Did you know that if the entire world lived like Americans we would need 4.1 earths? Even though we make up 5% of the world’s population we still use 20% of the world’s energy, eat 15% of the world’s meat and produce 40% of the world’s garbage. That’s insane! To have only 5% of the world’s population produce almost half of its waste. It think it says a lot about how much excess there is in the united states and no one really seems to notice. In fact a lot of people seem to always want or “need” more. I think it’s sad that we can never truly be satisfied and because of it we pollute the air we breathe, poison the water we need, contaminate ecosystems, and destroy habitats. Below is a chart that shows how many earths we would need if we lived like other countries:

It is a little nice to know that we aren't the worst but 2nd isn't something to brag about. I do find those figures crazy. I do agree that many Americans "need"/want more and more and as a result we have a lot of excess stuff that really is a waste. Although all the stats are insane I think our top priority is to cut down on our garbage. We need to start recycling, repurposing, etc. everything that we can.

This is so tragic, and it is made even worse by the fact that the presidential candidates don't seem to think environmental issues are very important. For the first time in 24 years, climate change wasn't mentioned even once in a presidential debate. Depressing

Holy Cow! It is so sad to see that 5% of the earth's population could use up so many resources. I am actually extremely surprised by numbers provided for China because it is the largest country in terms of population and it is currently quickly developing, and still, according to the figure, if the whole world acted like China, it would use only slightly more than the Earth could provide. I guess we can take some sort of comfort that we are not #1, but let's hope that one day we will learn to use what the earth has provided us humbly, rather than taking all that we can.

I did not watch the debate but I'm shocked that they did not talk about climate change. I know there are a lot of important issues out that (our economy being one of the major ones...) but we should be talking about it more and more considering it is getting worse. It should be one of the very top issues considering it is where we live.