Americans rank dead last in sustainability (eco-friendly, buy, refrigerator, natural)
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^^ I recognize the survey described. I don't remember which of the survey panels I belong to sent this to me, but I was one of the 17,000 respondents. It was very VERY detailed, wanting to know every aspect of my lifestyle and attitudes concerning the areas described in the articles.
I wouldn't expect anything different, the U.S. simply has a higher standard of living. Two example from the first article:
Quote:
The U.S. came in last in the area of housing, due to larger residences, fewer residents per household and higher energy use, compared to developing nations. The finding was not an unexpected one. Gross domestic product per capita in the U.S. is 16 times greater than India's and eight times greater than China's GDP
Is this a bad thing? Just because a family of 10 in India is crammed into a 3 room house doesn't mean we should do the same. Understandably many houses in this nation are much larger than they need to be but I'll venture to guess the average living space for a family of four is hovering around 2000 sq foot. e.g 3 bedrooms, family room, dining room, kitchen, laundry, utility and 1.5 baths. That's not excessive, it's being comfortable.
Quote:
In the food category, Americans also ranked near the bottom, and consumed less locally grown food than any other country in the survey.
I'll eat whatever I can that is grown locally, the farmers market locally is great place to pick up fresh vegetables. I even have my own tomato plants started now but when there's a foot of snow on the ground and it's 20 degrees out in the dead of winter there isn't anything grown where I live. The fact I can go down to the store and pick up fresh vegetables in the middle of winter is not a bad thing, that's a good thing.
Although they don't specifically say it many of these article like this are almost suggesting we lower our standards to the rest of the world.
The issue here is not "standard of living", but waste of resources.
If you got the resource, then why not use it?
The problem is not water fountains in front of each hotel and each hotel being built like a palace.
But that those hotel palaces are located not in Florida or Maine, but in Las Vegas.
And then people crank up the AC in their room until its cold like a refrigerator in there.
For some reason most Americans simply refuse to utilize the resources they got and insist on living against the terrain and the environment they're in.
That's whats causing a problem.
A simple example is an Adobe house in the South West vs. an East Coast or PreFab building in the same environment.
The Adobe house can be as large as you want it to be, it'll still be energetically superior to the thin walled, tipped roof East Coast building or the likewise thin walled PreFab.
So just build your desert house the Adobe way and you can make it as huge as you want it to.
The biggest mistake of the environmental movement is that they keep telling people they have to lower their standard of living to de-facto 3rd world standards.
That's not just wrong from a scientific point, but its also utterly unworkable on the PR level.
Sometimes I think the environmentalists keep arguing like that exactly because they know people won't accept it. This way they can assure they're still in business for years to come...
Articles like this are designed to make Americans feel guilty. That won't work with me. I have a good standard of living and ain't about to give it up without a fight.
The top-scoring consumers were found in India, Brazil and China.
That's because they're so poor they couldn't buy anything even if they wanted to.
I'd be curious to know how many hundreds of millions of American dollars are sent, each year, in the form of "relief" to these "highly sustainable" countries. I also have to wonder just how "eco-friendly" cities like Bombay really are...
You can find other articles regarding the sheer # of people starving in both of those countries.
I suppose this could be considered ''conservation of resources,'' unlike America where the poorest people are the most obese.
Ironic, isn't it?
I've often looked at old school pictures - of American kids during The Great Depression. And there are NO FAT KIDS in those pictures! So apparently being poor isn't what makes you fat. Maybe it has to do with poor choices - specifically regarding what we eat.
Somehow, I just couldn't get myself all worked up about that.
In short, I couldn't care less.
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