Most of the people I know, even if they have some issues with American capitalism, think is seems to work pretty great at "creating wealth" (these are all middle-class white folks, fwiw). They look at their relatively spacious houses, abundance of cheap consumer goods, two cars, etc and think yeah, this is all pretty great, thank you capitalism.

What I've tried to impress on them is a.) this wealth is due in no small part to exploiting workers in the global south, and b.) this wealth is also do to unsustainable exploitation of the environment.

So assume that this data is accurate - that we are using up the equivalent of 5 times the resources of earth. Current US annual GDP per capita is about $65k. Does this data mean that about 80% of this GDP or $52k is based on unsustainable exploitation of the environment? That what they attribute to the miracle of capitalism is really just ripping everything we can out of the planet? I get that GDP /= consumption, but I feel on a national level is near enough to make no difference. And even if 5X is high... say it's only 2X after making various adjustments. That still means HALF of what we attribute to capitalist wealth creation isn't about capitalism at all, just unsustainable greed (which is, of course, definitely capitalism)?

  • Gay_Wrath [fae/faer]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I doubt this is based on GDP. I went to the site - https://www.footprintcalculator.org/ and it's based on ecological footprint.

    Most of the things on those footprints are out of the consumer's control - if there is no public transit you cannot abstain from driving. If there is no access to renewable energy, you consume what you are given, and the consumer cannot control how far the food must travel to get to them.

    However, it's worth noting here that India has the highest percentage of vegetarians on the planet and only 17% of their energy is renewable. Considering a quarter of global emissions come from food and half of those from animal products, it's no surprise that a hundreds of millions of people refraining from putting dead bodies in their mouths contributes to a lower emission footprint.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46459714

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_meat_consumption

    Amerikkka is right up at number one that list with 98 kilograms of dead animal/person, then next is aussie with 94. Russia's sitting at 60 kg of dead animal, Germany at 88, and Switzerland at 74. India is at the bottom with 4 kg/person.

    I'm sure that's not the only reason Amerikkkka's is so high and India's is so low but it does impact things significantly the scale is having to raise and kill trillions of animals for millions of people.

    http://css.umich.edu/factsheets/carbon-footprint-factsheet

    Food accounts for 10-30% of a household’s carbon footprint, typically a higher portion in lower-income households. Production accounts for 68% of food emissions, while transportation accounts for 5%.