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)?
This has become totally pointless. I never disagreed that energy is the bigger greenhouse gas producer. I was just saying that because of the active and intentional effort by the oil industry to intertwine food production with fossil fuels, there would in fact need to be a massive shift in diet if we were to cut out fossil fuels entirely.
Meat as we know it today only exists as a byproduct of energy production. Can you at least agree with that?
My whole point from the start was that energy is the most important thing and matters much more than some measurement of "consumption".
Again, you haven't shown how food production is "intertwined" with a certain method of energy production. Yeah it uses some fossil fuels for non-energy purposes, but that's not stopping us from switching from fossil fuels for energy purposes. If the only fossil fuels we extract were for stuff like fertilizer and pesticides, that would be a major reduction in fossil fuels extracted, no?
Of energy, yes. Of the relatively small percentage of fossil fuels not used for energy, yes. Of fossil fuel powered energy by necessity, no.