C degrowth scenarios suggest the need for new mitigation pathways,' Nature Communications 12(1), 2021; Kai Kuhnhenn et al., A societal transformation scenario for staying below 1.5 C (Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, 2020).
-The richest 1% (all of whom are millionaires) capture some $19 trillion in income every year, which represents nearly a quarter of global GDP (and more than the GDP of 169 countries combined), according to the World Inequality Database. This means that a quarter of all the labour we render, all the resources we extract, and all the CO2 we emit is done to make rich people richer. Over the four decades since 1980, no less than 46% of all new income from global economic growth has gone to the richest 5%.
-Global North countries are responsible for 92% of cumulative emissions in excess of the planetary boundary. Jason Hickel, “Quantifying national responsibility for climate breakdown”, The Lancet Planetary Health, 2020.
-The richest 10% of the world’s population are responsible for more than half of the world’s total carbon emissions since 1990. Individuals in the richest 1% emit one hundred times more than individuals in the poorest half of the human population. Extreme Carbon Inequality, Oxfam, 2015.
-Material extraction and processing is responsible for 90% of total global biodiversity loss. International Resource Panel, Global Resources Outlook (UN Environment Programme, 2019).
-Resource footprints (materials, energy, land and water) account for more than 90% of variation in environmental damage footprints, and account for 90% of damage to biodiversity. See Z. J. Steinmann et al., 'Resource footprints are good proxies of environmental damage,' Environmental Science & Technology 51(11), 2017.
-In aggregate, the total mass of material use is coupled to ecological impact, with a correlation factor of 0.73. Ester Van der Voet, Lauran van Oers, and Igor Nikolic. "Dematerialization: not just a matter of weight." Journal of industrial ecology 8(4), 2004.
-Further clarifications on degrowth: Jason Hickel, 'What does degrowth mean? A few points of clarification', Globalizations, 2020.
-On synergies between MMT and degrowth, see: Jason Hickel, 'Degrowth and MMT: A thought experiment', 2020 (www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2020/9/10/degrowth-and-mmt-a-thought-experiment). For background on MMT, see: Stephanie Kelton, The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and How to Build a Better Economy (Hachette UK, 2020).
-Modelling studies show it is possible to deliver good lives for all - including universal healthcare, education, housing, electricity, heating/cooling, public transit, computing and so on - with relatively low levels of energy use that are compatible with keeping global warming to less than 1.5 degrees. Joel Millward-Hopkins et al. “Providing decent living with minimum energy,” Global Environmental Change 65, 2020. For an early study on material requirements for decent living, see Michael Lettenmeier et al. 'Eight tons of material footprint—suggestion for a resource cap for household consumption in Finland', Resources 3(3), 2014.
-Empirical data for the United States shows that water sanitation measures explain three quarters of the decline in infant mortality in major cities between 1900 and 1936, and nearly half the decline in total mortality. David Cutler and Grant Miller, 'The role of public health improvements in health advances,' Demography 42(1), 2005.
-Samuel Preston's original paper in 1975 observed that up to 90% of improvements in global life expectancy between the 1930s and the 1960s were attributable to factors "exogenous to income", such as public health programmes and other social technologies. Samuel Preston, 'The changing relation between mortality and level of economic development,' Population studies 29(2), 1975.
-In 2015, the UN Development Programme published an analysis confirming that the relationship between economic growth and changes in health and education is "weak", and concluding that "human development is different from economic growth." UNDP, 'Training material for producing national human development reports,' UNDP Human Development Report Office, 2015. See also UNDP, 'Understanding performance in human development,' Human Development Research Paper 42, 2010, pp. 28-32.
-At any given level of economic development, social outcomes are better in progressive states with universal public goods. See Shirley Cereseto and Howard Waitzkin, 'Economic development, political-economic system, and the physical quality of life,' American Journal of Public Health 76(6), 1986; Amartya Sen, ‘Public Action and the Quality of Life in Developing Countries,’ Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 43(4), 1981; Vicente Navarro, 'Has socialism failed? An analysis of health indicators under capitalism and socialism,' Science & Society, 1993.
-According to data from the UNDP, nations can reach the very highest category on the life expectancy index with as little as $8,000 per capita (in terms of purchasing power parity, or PPP), and very high levels on the education index with as little as $8,700. What’s remarkable about these figures is that they are well below the world average GDP per capita, which is $17,600 (PPP).
-By the year 1830, Britain was appropriating the equivalent of 25 to 30 million acres of productive land from its New World colonies. See: Pomeranz, The Great Divergence.
-In the late 19th century, more than half of Britain's domestic budget was funded by money appropriated from India and other colonies. See: Gurminder Bhambra, '"Our Island Story": The Dangerous Politics of Belonging in Austere Times,' in Austere Histories in European Societies (Routledge, 2017).
-On the ecological consequences of capitalism and colonialism, see Jason Moore, Capitalism in the Web of Life (Verso, 2015).
-Lord John Bishton, author of a 1794 report on agriculture in Shropshire, on the need for enclosure: 'The use of common lands operates on the mind as a sort of independence.' After enclosure, he wrote, 'the labourers will work every day in the year, their children will be put out to labour early,' and 'that subordination of the lower ranks of society which in the present time is so much wanted would be thereby considerably secured.'