This article emerges out of a number I tossed out in a posting on Facebook a day or two ago, suggesting that the average American would need to consume something on the order of 5% of the resources they presently consume (collectively) if their standard of living were to be equalized with the rest of the world’s population without destroying the planet’s ecosystem (i.e., how much less would we need to consume for the rest of the world to be able to consume an amount equal to what we do).
A friend asked me where I got that number from, and I’m somewhat embarassed to admit (since I’m such a data driven person) that I can’t actually recall at this point – I did the math in my head a while ago. I did some research for real numbers, mostly searches and reading on ecological footprint figures, as I vaguely recall basing the calculation on something along those lines; at this point, while the 5% number may actually have been based on some other metric entirely, the footprint metric seems the most reasonable one to use for the purpose of discussion.

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