179 comments on Money Talks
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179 comments on Money Talks
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A simple question I often consider is who is a better true environmentalist:
A. A poor person who doesn't think about environmentalism in their actions
B. A wealthy person who is a strong environmentalist and tries very hard to be environmentally friendly.
I've done a little research on this and through a few questions about what people eat, where they live, how far they commute to work, where they go on vacations, etc. I have to say that Person A almost always has lower carbon emissions than Person B. And it's not even close.
The other major driver is where people live - people who live in small towns or large cities do a lot better than folks that live in the suburbs or even rural areas.
Glenn -- I strongly agree that most "poor" people have a smaller ecological footprint, whether they know it or not, whether they care or not.
We relatively wealthy ones not only breathe and consume food and water like the poor, but our power plants and cars and the huge infrastructure we require inhales an enormous amount of oxygen and exhales a huge amount of waste.
The infrastucture that we relatively wealthy folks require for our "normal" lives soaks up resources and spews out toxins so that each one of us is a large behemoth roaming the earth with consequences we have not been much aware of until lately.
It would be interesting to show the relative environmental impact of those we consider to be "poor" with the "top" 20%, "top" 5% and then the "top" 1%.
One person living sustainably could be seen as 1 standard unit of measure. A poor person might consume/slough off more or less than this, depending. But then what about the people who are "middle class" or "upper class" or "very rich"?
It is a worthwhile point to ponder.
There's more to environmental protection than carbon emissions, though. Wholesale destruction of habitats, slaughter of various species (sometimes just for sport or boredom, like destruction of the passenger pigeon), overuse of soil - that is also a consequence of poverty).
You are still probably right, but there's more to consider. What I hope for is not a return to the past, but a future with a declining human population, but one living in better situations with more space and resources for the rest of life on this planet.
Our population needs to decline. That's the bottom line.