Is There a Moral Level of Consumption? (and there's a quiz!!!!)

[Karmadillo]

You have to read the article to find the link to the quiz. It gives you an idea of the size of your footprint on the planet and just how sustainable (or, as is likely, unsustainable) it is. Add a global population of 10 billion to the rapidly approaching peak oil production and you begin to wonder whether a 7.2% rate of GDP growth is indicative of economic health or terminal economic cancer.

http://www.counterpunch.org/jensen10302003.html

Can Big Houses and Global Justice Coexist?
A Moral Level of Consumption?
By ROBERT JENSEN

Whatever arguments one might want to have about the pace of global warming and toxic waste accumulation, about the rate at which humans are degrading the earth's capacity to sustain life, about how long before our current way of living destroys the planet -- one thing is beyond contention:

If all the people of the world consumed at the level of the typical middle-class American, the game would be over tomorrow. The earth cannot sustain 6 billion people living as we live in this country. Over the long term, our society is unsustainable, and in the short term our society can continue only if people in other parts of the world are consuming far less.

More than a fifth of the world's people live in abject poverty (under $1 a day), and about half live below the barely more generous standard of $2 a day. That means that at least half the world cannot meet basic expenditures for food, clothing, shelter, health, and education. The sources of poverty, like the causes of most social/political phenomena, are complex. But at the heart of worldwide inequality today is the continued economic domination of the underdeveloped world by the developed world -- with U.S. trade, foreign, and military policy square in the center of that system of domination. It is that system which allows us to consume as we do, and it is that system which helps keep the poor of the world poor.

This kind of realization is not confined to "radical environmentalists" or "leftist revolutionaries." Consider the recent judgment of World Bank President James Wolfensohn: "It is time to take a cold, hard look at the future. Our planet is not balanced. Too few control too much, and many have too little to hope for. Too much turmoil, too many wars, too much suffering."

more...

[rdfi-defi]

1. thanks for posting this

it is high time we " take a cold hard look at the future."

[newyawker99]

4. Hi rdfi-defi!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[ramblin_dave]

2. I need 8 planets, and if I cut back to the bare bones

that I think I could tolerate I would still need 3.5 planets.

[EdGy]

3. I'm at 3.5

but if I tried a bit could probably cut back to 2...

[Zorra]

5. Thanks, great post. I scored 4 (1 earth)

and don't see how I can go any lower on the scale unless I become a total vegan.

Link to quiz:

http://www.myfootprint.org/

[Greyskye]

6. Great link!

I'm at 3.2 planets. Need to see what I have to do to cut that down!

[HFishbine]

7. Wow!

2.8 Earths here. Would probaly be less if I weren't a carnivore.

[Karmadillo]

8. Jensen wrote "Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to

the Mainstream"

You can kind of see he practices what he preaches. He presents a fairly radical argument very persuasively. I haven't read his book, but it sounds well worth a look. Here's the Amazon link (there's a brief excerpt available, but it took several years for it to load on my dial up connection):

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0820456519/qid=1063546594/sr=1-4/ref=sr_1_4/104-7682319-0563156?v=glance&s=books

And here's an excerpt from the only reader review so far:

<edit>

Jensen combines the rare insight of an ex-journalist, an activist and an academician to tell the inside story of mainstream journalism. What Chomsky and Herman tell us on a macroscopic scale in their propaganda model finds real world microscopic explanation in Jensen's work. Yet, the book is not big on theory, its primary focus remains actual dos and don'ts and how-tos of journalism. Several examples of journalistic pieces Jensen has written and gotten published add to the utility and power of the book.

The book is useful for anyone, though the reader is assumed to be a radical throughout. Whether you are a burgeoning activist looking for practical guidance on whether, how and where to write and publish, or an experienced intellectual looking for ways to write in simple, clear and comprehensible journalistic style, this is the book for you.

A pleasant aspect of the book is Jensen's candid style that is a reflection perhaps of his radical ideology. He forcefully claims that 'any one can write' and that his success as a journalist is not due to a special gift. Journalism is a craft, and anyone can learn it.

On Edit: Fixed subject field to reflect the book he wrote and not another book he didn't write. Duh.

[bicentennial_baby]

9. 2.8 planets

Could be better, could be much worse :-)

[BiggJawn]

10. If i moved to a cardboard box in a large city, ate manure, went naked...

and shunned all transport that required machinery (human powered or not) I MIGHT get down to one earth, instead of 6. There is NO mass transit in my little town, I fly 2X a year on business, and I'm not a Vegan.

So the inferrence here is that I'm "immoral" in my consumption? Boy, I'm really rolling in it, y'know...No DSL, no Dish network, No cable, a pre-paid cellie, no yacht, no Harley, no "4-wheeler", no SUV, even though I could justify it by virtue of the main highway closing down at LEAST 2 days every winter...

In fact, I "massaged" my numbers, and if:
I was a 65+ year-old Vegan living with 7 others in a 500-sq-foot freestanding shack w/no electricity or running water.
And if all my veggies were local.
And if I never threw anything away.
And if the climate was like Phoenix, in a city of 1,000,000.
And if I never traveled by machine,

THEN I'd get by on 1 earth.
Never mind that I'd feel pretty miserable running around in just a "penis sheath" munching on termites....


I think this quiz is pre-freeped.

[Karmadillo]

11. Kick

n/t