consumerism

There is enough food for every person on earth to consume 2500 calories a day, not including fruit or roots. It is odd that despite this fact there is still an overwhelming level of poverty in the world. The wealthiest 20% of the world receive most of the food in the world and spend huge amounts of money to purchase all this food. In order for the elite to live at the standard it does, the majority of the world must go without. Millions starve because the elite prefer death of the hungry to their own inconvenience. This situation is not easily remedied. First, people must begin to understand that they must eat only as much food as they need. Many would argue that they never have any leftovers and that all the food in their house gets eaten with little thrown away. This is good in the sense that food itself is not being wasted, but every American doesn’t need to eat as much food as they do. When a high percentage of people in this country are overweight and most people in third world countries are ghastly underweight and undernourished, then it is apparent that the citizens of this country must consume much less food. After understanding the issue at hand, Americans must then stop eating three to four meals a day and stop stuffing themselves at every meal. This would be hard to accomplish because this would mean making a sacrifice, which the rich already have big problems with, but also because the food-producing corporations would do everything in their power to stop this from happening. There is no market for these corporations in small third-world countries where they may have to sell their products at lower prices and no longer make astronomical profits.
On an anti-consumerism website, these chilling statistics are given to show that America and the world’s richest are destroying our planet rapidly. “The United States, which has 6% of the world's population, uses 30% of the world's energy supply. 20% of the worlds population, (in other words its wealthy consumer class), is responsible for over 50% of its 'greenhouse effect' atmospheric pollutants, 90% of its ozone-depleting CFC gases, 96% of its radioactive waste... and so on “(enviroweb.org). Many may say that the reason for these embarrassing statistics is because the United States is the largest industrialized nation in the world.