Squeers,

You are assuming, like many on the Left, that it is all about reducing consumption. I don't pretend that wasteful consumption isn't part of the problem, but it is hardly the only problem or even the main problem. The Global Footprint Network thinktank has actually done the math, rather than just making assertions. Here is a link to their 2010 Atlas

http://issuu.com/globalfootprintnetwork/docs/ecological-footprint-atlas-2010/1?mode=a_p

If you look at the consumption footprint in the tables for the different regions, you can easily work out that the top billion people in the richest countries are collectively responsible for about 38% of the consumption, while that arch-devil the United States is responsible for about 15%, i.e. most of the consumption is going on in poor countries, not because they are living high on the hog, but because there are so many people in them. The only way to completely avoid consumption is to be dead. The Atlas also contains graphs showing the relationship between a country's environmental footprint (i.e. consumption) and its rank on the UN Human Development Index. It takes quite a high footprint to be a high human development country, and it would take the resources of about three Earths to give everyone in even the existing global population a decent quality of life.

Screaming about evil capitalists and people consuming more than you are, while pussyfooting on population, is the socialism of fools. I am frankly far less concerned about xenophobes who want to do the right thing for the wrong reasons than about folk on the left who want to do the wrong thing out of some misguided sense of moral purity or what Americans call liberal guilt.

Divergence,

your shrill and broad-spread attack tells me I've hit the nail right on the head with the suggestion of neo-fascism, especially when you now defend conspicuous consumption and imagine we can maintain it while blaming our problems on impoverished countries! Just imagine the impact those massive populations are going to have as we "lift them out of poverty"--euphemistic jargon for carpet-bagging! The wealth and high consumption in developed nations is "derived" from exporting growth and exploiting poor nations. A main theme I've tried to urge above is that everything is connected; you can't measure "consumption footprints" as contained within national borders. The West's consumption footprint is global. National borders are convenient abstractions. Our problems are global and all one: political economy.
I am not screaming at evil capitalists, I am offering sober and sustained critique, rather than digressing into paranoia and fantasy.
Of course I realise I'm pissing in the wind.

Squeers,

If you actually look at the tables in the Atlas, you will see separate columns for production and consumption footprints. You get the consumption footprint of a country by multiplying the average individual consumption in that country by the population. I suggest you read the Atlas before declaring that the method isn't valid and then explain why it isn't valid.

There is no way that the whole global population can be lifted out of poverty, because the Earth just doesn't have the resources. I expect collapse in a lot of these places, such as we are seeing now in Somalia.

Where exactly do I say that excessive consumption is OK? I just don't think it is the main problem. So far as exploitation is concerned, has it occurred to you that people might have set themselves up for it by excessive procreation? Poor and desperate people are vulnerable to exploitation by local elites and their partners in crime in the developed world, although I would agree that we have an obligation to try to stop the collusion.

The international community had a policy of tough love during the Rwanda genocide, that is, they let them get on with it, although they did help refugees afterwards. The Guardian has had a number of articles detailing the efforts of the current Kagame government to raise the status of women, find alternatives to subsistence farming, and make contraception available to the whole population, including injectible ones that women can access in secret. They have cut childhood mortality in half, but malnutrition has greatly increased, according to an article in last week's issue. People have accepted better child survival, but the poorer and less educated ones are refusing to take up family planning, so the same food has to be shared among more children, as land holdings are tiny. How exactly is this the fault of the West or even the Kagame government? Folk on the Left would say that poor brown people can do no wrong, so it has to be our fault somehow.

Divergence,
I tried to look at your link but it refuses to load correctly. I'll try again later. And btw I'm also critical of the left, and unionism generally, hence my use of the phrase "socialism of fools".
Your intellectual caricatures would be more usefully directed self-reflexively.

Squeers,

Of course, calling me a neo-fascist and accusing me of condoning wasteful consumption, essentially because I presented some facts that you don't like, is not an intellectual caricature.

Divergence,

I haven't seen any facts. I told you the link didn't work.
When it comes to fascism, there's plenty of suggestive material in you're last posts. You're the one defending indefensible Western consumption and disparaging "poor brown people"--what's their colour got to do with it btw?--while you condemn their population growth. I'll back a call for cutting population growth oversees when we cut consumption at home. Here's a link to our ecological footprints that does work:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Human_welfare_and_ecological_footprint.jpg
As long as we're prepared to do "nothing" to reduce our consumption (of course I know we can't, indeed we're bent on increasing it, at home and abroad; we have to) I'm blowed if I know where you get the effrontery to expect the wretches of the Earth to make cuts of any kind!
Well you'd better get used to our reality. If you look at the graph you'll notice the poor brown people are virtually the only ones living within their bio-capacity. There is some hope for us in that they'll no doubt continue having cyclical famines in the aftermath of the colonial era. On the other hand most of the other countries will keep moving ponderously to the right--capitalism dictates it--until there's a general collapse.