but a little perspective.. the car you drive, the grocery bags you use, and the lightbulbs you have in your house will all have a far greater impact on the world than the IKEA table you give away after a decade. This is all really just an excuse to feel superior over everyone else.

Actually, the opposite is true. But this is the kind of misinformed propaganda that is keeping us from addressing the greater issue- the production/consumption of this kind of crap and its impact on our resources/climate. Lightbulbs and grocery bag choices have minimal impact. The car you drive has -some- impact but it is less than we are brainwashed into believing. Don't get me wrong- most of my commuting is via bicycle and I am no fan of the car culture but MOST of the destructive emissions come from industry and the manufacturing and transportation of consumable goods, not from people going about their business in cars. You can have more of an environmental impact by not eating meat and processed foods.

The bottom line, and the one that no politician will dare utter, is that we have to start LIVING WITH LESS. Less of EVERYTHING, including crap like IKEA goods. Buy a bookcase or table on craigslist or at a garage sale. Buy more locally-grown produce and goods. Downsize. Drive less (more important than your actual choice of car). I dream of Obama saying these things. But it is political suicide. Gob forbid that Americans (5% of the world population consuming 30% of its resources?) should sacrifice a shred of their standard of living.

The decline of resources and our planet is in direct correlation to how much we consume, particularly the cheap (and unnecessary) goods that Shell describes. It isn't "cool", it's "responsible".

I'm sick to death of having no choices except Chinese crap. Any electrical appliance will break within a month or so. You know that up front, but there are no other choices.

I do not shop at Walmart because they sell the crappiest of the Chinese crap. In the past I have bought Walmart stuff and it wouldn't work even the same day you bought it.

Japanese used to make crap, but they improved because people had choices and enough people wouldn't buy their stuff until they did improve.

HOME IMPROVEMENT SHOWS PROMOTE THIS CONSUMERISM OF CRAP

People walk through a house and insist that light fixtures or kitchen cabinets or appliances or other things are "dated," but on the very next show the new stuff they put into a house is the exact stuff that they wanted to take out of the previous house. Stupid! If an item is still working or still being offered new for sale in stores, how can it be dated? It could be not to your taste, but it can't be dated. We need more recycle for major items of home construction. You see things like people insisting that light fixtures in a Williamsburg colonial style are "dated." Sorry folks, that's not "dated," that's classic, historical style. That person maybe wants tacky mid century modern, but a classic is not dated.

If you're still wearing the same clothes you bought ten years ago, then part of you hasn't changed through all that time. Too bad--Since you weren't all that to begin with, we were hoping to see a change.

Compare to buying furniture at a thrift store or via want ads. You have to have 1 or 2 friends helping you move the stuff. You have to borrow or rent a truck. This is a little tricky, and becomes much more of a project than following a 3rd-grade-level set of assembly instructions that require nothing more than a screwdriver and a hammer.>>

If ease of transportation is the only consideration, why not do what I did when my ex and I separated: go to Home Depot and get a couple of 1 x 8 pine boards. They will cut them for you (for a small fee, of course, just as they will cut sheet of glass). Go to the garden area and pick up a few decorative cement blocks. This was quite easily stowed in the car I had then -- a 75 Honda Civic. Easy to transport, even easier to assemble. Maybe it wasn't beautiful but it worked quite well for my purposes, was cheap...plus when I no longer needed it for its intended purpose, the blocks went into the yard and the boards were used for something, can't remember what now.

We need to take every last bit of the broken/failed Chinese crap back to the store where we bought it.

Insist on your money back and do not accept a replacement of the same crap.

It will be inconvenient, but it's our only hope. Walmart & others know they are selling crap, but as long as it's profitable they will only get worse and worse.

When you attenpt to buy items that have no American alternative, try to buy from another, ANY OTHER, store than Walmart and ANY OTHER country than China.

The whole point of our abundance is that we could turn labour, or "making and moving things" into an unskilled activity. This drove down costs (and actually drove UP wages, for unskilled workers, anyway, back in the early part of the 20th century). This ability also arguably is what enabled America to output the level of materiel in WW2, something the Axis powers completely underestimated.

A call back to "craftsmanship" is not going to necessarily lead to better quality goods, just more expensive ones. Why would I want a hand-crafted refrigerator? On the other hand, you can get near-hand-crafted cars from Mercedes-Benz with the AMG stamp and the signatures of the workers on your engine engraved on the block. But that's not exactly something that's accessible to all.

My IKEA bookshelves have lasted me, on average, 7 years, and that includes 2 moves, and they're still fine. I've had a few rather bad experiences with their stuff, but ... it's all rather recyclable anyway, isn't it? I could blow $20k on "good" furniture that lasts forever, but why? I don't want most of my parent's furniture -- not my style. I doubt my kids will want mine either.

Basically, other than nostalgic whining for an age that never really existed (where most people could afford crafted goods), a sad reflection on labour abuses, or a call back to economic centrism, I don't understand the point of this book.