“The population in developing countries is growing, but since they consume so little, it’s not a burden on the world. The real burden lies in the consumption of the one billion people who live in developed countries, who consume and produce waste at 32 times higher than in developing world. If the entire developing world were to catch up, world consumption would increase eleven-fold….We can solve the ecological crisis when all countries agree to converge on consumption rates considerably below the current highest levels….A real world problem is that each of the 300 million Americans consumes as much as 32 Kenyans. With ten times the population the United States consumes 320 times more resources than Kenya does” says Jared Diamond in his essay “What’s your consumption factor” .

The fact on the ground is not “if the developing world were to catch up…” but rather the developing world is catching up.

The race for increasing GDP’s and per capita incomes is now in its very advanced stage. The increase in GDP that defines the productivity of the nation is inversely related to the productive capacity of individuals. As the GDP increases the mass of unemployment people also increases which is a measure of the decrease in the productive capacity of an individual.

Jared Diamnod’s question “what is your consumption factor?’ has a deeper dimension in production. The consumption factor is a product of a production paradigm which perpetuates consumerism in order to perpetuate itself. The large majority of individuals and families enjoy the benefits of increased productivity of technology that is they enjoy goods for the production of which have they have contributed no effort. Societies in the past were called affluent when a few enjoyed the goods produced by a large majority, today an increasing goods are produced my machines. These goods get to a large number of consumers who have no contribution to the production process. Thus the economy has ever expanding service sector. The more appropriate question therefor is what is your production factor?

The core of the consumption factor is not just that people consume, more important is that they have become consumers because their productive capacities are progressively decommissioned. People work in the service sector ever more. There are several people today in different parts of the world who know that the milk comes from machines! When some of them see a cow being milked it is an experience-they have never before seen anything like this. We only receive what we consume; we know not how it and where it is produced, we progress only to be distanced from productive activities.

This is the core of mechanisation and mass production.

The neo-liberal economy carries this to an unprecedented scale, it aim is to an absolute decommissioning of human productive capacity replaced by technological productive capacity-the most advanced form of which is artificial intelligence robotics.

The most useful thing that consuming less *now* does is to prepare Americans for the day when they have no choice but to consume less.

It’s certainly not “impossible” for other countries to catch up to America. The American elite have nothing left but a war machine, and the world is unifying against that machine as we speak. The American government will be defeated soon, the “American multinationals” will simply move out of the country (as Halliburton has already done) and the American people will be left to pick up the pieces and build a new society.

America as we know it is on it’s last legs. Which is mostly a good thing, but it will have repercussions none of us yet understand.

Please see what some people have to do to put food on the table:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=F8IClxpuWyA

Did anybody notice the weather in the middle part of the United States the last few days. Get use to it. No don’t get use to it we need to start using our minds fight back. Britney Spears how is she doing. Can Dr. Phill help her what does it all mean. What does O’Reilly think, I mean Oh really. We have to start using our minds.

By the end of the century, according to Lovelock, global warming will cause temperate zones like North America and Europe to heat up by fourteen degrees Fahrenheit, nearly double the likeliest predictions of the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations-sanctioned body that includes the world’s top scientists. “Our future,” Lovelock writes, “is like that of the passengers on a small pleasure boat sailing quietly above the Niagara Falls, not knowing that the engines are about to fail.” And switching to energy-efficient light bulbs won’t save us. To Lovelock, cutting greenhouse-gas pollution won’t make much difference at this point, and much of what passes for sustainable development is little more than a scam to profit off disaster. “Green,” he tells me, only half-joking, “is the color of mold and corruption.” James Lovlock

Now what Lovelock just said what are the chances he’s right. If you would have talked with scientists only two years ago they would say 30 years to start getting carbon levels down. Ask them today 8 to 10 years. The data from the summer of 2007 was a real eye opener to say the least. There is still time but it has to be a total focus.