On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 1:51 PM, Jim Devine <[email protected]> wrote: > BTW, it is not "quite obviously true" that the average American > consumes too much. No empirical proposition is obviously true. It's > only in math and logic that a proposition is obviously true -- and > even then it's true only given the validity of its premises.
Alright if you insist: http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/trends/us/ This is a statistic I pulled off a quick Google search. I am sure you can find similar statistics for your preferred measure. > Others might argue that it's "quite obviously true" that people in > India of China pollute too much, contributing to global warming, etc. > out of proportion to their consumption levels. That's not obviously > true either. No, India China don't pollute as much as the West, in absolutely terms and certainly not in per-capita terms. They are very probably over-populated, as in it'd probably be unsustainable to decently feed, cloth, house and educate such a large population in the longer-term, but that's a different story and we can argue over whether the best way to reduce the population of these places to sustainable levels is a temporary binge of over-consumption to eliminate poverty. Maybe, maybe not. I don't have all the answers.. If what you are saying is every national group probably has a part to play in creating a more sustainable world, I agree on that. One of the part the West needs to play is to tackle its over-consumption. -raghu. -- Never say, "Oops!"; always say, "Ah, interesting!" _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
