[MCN] Excerpt from my most comprehensive article on the climate crisis

[Lance Olsen]

Nevertheless, some advocates have put the onus on corporations by stressing that individuals and households can’t do it alone. Derrick Jensen, for example, points out that households can “only” reduce national carbon footprint by  22 percent <https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/cornelisse14/files/2014/12/Jensen-2009-Orion-Magazine-shorter-showers.pdf>.

That’s true enough, but it doesn’t get individual consumers off the hook. Who would recommend falling short by as much as 22 percent?

Which brings us right back around to the reality that some households are well-off enough to do a lot more spending on consumption than others. This fact doesn't hand us a simple dichotomy of rich nations and poor ones. It holds about equally true within rich nations, including the US. 

As Business Week reported in its November 21, 1994 issue, “The gap between high- and low-income families has widened steadily since about 1980, hitting a new high every year since 1985.” The upshot is that, even within the US, there’s been a growing inequality in how much consumption people can afford to give up without feeling unnecessary and unreasonable levels of pain.

This leaves the rest of America responsible for holding the heat at livable levels  by cutting back on consumption.  Especially in the US, this is likely to be the third rail of climate politics. What politician can dare to tell comfortable, well-off voters they need to learn to get by with less? 

We have yet to see American, Chinese, European or other politicians echoing the 2012 WWF message that, “We have only one planet and the time has come to transform our present lifestyle and consumption patterns. <https://www.footprintnetwork.org/content/images/article_uploads/China_Ecological_Footprint_2012.pdf>" 

Instead, former US president George H. W. Bush had already declared in 1992 that “The American way of life is not negotiable.” 

End excerpt. Full article here:
https://mountainjournal.org/why-rising-temps-mean-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it <https://mountainjournal.org/why-rising-temps-mean-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it>


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Half the world's richest 1% live in the United States - Jan. 4, 2012
https://money.cnn.com/2012/01/04/news/economy/world_richest/index.htm <https://money.cnn.com/2012/01/04/news/economy/world_richest/index.htm> <https://www.google.com/search?q=%2434%2C000+1%25&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS737US737&oq=%2434%2C000+1%25&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.27159j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#> <https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:hBEabNzxQO8J:https://money.cnn.com/2012/01/04/news/economy/world_richest/index.htm+&cd=11&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us>
Jan 4, 2012 - The United States holds a disproportionate amount of the world's rich people. It only takes $34,000 a year, after taxes, to be among the richest 1% in the world. ... The rest are mainly scattered throughout Europe, Latin America and a few Asian countries.

We're All the 1 Percent – Foreign Policy
https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/02/27/were-all-the-1-percent/ <https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/02/27/were-all-the-1-percent/> <https://www.google.com/search?q=%2434%2C000+1%25&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS737US737&oq=%2434%2C000+1%25&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.27159j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#> <https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:yapyloaVjVoJ:https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/02/27/were-all-the-1-percent/+&cd=10&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us>
Feb 27, 2012 - But the global average is about a fifth of that. So by global standards, America's middle class is also really, really rich. To make it into the richest 1 percent globally, all you need is an income of around $34,000, according to World Bank economist Branko Milanovic.


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