The Wealth of Communities

In the beginning of the fourth chapter, The Wealth of Communities, McKibben begins to explain the possibilities for local economy with not only food but with other commodities such as energy and timber. This part of the chapter showcases a major point in the book, that local economy can be important for other products, not just with food. I found this to be very fascinating, that McKibben could take something that he had talked about so much in the previous chapter, and elaborate more on it with a different topic. The first product that he relates back to being a more local economy is the radio. "Radio is, like food, a large part of most people's lives: 77 percent of the population listens to radio an average of at least three and a half hours a day, making it very nearly ubiquitous. And like food, radio used to be mostly local, hemmed in by mountains, limited by signal strength" (McKibben 131). This is just a small passage from the author Bill McKibben speaking about the radio.