Consumption….All Roads Lead Back to Kyoto

Before yesterday morning the number 32 didn’t have a lot of meaning. According to economists, the number 32 is significant in a number of ways:

“To mathematicians, 32 is an interesting number: it’s 2 raised to the fifth power, 2 times 2 times 2 times 2 times 2. To economists, 32 is even more special, because it measures the difference in lifestyles between the first world and the developing world. The average rates at which people consume resources like oil and metals, and produce wastes like plastics and greenhouse gases, are about 32 times higher in North America, Western Europe, Japan and Australia than they are in the developing world. That factor of 32 has big consequences.”

- Click here to read the full article by Jared Diamond at the New York Times.

The population is rapidly increasing, this is something that we are all aware of. Diamond has us examine the issue of consumption. The Kenyans are more then 30 million people, but their consumption is so low that it hardly affects the world. Other developing countries have a much more high-consumption lifestyle (i.e. China and India)…which is even scarier if they reach American consumption rates.

Posted by Liz