Consumerism and the Environment

Will’s celebration of consumerism in America is more of his usual rubbish. He suggests that “contempt for consumer culture is generally an affectation of comfortable people addicted to the pleasures of condescension.” This from a man who wrote the book on condescension!

In focusing on the political and moral dimensions of consumerism, Will overlooks a troubling aspect of our consumer culture: the environmental dimension. As Murray Weidenbaum, a member of The Times Board of Economists, noted last year, “Fundamentally, it is the lifestyle of the average citizen that generates the demand for goods and services that give rise to pollution in its various forms.”

God help us if the whole world follows the American example of profligate living. While the American population represents about 6% of the world’s population, we consume over 30% of the Earth’s resources and are the major contributors to some of the planet’s most serious problems such as global warming and stratospheric ozone depletion. In using per capita energy consumption as a measure, Paul and Anne Ehrlich claim that “a baby born in the United States represents twice the destructive impact on Earth’s ecosystems and the services they provide as one born in Sweden, 3 times one born in Italy, 13 times one born in Brazil, 35 times one in India, 140 times one in Bangladesh or Kenya, and 280 times one in Chad, Rwanda, Haiti or Nepal.”

Will’s failure to see the big picture proves that Americans don’t have to be “dolts” to be manipulable. George, even intellectual giants can be suckers.

TIM LATTIMER

Long Beach