Sharing the work, sparing the planet: Reduced work time, overconsumption, and ecological sustainability

In response to the need to reduce the consumption of energy, materials, and environmental services in the North, much emphasis has been placed on increasing the efficiency with which we use nature. The goal is to reduce environmental impacts without any economic sacrifice and without having to abandon a vision of infinite economic growth. However, the valuable gains from an "efficiency revolution" will almost certainly be negated if we continue to expand our demands on the environment through attempts to maximize economic growth. The more challenging issue of sufficiency, which focuses on the need to limit our material appetites, must also be confronted.;Could the reduction of work time be a pragmatic starting point for a sufficiency revolution? It will be argued that reduced work time (RWT) can serve an environmental vision in four principle ways: by providing an ecologically sound response to unemployment, offering an alternative vision of progress based on liberation of time rather than growth in production, giving people the time to think and act as participants in building a more ecologically sustainable society, and by creating new opportunities for "simple living" and the subversion of consumerism. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).