We all contribute to the global economy and use the Earth’s natural resources. So, given this shared existence, what is one person’s fair share of created wealth and of the Earth’s resources?
Environmental Impact: Our daily lifestyle choices are critical in creating sustainable communities. Our past individual and institutional (corporations, governments, etc.) choices have done much to alter the ecology of the planet. Tragically, much of this damage is done without much thought, awareness or reflection.
Estimates show that the global North – with only 25 per cent of the world’s population – accounts for more than 80 per cent of the world’s consumption of natural resources and generates more than 75 per cent of the world’s municipal and industrial wastes. This level of consumption is creating environmental damage to the point that guarantees that these same resources will be exhausted/destroyed for future generations.
We consume too much, and much of this consumption is related to wasteful practices (so many cars, poorly insulated homes, eating large amounts of factory farmed meat, etc). We can do more to make sure our lives are more respectful of others, the environment, and future generations.
Our environmental sins include climate change, overuse of toxins, mining, industrial agriculture and wars.
Economic Fair Share: So, you are one of 7 billion people on Earth. We all depend on the same natural resources and environment. We are all part of the same economic system. We are connected to future generations, and their needs. So what is our fair share to consume?
Economically, the people of this planet have a combined GDP (Gross Domestic Product is the market value of all final goods and services produced within a country in a given period of time) of $74 trillion – or $10,500 per person. So what’s one person’s fair share of global annual income?
This question of “fair share” does raise other interesting questions about social justice:
– Some economists estimate that 60% of a person’ income level is determined by where one is born, and an additional 20% is determined solely by how well off one’s parents were. What responsibility comes with this privileged gift if born with these advantages?
– Do race, nationality, wealth give us unearned benefits and harm others? How how we participate in diminishing this harm?
– What role does your country’s relative economic and military power have in your own ease of earning money? In what ways has your government used this power to get (coerce) more favorable trade deals with other countries? What’s the cost of this power imbalance to other workers, and how is that related to your economic comfort? How did previous exploitation/theft (think Spanish taking gold and silver, US slavery, etc….) enrich our country/families and give us advantages over other peoples? And what would our hourly wages be in the US without such a power differential?
– Given the global power imbalance, can we say the money we earn is acquired fairly, or do we need to recognize that our access to resources may be dependent on others poverty?
– How much does this economic exploitation and failure to fully develop global human potential (through education, good nutrition, health care), diminish economic and cultural output, and increase damage to the environment?
– Finally, in what ways does our lifestyle (through purchases and taxes) support the maintenance of an unjust system by increasing the power of corporations and governments that are maintaining the unjust status quo? We didn’t create this exploitative – of the Earth and people – system, but we can decide what relationship we have with it going ahead.
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