The American Dream

This post is going to require a bit of work:

1) go to: http://assets.panda.org/downloads/living_planet_report.pdf
2) then go to page 21
3) on this page you'll see figure 22

What you're looking at is a graph which plots human development index (HDI) on the x-axis, and ecological footprint on the y-axis. HDI takes into account literacy, education, GDP per capita, and life expectancy. Naturally, one would expect that the greater a nation's development, the greater its ecological footprint. And surely that is what we see here.

However, what I find amazing in this chart, is how wide the spread of data is amongst the developed countries. For example, of the nations that are above the 0.8 development index, the Latin American countries seem to be the most sustainable, the Europeans next, and much much higher up (i.e. greater ecological footprint) is Australia, Canada, and the US. In fact, Cuba is the only nation that actually falls within the WWF (that's World Wildlife Foundation - not wrestling federation!) sustainability box - that is having a high HDI, but a low ecological footprint.

Which begs the question - why are we North Americans leading development projects, when we clearly don't have nearly as much of a clue what sustainable development even looks like compared with the rest of the world? Why aren't we seeking to learn from Cuba, other Latin American nations, and European nations to find out how it is they are achieving higher sustainability scores without compromising their economic development?

I've heard many people and articles theorize "how horrible the world's environment is going to be when China and India become fully developed". I think this graph illustrates well how much closer we need to first look at ourselves and consider whether we might adopt some changes by learning from more sustainable nations - before sensationalizing potential future risks posed by other countries. Rather than using environmental concerns to legitimize the poverty and underdevelopment of other parts of the world, let us instead seek to deligitimize our own excesses by first acknowledging how obscene we are in our consumption here in North America.