According to EarthTrends, it is not unreasonable to expect the nations with the highest per capita income to use the most resources on our planet. figuring consumption can be a bit tricky, but we take intop consideration the monetary expenditures, the amount of recycling, and money spent in the services sectors.

According to EartTrends’ study, it is the industrialized nations that use the most resources. This is only natural, as industry consumes a lot of resources and contributes the most pollution to the atmosphere. Here’s how it breaks down:

Low Income Countries spending 783 billion dollars annually equals less than 3% of public and private consumption in 2004.

Medium Income Countries: spending $4,537 billion dollars annually, approximately 17%.

High Income Countries: spending $22,187 billion dollars annually, approximately 80%.

These figures were released in 2004. It shows that the United States accounted for 4.6 percent of the world’s population and 33 percent of global consumption–more than $9 trillion U.S. dollars.

This begs the question - if monetary figures alone are responsible, how accurate is this value? Remember that a country with high income always has a strong service sector, providing significantly greater consumption. The average American, for example, consumes around twenty times more meat and fish and sixty times more paper, gasoline, and diesel than the average person in India. And all this means more pollution.

It takes education to make us realize what our monetary habits do to our planet. No one, I think, wants to return to a simpler, plainer life. Life just has too big of a habit of getting in the way, and there are too many distraction. I, for one, am leaning more and more towards a vegetarian diet. My reasoning is simple. It greatly reduces the carbon footprint of my activities on this planet. I am not overly concerned about the treatment of animals led to slaughter as I am to the pollution created. And in the final analysis, that is where it is at…

Drive on,

Charlie~

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