The article by Eric Sundheim published on November 14, “Increase the size of our carbon footprint,” embodies the essence of pride in American overconsumption as a standard of living. I think that feeling grateful is appropriate, but so is a degree of guilt. Not guilt for the sake of guilt, but in the form of recognition that the American way of life is absurdly excessive. We are the richest country in the world and we adamantly defend our way of life, trying to keep others from partaking in it.

The whole debate on immigration is basically centered on this issue – the people who want to stop immigrants from coming to America are threatened by the potential for those immigrants to take away from their piece of the proverbial pie. The more people there are in this country, the more people striving for lives of overconsumption, the harder it is for Americans to protect that way of life.

I guess you could call me an environmentalist, although I am not entirely sure how comfortable I am with that label, but I have no problem admitting that “the energy-intensive lifestyle that is responsible for global warming is also responsible for our prosperity,” as Eric said. I don’t think anyone would deny that fact. But I will go right ahead and attack that prosperity.

Eric, I take offense at your assertion that the only “environmentalist” objection to drilling for oil in the Alaskan Arctic Reserve is the caribou. First of all, calling it a “worthless piece of land” clearly shows a level of crass ignorance. How can you marvel at “pressure showers” and “vacuum cleaners” but not a rich, unique wildlife habitat that houses a variety of species, like moose, polar bears, grizzly bears, wolves, 20 species of fish, and, yes, caribou (about which environmentalists supposedly “whine and moan”)? Just because you have no appreciation whatsoever for anything that is not man-made does not mean the Alaskan arctic is devoid of value. Have you ever seen a glacier? It’s a pretty amazing sight.

Furthermore, saying that we can “easily and cheaply extract profitable goods” from Alaska, referring to oil, is another example of your ignorance and over-simplification of the issue of energy. Energy security is a huge issue right now, but that does not translate into saying we should simply try to get whatever small amount of oil there is in Alaska. In order to achieve energy security we need to switch to renewable sources of energy, away from non-renewable fossil fuels. So drilling in Alaska is just an attempt to hold on to a fuel of the past. It’s time to look to the future, which is NOT oil.

The guilt I feel over our prosperity is not because it is at the expense of caribou, the “poor creature mentality” as you call it. It is because all over the world there are people struggling to survive, starving to death while we pile up our plates at the buffet and throw away what we don’t eat. Your reference to Democrats and welfare programs suggests that this is not something you care about. You are so wrapped up in enjoying the “benefits of complex, industrial, capitalist societies” which you claim you deserve, that you don’t seem to notice the immense suffering of millions of people, not only in our country but all over the world.

Just some quick statistics – about 37 million US citizens (12.7%) were living below the poverty line in 2004. The poverty line for a family of four people is calculated at $19,157. Do you think those 37 million people are able to enjoy the advances of capitalism the way you are? Would you be so proud of our society if you were one of those people? Another fact: about one third of all children under the age of five in developing countries are underweight. About 820 million people in the developing world are undernourished. Hmm, I guess it’s alright that they’re starving to death because America was lucky enough to have the Industrial Revolution.

You tout the fact that cheap energy has freed up time to pursue medicine. While I agree that we have made some pretty amazing advances, I am constantly struck by American greed in the field of medicine – we are more concerned with making Cialis, while about 1.2 million people (mostly children) die annually from malaria in Africa; a fact that could be very easily alleviated if pharmaceutical companies made more of an effort to distribute malaria drugs. Unfortunately they don’t because the market for malaria drugs (poor Africans) is not so profitable.

You say that the Industrial revolution made things such as treatment plants for contaminated water, but industrial production continues to be an enormous contributor to water contamination. Seems a bit paradoxical to me to praise the wonders of industrial expansion for supposedly being able to reverse the damage it created.

Overall, I was shocked by the extremely self-centered, American-centric view you expressed in your article. Please tell me if I have misread what you wrote, but I am saddened and worried by the thought that this is the kind of thinking of Americans, especially an educated Wash. U. student. My main point is that environmental concerns are real (global warming has been confirmed by the IPCC, a panel of expert climatologists) and they are not trivial. Using American overconsumption as a reason to not deal with the problem of climate change is not only selfish but I would even say immoral.

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