3D Security Initiative

Pulitzer Prize winning author Jared Diamond poses provocative questions about the relationship between consumption and security in his recent New York Times article "What’s Your Consumption Factor?"

Diamond claims sharing the world's resources is key to a more secure future for the global community.

While others look at impending environmental collapse as a problem of over-population, Diamond examines the rate of consumption as the key problem.

Diamond states, "The average rates at which people consume resources like oil and metals, and produce wastes like plastics and greenhouse gases, are about 32 times higher in North America, Western Europe, Japan and Australia than they are in the developing world."

Much of the world's population currently has little impact on the environment. Americans consume 32 times more resources than most Africans, for example.

Diamond points out the social impact of this disparity: "People in the third world are aware of this difference in per capita consumption... When they believe their chances of catching up to be hopeless, they sometimes get frustrated and angry, and some become terrorists, or tolerate or support terrorists."

But there is hope. Current consumption patterns in the West are simply unsustainable, it won't be possible for everyone in the world to live at this level, nor for Americans to continue consuming as we now do.

More importantly, Americans need to realize that living standards are not tightly coupled to consumption rates.

In de-linking consumption with happiness and living standards, Americans might find themselves more secure and living in a world where others also have found basic human security.

-Lisa Schirch
January 12, 2008