Dont be dense or do

On average, a person living in the United States consumes more of the planets resources than anyone living anywhere else on the planet. Scripts for calculating one's impact in terms of resource consumption abound. The ones I have seen ask if you live in the U.S. and then automatically boost your estimated consumption, which is, of course, patently unfair and probably reduces accuracy since the people checking their "ecological footprint" typically aren't SUV driving litter bugs, but cardigan wearing hybrid drivers.

On January 2nd, 2008 I read an op-ed in the New York Times.

What’s Your Consumption Factor? by JARED DIAMOND

This article throws around a lot of numbers and a lot of guilt. Basically Americans consume a ton of resources and live like kings relative to the rest of the world. The rest of the world hopes to live like us and some of these hopes are not unfounded (China and India). And, this state of affairs is leading to an environmental crisis.

I wouldn't disagree, but when Mr. Diamond states...

Real sacrifice wouldn’t be required, however, because living standards are not tightly coupled to consumption rates. Much American consumption is wasteful and contributes little or nothing to quality of life. For example, per capita oil consumption in Western Europe is about half of ours, yet Western Europe’s standard of living is higher by any reasonable criterion, including life expectancy, health, infant mortality, access to medical care, financial security after retirement, vacation time, quality of public schools and support for the arts. Ask yourself whether Americans’ wasteful use of gasoline contributes positively to any of those measures.

...then I feel the need to set the record straight. Let me show you some of my own numbers.

The total area of Europe and the U.S. is similar. 9.8 million square kilometers for the U.S. versus 10.1 million square kilometers for Europe.

However, Europe's population density is more than twice that of the US. 31(people?) per sq km versus 70 per sq km. Now that's funny, "per capita oil consumption in Western Europe is about half of ours". Perhaps we are driving twice as far (twice the gas consumption) as Europeans to get where we are going?

My point is merely that writing slightly misleading guilt-inducing op-eds to liberal audiences is not productive environmentalism. We know we are over-consuming and we are trying our best. We are carpooling. We are biking to work. Our houses are cold in the winter and hot in the summer. These are sacrifices. Don't patronize us by saying sacrifice isn't necessary, because it is.

I don't disagree that our standard of living is largely sustainable. I sure hope it is! I don't think that sharing a car to work with people you'd rather not talk to takes a very big slice out of your standard of living and I do hope that I can still play my video games without too much guilt over the impact from the spent electricity and the toxic chemicals used to make the electronics, but sacrifices ARE needed.

So, Mr. Diamond, I have some suggestions for your next environmental rant.

How about a comparison of awesome European public transportation versus largely crappy or absent public transit in the US? That could be productive if it lead to change in our transportation.

Or write about the hideous state of urban and suburban planning in the US that is inherently pro-car and anti-biker/walker. Yeah, that should change too.

And let's all not just read the articles and growl and shake our fists before checking our email, let's put our thoughts into action. Call your rep in Washington and let them know.

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