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The Forum > Article Comments > Consumption dwarfs population as main environmental threat > Comments

Consumption dwarfs population as main environmental threat : Comments

By Fred Pearce, published 22/4/2009

A small portion of the world's people - those in the affluent, developed world - use up most of the Earth's resources.

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I love all this Western guilt trip stuff!

So if I live in Mauritius, strip farm the forest until there is none
left and have 11 kids, that is not a problem. But if I live frugally
in the West, even peddle to work, I should be on a guilt trip.

If I live in Africa and shoot the wildlife in the forests, as it
is far easier then having to farm livestock to produce meat, that
is clearly not a problem.

If I live in Ethiopia and have 10 kids, and burn every tree in sight
for firewood, I should rejoice, for I am not part of the problem.
If I get hungry, I will simply dangle another starving baby in
front of the Western tv cameras and hey presto, across the horizon
come boatloads of food! Sheesh, I might as well throw the old
leg over and get her pregnant once again, all guilt free and cost
free. Those Western suckers will sort it out.
Posted by Yabby, Wednesday, 22 April 2009 2:09:49 PM
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As with most of this well meaning stuff the views in the article are the exact opposite of what is actually happening - at least on a local level. Who remembers the Aral Sea in what was the Soviet Union? The Soviets managed to virtually destroy it along with its eco system and large fishing industry through gigantic cotton growing projects that wasted most of the water. Western economies have done strange things but the Soviets still take the prize for the biggest piece of local, environmental destruction.
The list goes on. Most of the deforestation of the Amazon basin is in fact due to indigenous slash and burn type agriculture, and nothing to do with giant western corporations. The Burmese government sells off as much of its teak forests as it can, without giving a rap about the environment, and I need hardly detail China's pollution record.
Once countries get to a certain stage in per-capita income, its citizens start to worry about the environment and start to clean it up. The best thing we can do for environment, before its too late, is to get the developing world up to Western income standards.
But what about the carbon footprint? Those who believe that stuff are in for a shock in a couple of years when scientists seeriously start to abandon it, as they will have to if current temperature trends continue.. look up Hadley if you don't believe me.
Posted by curmudgeonathome, Wednesday, 22 April 2009 5:54:23 PM
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The Redefining Progress site has the environmental footprints of most countries as calculated in 2006. (Environmental footprint is a way of expressing total consumption in notional hectares of land.) The global average per capita footprint is about 22 hectares, already above the sustainable capacity per person, while the US footprint is 109. This leaves an average footprint of 18 hectares for the rest of the world. Now lets assume that all those 300 million high consuming Americans didn't just consume less, but were raptured up into the sky, leaving all their resources to be shared among the rest of the world. This would raise everyone else's average footprint to 23 hectares, an average standard of living equivalent to that in Argentina. However, the global population is growing at 1.3%. Assuming no increase due to the bonanza, and ignoring further environmental deterioration, peak oil, the pumping dry of aquifers, etc., it would take only 20 years of population growth at 1.3% to bring the average footprint back down to 18.

A previous poster has noted that population growth in the developed countries (partly due to momentum from past high fertility, but mostly due to immigration now) has been ignored. US per capita energy consumption has been quite flat for more than 30 years and is less than it was in the 1960s. See

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/pdf/pages/sec1_12.pdf

Increases in total consumption are entirely due to population growth. This graph shows growth in US population by natural increase and immigration since 1970

http://www.numbersusa.com/content/learn/about-problem/our-lost-future.html
Posted by Divergence, Wednesday, 22 April 2009 6:04:57 PM
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Aahahahaha Wow, that changes things. At a glimpse I thought the title of this article was something about the consumption of dwarfs being an environmental threat. My bad. Thought I missed something in our evolution somewhere.

Moving on.
Posted by StG, Wednesday, 22 April 2009 7:00:03 PM
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In defence of the USA, maybe you have to have a society as rich as the theirs so you can have so much excess money around to pay for all the advances in technology.

Medicine, electronics and science of many fields as well as a manufacturing high tech base like no other, no one is even moderately close.

The whole world wants US technology and medicine, the great consumers, but at the same time wants to hate them for being great consumers with a large ecological footprint, so ungrateful.

I don't see countries with small ecological footprints contributing as much or even a fraction of what the US does.

So maybe we need some new equation that recognizes that you need to get to that huge "super size" so you can generate technologies everyone wants, despite their supposed moral revulsion no one seems to refuse US technology.

They are the worlds great producers of life saving medicines and technology - let them have their consumption as a "thanks" from the rest of the world who contribute bugger all but whine a lot.
Posted by rpg, Wednesday, 22 April 2009 8:03:48 PM
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Guilt trip? The absence of over consumption=poverty? Talk about selective, binary reactionary thinking. Gentlemen please disagree by all means but lets have a debate not simple gain saying. The written equivalent of stamping your feet and saying it isn't so because *I* SAY so. Followed by what?

Neither the author nor I were saying advocating either. The article acknowledges that too many people is bad he simply gives PERSPECTIVE and OBJECTIVITY and FACTS to the debate on global damage, poverty and one of the reasons why there are so many refugees.
Enlightened self interest would support my contention to give the people positive reasons to stay home makes more sense that punitive actions. Consider 7 years transportation for trivial offences. Desperate people do desperate things.
NB the argument of selfish over consumption by 7% stands independent of AGW
One could ask where are the COUNTERING FACTS. Even scanning Plimer's Book there are underlying assumptions that are highly debatable. His is geologist's perspective.

As for the argument that it's in our nature to over consume perhaps that's true but should we then sit back ad do little simple thereby confirming that affluence= greed, obesity, selfishness, indifference, unacceptable and destructive pollution etc.
Even the dissenters on Yale 360 are far more reasoned.

I watch with bemused trepidation as the economy goes down the pan largely because of greed and unsubstantiated self fulfilling opinion(fear). Then hear people whinge because they have to economise or can't afford a holiday O/S this year or that THEIR decision to buy a McMansion is coming back to bite them! I feel for their pain but considering the above then comparing it to their plight with that of the so despised refugees .
Omar Kyam said it best “I wept because I had no shoes until I met a man with no feet”
Having experienced my share+ of setbacks I wonder at the lack of perspective being expressed here
Posted by examinator, Thursday, 23 April 2009 9:09:05 AM
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