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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
We should all support less imports from China.
China is the worst environmental disaster ever!

[/quote]

American consumers are the worst environmental disaster ever. No one put a gun to every American's head and asked them to keep buying "stuff", whether they can afford or not.[/quote]

Ok, so let’s NOW reduce our made in China slave labor trade. Why not?

Better late than never....[/quote]

Not gonna happen. We are addicted to buying things and our economy is driven by consumerism. If we stop buying our economy will collapse. So we are stuck in a cycle of consumption. Its like riding a tiger. If we stop, the tiger will consume us.[/quote]

I often hear this line of argument but it strikes me as being irrational and detached from reality. Consumption is simply deriving incremental utility/enjoyment out of some good or service that you've purchased. Consuming is what gives value to the activities of an economic system. Every person consumes, some more than others, and in general there is a linear relationship between consumption and quality of life. It isn't somehow more virtuous to consume less.  Every developing country in the world desires to consume more in order to improve the quality of life. Note that environmental conservation is also a type of consumption - people desire a better environment and work towards technologies which contribute to that goal, and there fore wind farms, solar energy, and etc.

There is nothing wrong with consumption in and of itself. [/quote]

Consumption for our needs is one thing but consumption for our wants is what kills the earth. The resources are finite and if all 7 billion consumes like greedy Americans there won’t be much of anything left and the world will fail to address climate change. [/quote]

But you discount the fact that our consumption gets more efficient with time - less waste, less energy, less manpower to produce one unit of consumption. And we’ve become incredibly adept at recycling previous units of consumption. We are more efficient at all points in the value chain.

-A liberal Democrat [/quote]

What you say maybe true BUT the consumption increase is many multiple the efficiency of modern production. So it simply outstrips any efficiency gains. [/quote]

That would be a great point, if true. But what we do see is that even as the US consumers consume more products and services, it takes *LESS* energy to supply those products and services:

[b]https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Julian_Morris3/publication/324064513/figure/fig6/AS:667795524165642@1536226268658/US-ENERGY-CONSUMPTION-AND-CO2-EMISSIONS-PER-UNIT-OF-GDP.png
[/b]

And as a consequence of more efficient energy usage US greenhouse gas emissions are *FALLING* even as consumption has increased:

[b]https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/styles/large/public/2019-04/us-greenhouse-gas-emissions-economic-1990-2017.png
[/b]

Again, capitalism and consumerism contributes significantly to improving efficiency and reducing our impact on the environment. I want to acknowledge once more that there is "government regulation" in this pie, but only where necessary. 
[/quote]

All that is fine but the US per capita consumption is still the highest by a mile. Imagine if everyone wants to consume at the Same level in ROW, and that’s what we are seeing today. The US should set good precedent NOT consumerist precedent that everyone wants to follow. A great nation should set a great example for others to follow. We are setting bad precedent in everything: selecting a conman by slavery era EC to needlessly big homes to BIG SUVs to conspicuous consumerism to poor public transit. An educated and smart people are supposed to think for the society and future generations NOT me me me shortsighted selfishness. It is sad. [/quote]

Once again, consumption is strongly correlated to quality of life: countries with higher quality of life will consume more by definition. Saying that the US per-capita consumption is the highest is not saying much beyond that the US has a high quality of life. By the way, the US does not have the highest consumption "by a mile". You can check the per-capita rankings here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_household_final_consumption_expenditure_per_capita

I don't understand why you think consumption is bad. I agree it has become somewhat popular among impressionable youth to criticize consumerism as it is an idea supported by socialism and Marxist thought.  It feeds into their sense of rebellion, to be counter-cultural. So edgy, so exciting! [/quote]

Consumption will be more by $ amount because things are expensive in Europe even though Europeans consumes lot less. That is not a good measure at all.

Let us take carbon emissions/capita in which US is the leading emitter among large countries. If a county like Qatar with tiny population emits a lot per capita it is insignificant in global scale because of their tiny population.

https://cotap.org/per-capita-carbon-co2-emissions-by-country/

It is not true that countries with higher income consume the most because there are other factors like tax, subsidies that affect consumption. Western Europe is as rich as the US but their per capita consumption is lot less because they work to reduce emissions unlike the SUV driving Americans. Europeans also use public transit, get a big portion of their electricity from renewables and nuclear energy.

So the US is not a torch bearer when it comes to carbon emissions and infact we are the worst culprit since we are the only ones that pulled out of paris summit. [/quote]

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