It is racist though . its "Scientific racism"

It literally equates every human life as using the same resources or polluting the same amount

Americans are 5% of the population yet use up 20% of the worlds energy

The biggest polluter in the entire world is not even a country but the US military

With less than 5 percent of world population, the U.S. uses one-third of the world’s paper, a quarter of the world’s oil, 23 percent of the coal, 27 percent of the aluminum, and 19 percent of the copper,” he reports. “Our per capita use of energy, metals, minerals, forest products, fish, grains, meat, and even fresh water dwarfs that of people living in the developing world.”

He adds that the U.S. ranks highest in most consumer categories by a considerable margin, even among industrial nations. To wit, American fossil fuel consumption is double that of the average resident of Great Britain and two and a half times that of the average Japanese. Meanwhile, Americans account for only five percent of the world’s population but create half of the globe’s solid waste.

Americans’ love of the private automobile constitutes a large part of their poor ranking. The National Geographic Society’s annual Greendex analysis of global consumption habits finds that Americans are least likely of all people to use public transportation—only seven percent make use of transit options for daily commuting. Likewise, only one in three Americans walks or bikes to their destinations, as opposed to three-quarters of Chinese. While China is becoming the world’s leader in total consumption of some commodities (coal, copper, etc.), the U.S. remains the per capita consumption leader for most resources.

Overall, National Geographic’s Greendex found that American consumers rank last of 17 countries surveyed in regard to sustainable behavior. Furthermore, the study found that U.S. consumers are among the least likely to feel guilty about the impact they have on the environment, yet they are near to top of the list in believing that individual choices could make a difference.

Paradoxically, those with the lightest environmental footprint are also the most likely to feel both guilty and disempowered. “In what may be a major disconnect between perception and behavior, the study also shows that consumers who feel the guiltiest about their impact—those in China, India and Brazil—actually lead the pack in sustainable consumer choices,” says National Geographic’s Terry Garcia, who coordinates the annual Greendex study. “That’s despite Chinese and Indian consumers also being among the least confident that individual action can help the environment.”

On average, one American consumes as much energy as

o 2 Japanese

o 6 Mexicans

o 13 Chinese

o 31 Indians

o 128 Bangladeshis

o 307 Tanzanians

o 370 Ethiopians

The average American individual daily consumption of water is 159 gallons, while more than half the world's population lives on 25 gallons.

Americans eat 815 billion calories of food each day - that's roughly 200 billion more than needed - enough to feed 80 million people.

Americans throw out 200,000 tons of edible food daily. While 250 million people have died of hunger-related causes in the past quarter-century roughly 10 million each year (that just shows that Americans dont really care about "famines".

Each person in the industrialized world uses as much commercial energy as 10 people in the developing world. The poorest 10% accounted for just 0.5% and the wealthiest 10% accounted for 59% of all the consumption.

Why are we focusing on the United States? Because it consumes far more energy than any other country -- more than China and Russia put together. Just five percent of the world's population consumes 23% of its energy! That's really extravagant! Imagine if you wasted five times more gasoline as your neighbors... or five times more food... or produced five times more garbage. Your neighbors wouldn't be very happy! Yet, that's what we're doing.

How much energy does the average American consume? Well, if you list the countries of the world in order by their population (as we've done in the graph above), the U.S. comes in third... but the combined energy consumption of the other five largest added together doesn't match U.S. energy consumption! In other words, the 5% of the world's population that lives in the U.S. has more environmental impact than the 51% that live in the other five largest countries.

Next time you hear about a woman in India who has seven children, remember that she'd have to have more than 20 children to match the impact of an American woman with just one child. And an immigrant who moves to the U.S. is likely to consume far more energy just by moving here. Even if he scrimps and saves energy at home, every thing he buys will increase consumption of energy and other resources.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/american-consumption-habits/

https://public.wsu.edu/~mreed/380American%20Consumption.htm

And SHUT THE FUCK UP about how overpopulation is a myth or whatever and it’s racist and blah blah blah.

It IS racist, because 99% of the people who bring up overpopulation never bring up overconsumption (which is an exclusively white problem).

Also, it is overconsumption by white countries that LED to overpopulation in the rest of the world, partially as a defense mechanism (if countries like India didn't overpopulate they'd be US clay by now)

Also, 99% of the people who bring it up accuse India or China or whatever of being overpopulated, despite the fact that the West has approximately 1.2 billion people as well (only slightly lower)

The point you're making isn't racist

But in any case it doesn't matter, because these braindead takes are made by braindead neolib/neocon white hero worship boys who think that history is decided by enigmatic Harry Potter Abe Lincoln characters, instead of raw physical and demographic realities.

It took Europe like 700 years to come CLOSE to recovering from the Black Death (that's why they still have slightly less people). US overpopulation isn't going to be a problem for several more centuries at the minimum

seethes with this disgusting happy little goodie two-shoes energy. I wanna punch every bitch who believes this shit in the face. This take needs to be wiped from existence. Fuck off Matt Yglesias, you dumb bitch.

go off king