One of the realities of politics is: there are some things you simply cannot admit in public. Certainly, one or more of Murphy's Laws must be at work here.
One of those realities is the real reason why President Quagmire started the latest Iraq War: American's Affluenza Infection. One of the things that makes us Americans is our need to constantly overindulge - in everything. We eat too much, consume too much, and waste too much .. and because of that, thousands of our soldiers are fighting and dying many thousands of miles from here. Gotta protect the American Way of Life, ya know.
I have a personal goal which includes a healthy dose of "Voluntary Simplicity" but I'm still a long way from there. I've grown past the phase where lifetime success is counted in the number of Things I own, and I've made serious attempts to orient myself to having better stuff, but less of it. The Affluenza film (mentioned above) really hit home for me. Americans comprise 10% of the world population yet consume 25% of its resources: eeeek!
Given the number of trade journals I prescribed at, I've made many trips to The Paper Recycler, and need to make many more. Most paper gathers dust if I don't process it (read it, convert the useful items to properly categorized note in my PDA, discard it) with a week or so of its arrival.
I've found the best thing to do is to recycle. Meaning: grind it up, and morf it into Different Stuff - whether that be a new magazine filled with advertisements prompting us to Buy More Stuff, or an egg carton. An egg carton: ah, one of the few things in life whose goal is simple .. to protect a dozen delicate chicken eggs long enough for us to consume them.
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I'm not sure that the 10%/25% argument is reasonable when you consider the plight of the poor around the world. These are not people who consume less because they are good stewards of the earth's resources. They consume less because they are unable to consume more.
The interesting question is why they are unable to consume more. The angst ridden liberal will say it is because we consume everything first, but that ignores the effects of the civil wars, despots, and ideologies (think China a few years ago and North Korea even today) which hold these people back.
The self righteous conservative will say that it is because God has shown us favor, or that we are intellectually or culturally superior to those other peoples. But that ignores the effects of our government policies (e.g. farm subsidies and trade policies) on the ability of other countries to improve their lot in life.
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