Lifestyle and responsible consumption

"Religious institutions are better suited than other forces in our society to encourage us to make necessary changes since "they are the only institutions left that understand some goal other than material progress and endlessly rising material affluence."

~ An Interview with Bill McKibben, Earth Letter, Sept. 1998

The ecological Golden Rule

We're all familiar with the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. As we're making some of life's daily choices with respect to people we meet, this rule often puts things in perspective.

The ecological equivalent of this rule is:

Each generation should meet its needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.

As we make our lifestyle choices, this is a good rule to keep in mind. For the last few decades, the lifestyle choices we have been making have been compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs!

The American lifestyle

The "ecological footprint" is the biologically productive area needed to produce the resources you use and to absorb the waste you generate. The average American uses 24 acres to support his or her current lifestyle. In comparison, the average Canadian lives on a footprint 30% smaller (17 acres), and the average Italian on a footprint 60% smaller (9 acres). You can calculate your own individual ecological footprint at:

http://www.earthday.net/footprint/index.asp or at http://www.lead.org/leadnet/footprint/intro.htm

North Americans comprise only about 5% of the world's population, but according to the Consumer's Guide to Effective Environmental Choices published by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) we consume about

Compared to the average citizen of Bangladesh, Americans on average consume 106 times as much commercial energy. Even compared to other industrialized countries, Americans consume more. We consume twice as much fossil fuel as the average resident of Great Britain, and 2.5 times as much as the average Japanese.

We consume over 3.25 pounds of meat each week - 1.5 times as much as the average Briton or Italian and more than 2.5 times as much as the average Japanese.

We produce a corresponding amount of waste. The typical American discards nearly a ton of trash per person per year, two or three times as much as the typical Western European throws away.

The leading consumption-related environmental problems, according to the UCS's Consumer's Guide are air pollution, global warming, habitat alteration, and water pollution.

It's important to educate ourselves and the members of our congregations about how our current lifestyle is affecting the earth, the rest of the world, and future generations. Additional resources are The Center for a New American Dream and the Affluenza videos.

Here are some interesting articles about these issues.

Responsible consumption at church and at home