Modern Westerners are often called consumers, as if the term were almost interchangeable with citizen or even human. And indeed, viewed from a distance, the most remarkable thing about American society might well be its high rates of resource consumption. Sometimes that consumption has been considered synonymous with "the American dream," and each quarterly increase in consumption levels or monthly rise in "consumer confidence" is heralded as good news. But increasingly, consumption is also being called into question as a cause of both environmental peril and social malaise. Many who worry about the Earth's future now view spiraling rates of consumption as being at least as important as further growth in human numbers.

Since humans, like all other forms of life, need to consume in order to survive, any discussion of consumption is necessarily relative-consumption as such isn't bad, but over-consumption may be. The average Westerner today consumes more than 100 times the resources of a person living 200 years ago at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. The greatest spurt in consumption has come in the years since World War II. The size of the world economy has quintupled in those decades, led by increasing consumption in the West. Consumer spending now accounts for two-thirds of economic activity in the United States, for instance.

The volume of our consumption is eye-openingly large: The average American accounts, by one estimate, for the equivalent of about 300 trash bags full of waste each week. Since we actually throw out only two or three bags on average, that means most of our consumption happens upstream, in the manufacture of items that we consume. Take just one example: The manufacture of an average desktop computer-symbol of our streamlined and modern society-requires more than 10 times its weight in fossil fuels and chemicals. But even our visible consumption is extreme. Consider the fact that the storage-locker industry is growing quickly in this country, despite the simultaneous increase in the size of our homes.

How is consumption divided around the world?
Roughly speaking, the richest quarter of the world's population consumes 75 percent of the world's resources. The United States, with 5 percent of the world's population, consumes more than 20 percent of the planet's resources, and about a quarter of its energy.

The rest of the world clearly needs to consume more than it does at present. In the 1990s, the one large effort to assess this need-the Brundtland Commission report on Global Economic Outlook-recommended that the world's economic output increase by five to 10 times in the next six decades in order to lift the world's poor into easier, healthier, and more secure lives.

Why don't we just follow that growth curve until everyone is as rich as Americans?
This is the business-as-usual plan for the future. But serious questions have emerged about whether the rates of consumption it implies are possible. The eco-statistician Lester Brown has calculated, for instance, the impact of potential increases in Chinese consumption. Since that nation's economy is now growing at a better than 8 percent annual clip, its citizens could expect to reach American levels of affluence by the 2030s. If they then own cars in the same numbers as Americans (three for every four people), they would add 1.1 billion automobiles to the world's current fleet of 800 million.

Eating an American diet rich in meat, milk, and eggs, the Chinese would consume two-thirds of the world's current grain harvest by themselves. Their steel needs would double the current level of Western consumption, and they'd use twice as much paper as the entire world at present. And, of course, right behind China comes India-whose population by 2030 will be even larger, and whose economy is growing at nearly 7 percent per year at the moment.

Figures like these have led an increasing number of scientists to calculate the "ecological footprint" of various populations. Not surprisingly, an American or Canadian requires lots of farmland, mines, and other land to support himself. And the inhabitants of London together have an ecological footprint equal to all the productive land in the entire United Kingdom. A 2005 study showed that, taken as a whole, humanity's footprint is 57 acres per person, while the Earth's biological capacity is just 41 acres per person. This ratio will only increase, of course, as consumption expands. Depending on whose calculations are used, if everyone on Earth lived at an American standard of living, we would need between three and 10 additional Earths to provide the necessary resources.

How does this connect to climate change?
Climate change is often viewed as the largest environmental problem we face, but it is deeply linked to consumption. All items that we consume involve some energy to produce, package, transport, advertise, and dispose of, and since most of that energy is derived from fossil fuels, increased consumption means increased production of carbon dioxide (CO2).

Most other forms of pollution decrease as we become wealthier-the chemicals that cause smog, for instance, can be trapped in the catalytic converters of automobile exhaust systems as soon as societies are rich enough to employ such technologies. But since carbon dioxide is an inevitable byproduct of burning fossil fuel that no filter really controls, its levels in the atmosphere consistently track economic growth. As Harvard economist Benjamin Friedman concluded last year, CO2 is "the one major environmental contaminant for which no study has ever found any indication of improvement as living standards rise."

Theoretically, more efficient technologies should be able to produce more goods using less energy, and indeed this is what has happened in the U.S. The "energy intensity" of each dollar of gross domestic product has fallen steadily for several decades. But the rate of economic growth has outpaced that increase in efficiency, meaning that even in America carbon dioxide production continues to rise at a steady one percent annually-a figure that the federal government predicts will persist through 2020.

So consider what would happen were China alone to use energy at an American rate. By the 2030s, when its individual income might equal that of America, China would need 99 million barrels of oil a day. Since the world currently produces just 79 million barrels per day, and many analysts are already warning of a situation known as peak oil, that may not happen. But the Chinese do possess large quantities of coal. At the moment, they are adding one coal-fired power plant a week to their electric grid, and even that is not enough to keep pace with demand. Were their coal burning to reach the current U.S. level of nearly two tons per person each year, the country would use 2.8 billion tons annually-more than the current world production of 2.5 billion tons. Anything approaching that number would render moot efforts to deal with climate change.

Are there other possible scenarios?
Though the American level of consumption is often touted as desirable (and by age 18, the average U.S. citizen has seen a million commercials, so it's easy to understand consumerism's grip on our imagination), other societies have devised different approaches. In Western Europe, for instance, even though productivity is as high as in America, the average resident has only one-half to two-thirds as much disposable income. This is because he or she trades much of that productivity for leisure time (working on average nine fewer weeks per year) and for public goods, like cheap access to higher education or health care. Because their disposable income is smaller, Western Europeans have fewer things: smaller homes, smaller cars that they use less often, and so forth. As a result, the average Western European uses about half as much energy as the average American-a very large difference.

Equally interesting is the fact that European levels of happiness or "life satisfaction" are consistently higher than those in the United States. In fact, Americans have seen steady decreases in happiness since the end of World War II-in precisely those decades when consumption levels have risen most dramatically. Economists and sociologists attempting to explain the phenomenon have said that much of the increase in consumption has come at the expense of social connection and community. The single biggest driver of consumption has been the construction of the suburb, with Americans living in ever bigger homes ever further apart from their neighbors. The number of close friendships, and of interactions with friends, neighbors, and relatives, has fallen even as the level of affluence has risen.

These statistics have inspired a small number of Americans to embrace the "voluntary simplicity" movement, and to try very consciously to replace material consumption with other activities and values in their lives-emphasizing, chiefly, an increased sense of community. This kind of analysis is beginning to enter the mainstream political and economic conversation, as Americans start to understand that more is not always better. The huge increase in obesity, for instance, has led many to conclude that Americans consume too many calories. By the same token, many surveys indicate that Americans believe their fellow citizens, in recent decades, have been consuming too much of everything else as well.

Related Resources

Related Articles Wal-Mart's Conscience Sustainable Handcrafted Dolls Business Budding Consciousness See All Related Articles

Related Eco Categories Transportation & Travel How to Guides Science & Technology Top 10s

Topics Recycling Gadgets & Products Business Alternative Energy Saving Money

Tip of the Day Install a Low-Flow Showerhead Trick-Or-Treat on Your Feet See All Tips

Glossary Pollution credit Global warming Drywall Indoor air quality Vegetable dye Full Glossary

Site Resources Directory Answers Quizzes