A visit to a mall can be a rather schizophrenic experience. Even while delighting in the wonderful cornucopia of temptations, one cannot help but feel a vague disgust at one's hedonism. This feeling of self-loathing is joined with one of absurdity at the sight of the starving beggar outside, seeking morsels of generosity from the more fortunate. The conscience winces at the sight of abject poverty in the backyards of modern temples of consumerism.
These are two importantly different reactions. The first is an aesthetic revolt against conspicuous consumption; the second, an ethical shiver in the face of conspicuous deprivation. Nature or environment, however, rarely triggers such guilt pangs, because there is a complete disconnect between the city and nature. Urban, capitalist society does not encourage knowledge of the origins of the products sold in its shops. Indeed, for all we know, things that we derive pleasure from – computers, clothes, books – could well be made from materials carrying the bloodstains of some indigenous tribe or the scars of a decimated forest.
Such inchoate feelings will undoubtedly find resonance with many readers. But the acquiring and honing of a sophisticated environmental consciousness is a difficult task: it requires sustained thinking through the politics of the competing desires of communities, classes and nation states, in search of diversity, sustainability and equity in an increasingly interconnected world. Ramachandra Guha's anthology of essays is just such a journey – a fascinating if sometimes bumpy ride through towns, villages and forests of ideas about that most enduring philosophical question: How should one live (Kaise jeebo re)? Or, to couch it in ecological terms, how does one reconcile the modern ideals of equality, liberty and fraternity with the fact of an increasingly fragile and imperilled environment?
Most of the pieces in How Much Should a Person Consume? are expanded versions of previously written essays and lectures, the overarching theme of which is a comparative history of environmentalism in India and the US. Guha knows of what he speaks; he has been a teacher in several American universities, and has had a long engagement with environmental movements in India. Although he began his scholarly career as a Marxist, he is quick here to repudiate allegiance to any ideology. Instead, one of Marx's popular maxims is inverted to proclaim Guha's motto: "Environmentalists may wish to change the world, but environmental historians should seek merely to understand and interpret it."