CONTEMPORARY WORLD

THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT

The Global Climate Change
• A strong scientific consensus supports the • including increased water stress and
fact that global climate change, also known food insecurity.
as “global warming”, is underway.
• Climate change is likely to lead to an
• Scientists have identified several key acceleration of human displacement.
contributors to it, including carbon dioxide
• Increased competition for land,
(CO2) emissions and other greenhouse
resources, housing
gases.
• Deforestation
• Increases in greenhouse gases are the
result of human activities, such as industrial • One of the biggest culprits for
processes, fossil fuel (coal, oil, and gas) releasing CO2 into the atmosphere.
combustion, and changes in land use (e.g.,
factory farming and deforestation) • Trees store carbon and, when they
are cut down, that carbon is released
• With global warming, communities are likely into the atmosphere. If it mixes with
to face a variety of challenges, including, oxygen, it creates CO2.
including increased water stress and food
insecurity. • FAO (2005) reports that global
deforestation had slowed down
• Climate change is likely to lead to an between 2000 and 2005. However,
acceleration of human displacement. deforestation was progressing at an
alarming rate.
• Increased competition for land, resources,
housing • Areas are deforested for a variety of
purposes, including commercial
The Global Climate Change
logging, clearing land for agriculture,
• A strong scientific consensus supports the and creating space for housing and
fact that global climate change, also known commercial developments.
as “global warming”, is underway.
• The removal of trees also results in
• Scientists have identified several key the destruction of the habitants of
contributors to it, including carbon dioxide thousands of animals and plants.
(CO2) emissions and other greenhouse
gases.
• Increases in greenhouse gases are the
result of human activities, such as industrial
processes, fossil fuel (coal, oil, and gas)
combustion, and changes in land use (e.g.,
factory farming and deforestation)
• With global warming, communities are
likely to face a variety of challenges,
•
ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS • The ozone layer in the upper atmosphere
filters out ultraviolet rays from the sun,
• Deforestation is also creating situations
which are harmful in large doses to most
where humans are making themselves
life forms.
more vulnerable to “natural disasters”.
• Ozone depletion refers to both:
• Higher occurrences of typhoons,
landslides, flooding • The slow decline of the total volume
of ozone making up the ozone layer
• In addition to serving as “carbon sinks”,
since the late 1970s.
helping to regulate climate, supplying
wood products, and functioning as place • A seasonal decrease in the ozone
of recreation, the Earth’s forests also layer over the globe’s polar regions
play a crucial role in conserving during the same period
biological diversity, playing host to
• Of the greenhouse gases, the
millions of plan and animal species.
chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are the
biggest contributors to ozone
depletion.
Based on UN Statistics:
• Without the ozone, the sun’s unfiltered rays
• Global forest cover was just under 4 billion
penetrate the atmosphere, killing marine
hectares in 2005, 36% of which were
plankton and leading to a host of other
classified as primary forest (old growth
problems, including skin cancer in humans.
forests).
• International efforts to reduce CFCs have
• Forests provide approximately 1.6 billion
been successful.
people with food, medicines, fuel and other
necessities; • The Montreal Protocol, which was
signed in 1987, and came into force
• Over two thirds of known land-based
in 1989, was designed to phase out
species live in forests;
the production of CFCs and other
• Approximately 8,000 tree species, or 9%, of ozone depleting agents.
the total number of tree species worldwide,
are currently under threat of extinction.
Oceans
• The latest deforestation rates are estimated
around 13 million hectares per year; a net • Climate change is also affecting the
loss of about 7.3 million hectares per year world’s oceans in a variety of ways.
2000 – 2005.
• Oceans play a critical role in CO2
• Deforestation is estimated to have been the absorption.
cause of 20% of annual greenhouse gas
• In fact, roughly half of all CO2 produced
emissions in the 1990s.
by humans has been absorbed by the
oceans.
Ozone Depletion • Because CO2 is acidic, it is changing
the pH balance of the oceans.
• Greenhouse gasses are not only causing
global climate change, they are also • Climate change is causing ocean
contributing to ozone depletion. sea surface temperatures (SST)
to increase.
 • As the temperature of the ocean increases, • Roughly 97 percent of all freshwater
scientists are concerned about the ability of potentially available for human use is
the oceans to store oxygen. in underground basins;
• Warmer oceans holds less oxygen • From 1950 to 1990, water usage has
than cooler water. tripled;
• According to scientists, this may lead to • The world’s population is expected to
“dead zones” – areas where there is not growth to over 9 billion by 2054;
enough oxygen for marine life to survive.
• And roughly one-third of the world’s
• Oceans population lives in countries that are
experiencing water scarcity;
• Of particular concern is the fate of coral
reefs. • By 2025, that number is expected to
increase to two-thirds.
• Reefs play a critical role in local economies,
both for what can be harvested from them
and for tourism.
• Water
• They also help to control storm surge, the
• Overuse and pollution are cutting into the
water pushed toward the shore by the force
limited supply of fresh water.
of winds.
• One of the sectors that uses the most water
• The wide variety of species that exist within
is agriculture, using roughly 65 percent of
a reef ecosystem has led to refer to reefs
all the water that is removed from rivers,
as the “tropical rainforests of the sea”.
lakes, and aquifers.
• Between 1968 and 2004, coral coverage in
• Another 22 percent is used for industry,
the Pacific had dropped by 20 percent, with
and 7 percent is used for households and
roughly 1,500 square kilometers of reefs
municipalities.
disappearing.
• In addition to overuse, pollution poses an
• The UN estimates that approximately 27
additional serious threat to the world’s
percent of the world’s reefs have already
water supply.
been lost.
• Overuse of pesticides, leaking
• Due to overfishing and
“lagoons” from factory farming,
sedimentation
tailings and other byproducts from
mining, and industrial and human
waste that seeps into ground water,
ONGOING
contaminating it.
GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGES
• Water
• Air Pollution
• Gaining access to clean water is
• Many urban areas are also wrestling with
increasingly difficulty for many people
the problem of deteriorating air quality.
around the world.
• Rapid urbanization, car exhaust, and
• Only 2.5 percent of the Earth’s water is
industry emissions have all contributed to
freshwater, and of that, two thirds is locked
declining air quality in major urban centers.
in ice caps and glaciers;
 • Ex-urban and rural areas are also feeling
the effects of worsening air quality.
• For instance, several studies that have
focused on Mexico City have found that
children who are “exposed to high levels of
air pollution experience chronic respiratory
tract inflammation, changes in inflammatory
• Disappearing habitat and species
mediators in blood and changes in brain
tissue”
• A Cornell study suggests that “air pollution
from smoke and various chemicals kills 3
million people a year.”
• Desertification
• Global climate change is projected to alter
some climates from wetter to drier while
others will move in the opposite direction.
• Already existing dry climates may get even
drier, and one contributor to this change is
desertification.
• Desertification is the process whereby a
desert expands and claims hectares of
previously arable land, rendering that land
useless for agriculture and human
habitation.
• Once a desert starts expanding, it is near
impossible to stop it.
• Deforestation is one component of
desertification. Without trees to hold topsoil
in place, nutrient-rich soil is blown away
and the desert sweeps in.
• In addition to deforestation, land
overcultivation, slash and burn farming,
overgrazing, and climate change all
contribute to desertification.
• As early as 1977, the international
community recognized the need for a
concerted effort to combat desertification.
• The 1994 promulgation of the UN
Convention to Combat
Desertification (UNCCD) came into
force in 1996. The Convention
establishes processes and
procedures for monitoring both
desertification and the various efforts
made at combating it.
• Global climate change has also been linked
to disappearing habitats and species
extinction.
• Between 1980 and 2006, roughly 112
species of amphibians had gone extinct.
• As of 2009, roughly 40 percent of all known
species of amphibians are threatened with
some level of extinction, according to
Vance Vredenburg, Professor of Biology at
San Francisco State.
• Researchers are busy trying to understand
the cause of the mass extinctions, but
evidence seems to suggest that they are
the result of a combination of factors,
including global climate change, use of
pesticides, invasive species, overexposure
to UV rays (resulting from a thinning
ozone), loss of habitat, and disease.
• One of the biggest threats to these species
is habitat loss.
• This occurs through pollution,
deforestation, desertification,
corporate farming, urban
development, introduction of
nonnative species, mining, grazing,
water development (damming rivers
and redirecting channels, for
example), and recreation.
• Wars, droughts, and population pressures
all create conditions that threaten reserves.
• Poaching and the sale of endangered
species has been so widespread that,
despite the best efforts of states and NGOs,
many endangered and threatened species
continue to see a decline in their overall
numbers.
 • According to the World Wildlife Fund, the
second biggest threat to species after
• Technology
habitat loss is the illegal wildlife trade.
• Pesticides
• Although pesticides have proven to be
effective in aiding with agriculture and
preventing the spread of vector-borne
diseases, they are also associated with
species decline and human health
problems.
• Pesticides come in a variety of forms,
including herbicides, fungicides, and
insecticides, and they are used daily to kill
insects, control parasites, kill unwanted
plants, and rid an area of rodents.
• Manufacturers and consumers argue that
the benefits are multiple and in some cases
lifesaving.
• Given that a large percentage of the
• Arms production and use
workforce in developing countries works in
agriculture, the ability to use pesticides to
protect crops from infestation is important to
many people’s livelihoods.
• On the other hand, the use of pesticides
has become an international concern as it
increases and as adverse, unintended
consequences are revealed.
• Roughly 5 billion pounds (2.27 billion
kilograms) of pesticides are being used
around the world annually
• Waste Production
• Waste production refers to “the production
of unwanted materials as a by-product of
economic processes.”
• While this is a very general term, we will
apply it here to several very specific areas
where environmental concerns have arisen
over the production and management of
waste products.
• The technology behind the industrial
economy has wrought extensive damage to
the planet, but technology also offers some
of the most comprehensive solutions to
addressing this damage.
• New technologies are developed to address
a particular set of circumstances arising at
a specific point in time.
• The consequences of this development
cannot always be predicted and thus we
may end up with unintended results that
prove hazardous to our health or to the
health of the planet.
• For example, the green revolution allowed
countries like India to produce enough food
to feed their growing populations.
• Arms production has had a catastrophic
impact on the environment.
• From nuclear testing above ground,
underground, and under the sea, to
chemical and biological weapons
manufacturing and destruction, the
production and use of arms have left behind
disastrous ecological consequences.
• Crafting strategies for the safe disposal of
waste from arms production has proven
challenging for many nation-states.
• For example, in the US there has been a
great debate over what to do with nuclear
waste.
• Because nuclear waste is highly
radioactive and will remain so for
many thousands of years, spent
nuclear fuel is inherently dangerous
to human health and to future
generations. Additionally, spent fuel
contains materials used to make
 nuclear weapons, which means it targets for waste sites because the poor
poses proliferation risks as well. and minorities within countries wield less
political clout than wealthy members of the
dominant culture.
• Miscellaneous Human Waste
• This is particularly true for indigenous
• One of the growing areas of concern for peoples, many of whom are intimately
environmentalists and governments is connected to their physical environment.
garbage.
• According to the ILO, “There are more than
• Human refuse, household garbage, and 5,000 different indigenous peoples living in
industrial waste are growing yearly and will some 70 countries in the world.
continue to increase as the population
• About 70 per cent of them are in
grows.
Asia and the Pacific, mostly in rural
• Currently, floating in the Pacific is what areas.
scientists refer to as “plastic soup.”
• They often lack control over land and
• In addition to the waste floating in our resources and face high levels of
oceans and washing up on our shores, discrimination and poverty.”
each year humans produce millions of tons
• In some cases indigenous peoples are not
of household, commercial, and industrial
given citizenship in the nation-state that
waste.
exerts its authority over them, making it
• Landfills and incinerators are the two main almost impossible for them to seek redress
strategies used to dispose of this waste. for harm.

• Each of these methods raises

environmental concerns. Incineration leads
POPULATION AND CONSUMPTION
to air pollution and the release of toxins,
while landfills also leach toxins into Population
surrounding soil and water.
• Projections and Statistics
• Communities near proposed incinerators
• In 1804, the world population reached one
and landfills often react strongly to having
billion.
these “in their backyards,” but government
officials have limited options when trying to • From 1927 to 1960, a period of just 33
figure out what to do with solid waste. years, the population increased from two to
three billion.
• The best solution is to recycle where
possible, but also to encourage less • It took an additional 14 years to reach four
production of such waste. billion in 1974, 13 years to reach five billion
in 1987, and 12 years to reach six billion in
October of 1999.
• Environmental Discrimination
• While the annual percent of growth is now
• The poor and minorities within countries declining, population numbers will
often feel the adverse effects of nevertheless continue to rise rapidly,
environmental degradation the most. reaching seven billion by 2012, eight billion
by 2025, and nine billion by 2040.
• It tends to be their land that is selected by
governments and corporations as easy
• Prior to the seventeenth century, population
growth was slow and unsteady, with periods of
growth followed by periods of decline due to
war, famine, and disease epidemics.
• Outbreaks of the Bubonic Plague, also
called the Black Death, for example,
occurred periodically from the mid-1300s
through the mid-1600s, killing anywhere
from 30 to 50 percent of the population in
Europe and the Middle East.
• By the middle of the seventeenth century,
however, outbreaks of the plague were on
the decline, death rates began to fall,
people began living longer, and the rate of
world population growth accelerated.
• Prior to 1750, global population growth rates
never exceeded 0.5 percent per year, and until
1930, they never surpassed 1 percent per
year.
• In many developed countries, this dramatic
growth, which included the post-World War
II baby boom, was attributed to significantly
improved health care and a concomitant
reduction in death rates.
• Population growth rates did not begin to
decline until other factors affecting birth rates
emerged, such as the widespread availability
and use of contraceptives and an overall shift
in family planning patterns emphasizing fewer
children.
• In less developed regions, such as
Southeast Asia and parts of Latin America,
we are only now seeing declining growth
rates.
• Declining birth rates in most of the world
have led to decreases in the rate of
population growth from 2 percent in 1971 to
1.3 percent in 1998, to 1.18 percent in
2008.
• By 2020, the growth rate is projected to reach
below 1 percent per year.
• But even at this reduced rate of growth, the
annual population change, or the amount of
people added to the planet each year, will
continue to grow significantly.
Fertility and Mortality
• Demographers, people who study population,
discuss population growth in terms of fertility
and mortality, or birth and death rates.
• Population growth, which is sometimes
referred to as the natural increase, occurs
when fertility rates are higher than mortality
rates.
• Fertility is influenced by both biological and
social factors.
• Biological processes affecting fertility
include the period of time between puberty
and menopause when women are able to
reproduce, while social factors include
marriage patterns, the age at which it is
considered culturally appropriate for people
to become sexually active, and the
availability and use of birth control devices.
• Although the global average number of
children per woman is estimated at 2.55 for the
2005–10 period, this average obscures the
differences in fertility rates among regions.
• Specifically, fertility rates in the developed
world are often close to replacement levels,
while fertility rates in much of the developing
world are much higher.
• During the 2005–10 period, for example, 45 of
the 73 countries with fertility levels below 2.1
children per woman are considered more
developed.
• In contrast, all of the 122 countries with fertility
rates above 2.1 children per woman are
located in less developed regions.
• Finally, of the 27 countries with fertility levels
that are at or above five children per woman,
25 are included among the world’s least
developed countries.
 Demographic transition
• The theory of demographic transition attempts
to account for these regional population
differences in economic terms, positing a link
between population growth patterns and
economic developmental stages.
• The “demographic transition,” then, is the
“movement of a nation from high population
growth to low population growth, as it develops
economically.”
• Stage one is made up of pre-industrial
countries with high birth rates and high
death rates. Death rates are high due to
factors such as famine and disease, while
birth rates are high in order to increase the
chances that children will survive into
adulthood. Because the death rate almost
completely offsets the birth rate, population
growth is static or low.
• In stage two, living conditions, food
availability, and health care improve,
resulting in a decrease in the death rate;
however, the birth rate remains high, since
children are viewed as both sources of
labor and caretakers for their aging parents.
Declining death rates and high birth rates
result in high population growth.
• In stage three, birth rates begin to fall due
to many factors, including access to
contraception, wage increases, better
education, child employment legislation,
and other urbanization factors that
decrease the economic value of children.
• Finally, stage four is characterized by both
low birth rates and low death rates, and
thus by low rates of population growth as
well.
Population Pressures
• Population and Poverty
• Many population analysts and social
commentators insist that the best way to
alleviate poverty in the developing world is
to control population growth.
• A more recent study of the relationship
between poverty and population growth
indicates that high fertility increases poverty
by slowing economic growth and “skewing
the distribution of consumption against the
poor.”
• The researchers estimate that, had the
average country in the group of 45 studied
lowered its birth rate by five births per 1,000
women during the 1980s, as had many
Asian countries, poverty would have been
reduced by a third.
• While population growth and poverty are
often linked, it would be a mistake to think
that population growth leads inevitably to
poverty.
• In fact, historically, the reverse has
frequently been true, as population growth
has often been correlated with economic
prosperity and population decline with
economic decline
• World Population Aging
• Population aging, “the process by which
older individuals become a proportionally
larger share of the total population,” began
in the twentieth century in more developed
countries and has now expanded to the
developing world.
• It is an unprecedented global demographic
trend that will affect every country in the
twenty-first century, though the pace of
change will vary.
• Population aging is the result of declines in
both fertility and mortality.
• In other words, we are both living longer
and having fewer children.
• Today, global life expectancy is
approximately 66 years, up a remarkable
20 years from 46.5 years in 1950–5.
 • By 2050, global life expectancy is projected
to increase by another 10 years to reach 76
years.
• The total number of older persons living on
• Urbanization
the planet tripled between 1950 and 2000
and is projected to triple again by 2050.
• However, by 2050, the proportion of older
people in developing regions is projected to
reach 19 percent.
• Population aging will have many social and
economic implications for societies around
the globe.
• Social benefits for longer periods of
time.
• Older people typically need more
health services
• Increased demands for long-term
care and increased medical costs.
• More people will be drawing upon
health and pension funds,
• Funds will be supported by a smaller
number of contributors.
• A heavier demand on the working
age population to maintain benefits
for the older population
• Declines in fertility may also result in
fewer family members for older
people to turn to for help and support
• Migration
• Migrants are people who have left their
homes for another.
• Some people migrate within their own
country, while others leave their home
country altogether. Various push–pull
factors influence individuals’ decisions to
migrate.
• Pull factors, for example, include the
promise of better living conditions in a new
country, while push factors include the flight
from violence, poverty, or oppression.
• Since the beginning of the twentieth
century, the largest migration flows have
been from rural to urban areas.
• This accelerating urbanization trend began
with the agricultural revolution, which
provided sufficient surplus food to sustain
people in towns and cities.
• Then, in the late nineteenth century, the
Industrial Revolution transformed working
and living patterns.
• Millions of people flocked to urban industrial
centers, putting increasing pressure on the
environment through pollution and
increased rates of consumption.
• The year 2008 marked the first time in
human history that more than half of the
world’s population was living in urban
areas.
• By 2050, global urbanization levels are
expected to rise to 70 percent.
• Many people will live in so-called
megacities, urban areas with more than 10
million residents.
• This dramatically increased trend toward
urbanization has profound implications for
patterns of population growth and
consumption.
• In many urban environments, residents
tend to be better educated and more
affluent; they are often in better health and
thus live longer than rural people.
• Although urban residents live on less than 2
percent of the world’s landmass, they
consume a disproportionate amount of
resources and contribute disproportionately
to global pollution when compared with their
rural counterparts.
 • Continued rapid urbanization is likely to transport, and agriculture would increase
exacerbate these consumption and productivity, as well as how economic and
pollution disparities in the near future. medical advances would contribute to
decrease in population growth.

• Consumption
• Costs of increased agricultural production
• Though we still must face region-specific
droughts, famines, and other crises, we • The shift to intensive agricultural production
must also confront the larger issue of the to feed more people has increased our
entire world’s carrying capacity, or the consumption of basic resources, such as
ability of the Earth’s natural environment to energy, land, and water.
sustain the human population.
• Some of our strategies for producing larger
• In the late 1700s and early 1800s, English amounts of food have been particularly
demographer and theorist Thomas Malthus problematic.
was one of the first to highlight the potential
• For example, the so-called Green
problems of population growth and
Revolution of the 1950s (which, despite its
unbridled consumption.
name, actually marked the advent of the
• In his Essay on the Principle of Population large-scale use of chemically based
(1798), Malthus argued that if population agriculture) was an effort by scientists to
growth remained unrestricted, our numbers engineer a limited number of improved
would increase geometrically (1, 2, 4, 8, strains of wheat and corn in order to
16 . . . ) while our food supply could only increase food supplies in developing
ever be increased at an arithmetic rate (1, countries.
2, 3, 4, 5 . . . ), thus creating a widening gap
• Initially, this proved to be a great success
between the number of people on the
because these strains yielded much larger
planet and the amount of food available to
crops than had previous grains.
feed them.
• These new strains, however, required much
• In short, he argued that people were poor
more water and fertilizers than the earlier
because there were too many of them and
ones.
not enough resources.
• As more farmers in the developing world
• Although he warned that our inability to
switched to these varieties, they incurred
increase our food supply at the same rate
greater and greater costs, as water grew
as our population would lead to drastic
scarce, and fertilizers, which are derived
levels of political and economic instability,
from declining petroleum oil reserves,
he also suggested that population growth
became more expensive.
would generally be checked by factors such
as famine, disease, and war. • The use of irrigation and fertilizers also
created favorable conditions for the growth
• Malthus’s theories have had a significant
of weeds, which in turn caused farmers to
influence on demographers ever since, and
seek out expensive and toxic herbicides.
his ideas have contributed to growing
concerns about the planet’s carrying • Overall, the Green Revolution proved a
capacity. costly disaster for many poor farmers and it
wreaked massive environmental damage.
• Common criticisms include his failure to
anticipate how advances in technology,
• Consumer culture
• Buying, selling, and accumulating are so
integrated into people’s lives in the
developed world that consumer culture may
seem to be the natural order of things or the
logical way that societies should be
organized.
• However, consumerism is not an innate
human trait and many cultures around the
world have discouraged the accumulation
of wealth.
• Even in nineteenth-century America,
moderation and self-denial were dominant
cultural values, and people were expected
to save money, purchasing only the
necessities.
• During this period, more than half of the
population lived on farms where they
produced much of what they consumed.
• By the early twentieth century, however,
American culture had changed.
• Merchants no longer waited passively for
people to buy goods when they needed
them; instead, increased attention began to
be paid to marketing and presenting goods
in a way that would make people want to
buy them, whether they needed them or
not.
• Business schools began to emerge at
universities around the country, teaching
people the fundamentals of marketing,
sales, and accounting.
• Governmental agencies, such as the
Commerce Department, were developed to
promote consumption.
• The consumer economy was also
advanced by the transformation of laborers
into consumers as businesses began
increasing workers’ wages. Later, the
expansion of credit introduced additional
buying power into the economy.
• Mortgages, auto loans, and credit cards all
became easier to acquire. With these
changes came changes in values from
frugality to fulfillment through spending.
• Today, financial institutions and
manufacturers, such as automotive
companies, have spread the pattern of
debt-based consumption around the world.
• Many argue that people’s lives, particularly
in the developed world, have been
dramatically improved by consumer culture
and the products it makes available – new
machines, medicines, foods, transport,
houses, and information and
communication technologies. There are,
however, important social and
environmental costs involved in what and
how we consume.
• Global Consumption Patterns
• The question “How many people can the
earth sustain?” is inextricably linked to
resource consumption issues.
• Although agricultural production and
exploding population growth rates in the
developing world are important concerns,
so too are the high consumption and waste
rates of the developed world.
• Resource consumption and waste
production rates are about 32 times higher
in North America, Western Europe, Japan,
and Australia than they are in the
developing world.
• According to UCLA geography professor
Jared Diamond: “The estimated one billion
people who live in developed countries
have a relative per capita consumption rate
of 32.
• Most of the world’s other 5.5 billion people
constitute the developing world,mwith
relative per capita consumption rates below
32, mostly down toward 1.”
• Each American consumes as many
resources as 32 Kenyans, for
example, and with a population 10
 times the size of Kenya, the US
consumes 320 times more
resources.
• The question “How many people can the
earth sustain?” is inextricably linked to
resource consumption issues.
• Although agricultural production and
exploding population growth rates in the
developing world are important concerns,
so too are the high consumption and waste
rates of the developed world.
• Resource consumption and waste
production rates are about 32 times higher
in North America, Western Europe, Japan,
and Australia than they are in the
developing world.
• According to UCLA geography professor
Jared Diamond: “The estimated one billion
people who live in developed countries
have a relative per capita consumption rate
of 32.
• Most of the world’s other 5.5 billion people
constitute the developing world,mwith
relative per capita consumption rates below
32, mostly down toward 1.”
• Each American consumes as many
resources as 32 Kenyans, for
example, and with a population 10
times the size of Kenya, the US
consumes 320 times more
resources.