Another holiday season is over. Many of us have spent the last few weeks consuming--food, gifts, beer, eggnog, caffeine, Prozac, you name it.

It's a patriotic thing, consumption. After the September 11 terrorist attacks drove the economy from the toilet to the septic tank, President Bush urged Americans not to be afraid--of spending. To drive that point home, in October he took Washington Mayor Anthony Williams out in the District of Columbia for a pricey steak dinner.

The need was especially great in Florida, where the local economy depends on the lavish spending of plane-hopping tourists. The governor, Jeb Bush, reiterated his brother's call to action: "We need to respond quickly so people regain confidence and consider it their patriotic duty to go shopping, go to a restaurant, take a cruise, travel with their family. Frankly, the terrorists win if Americans don't go back to normalcy."

The way everyone is speaking, you would think that not plunking down $3 for that creamy Starbucks latte is communism. Consumer spending accounts for two-thirds of economic activity, we are reminded. If people aren't going out and buying goods and services, the economy falters, and the evildoers win.

We're not just talking about going to the store and buying a loaf of bread. We're talking nonessential, excessive, bust-a-hole-in-your-debit-card spending. That's really what will send the American economy soaring during these lean times. Never mind that credit card debt has reached record levels in this country, or that personal savings rates were nearing a seventy-year low even before September 11.

It's the American way, consumption. It keeps our country strong and prosperous. It also says quite a bit about our national blind spots. We should not forget, after all, that the United States can consume precisely because most of the world cannot.

Consider this: It takes about four to six hectares of land to maintain the consumption of each person in a high-income country. But for each person in the world there are only about 1.7 hectares of productive land.

What this means is that Americans are able to buy their lattes, drive their SUVs, and trot around the globe precisely because people in large parts of Africa, Asia, and Latin America do not. The extra burdens we place on the environment are invisible to us, in part, because our trade with lower-income nations allows us to expropriate their resources. Not only do we benefit from the lack of consumption in these countries (which leaves their resources available for our use), but we also benefit from having our manufacturing done in their plants--keeping the environmental costs of our production out of sight and out of mind.

"It becomes abundantly clear that if the earth's sustainable natural output were shared equally among the earth's present population, the needs of all could be met," writes David Korten in When Corporations Rule the World. "But it is equally clear that it is a physical impossibility, even with the most optimistic assumptions about the potential of new technologies, for the world to consume at levels even approximating those in North America, Europe, and Japan."

It's a nice system we have set up, for the ease of our consumption. One could even argue it has helped developing countries. After all, as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) points out on their Web site, international trade has brought industry, jobs, and greater prosperity to places like East Asia, transforming that region "from one of the poorest areas of the world" only four decades ago to an area of dazzling economic growth.

But regardless of how quickly East Asia grows, its citizens will never be able to achieve the "quality of life" that, say, North Americans, Europeans, and Japanese enjoy. If they even came close to our levels of consumption, the whole world would suddenly face massive shortages in timber, fossil fuels, clean water, and other essentials. The wonderful prices that Americans enjoy when they fill up their gas tanks, stock up at the supermarket, or keep their lights on at night--these would all evaporate, as increased worldwide demand drained available resources and sent prices soaring. There simply aren't enough resources to go around. Either Americans will have to start consuming less, or the rest of the world will never be able to consume much more.

And therein lies the rub: Our very way of life--our very love of consuming--implies that other people do not share in our prosperity.

Which brings me back to my original point: Should we consume more, for the good of the country? It makes perfect economic sense, as two Bushes repeatedly tell us. (Perfect sense, that is, if you're not like the average American family, drifting in a sea of personal debt.) But does it make sense in terms of the limited resources of our environment, or our cherished ideas of fairness?

As far as the environment is concerned, the answer must be a resounding "No." Americans already consume way beyond their means. We need to cut back. We need to start using resources at a fraction of our current rate--at a rate that would not necessitate staggering poverty in other countries to balance out the environmental costs of our irresponsible consumption.

The Bush administration's withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol was a step in the wrong direction, unfortunately. The 1997 treaty commits industrialized nations to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, which are believed to cause global warming. It would have bound the United States, the producer of one-fourth of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, to cut its emissions by 7 percent in about a decade's time. But the administration pulled out of talks in March, abandoning the European Union, Japan, and Russia. "I will not accept a plan that will harm our economy and hurt our workers," Bush said. Also in March, Bush backtracked on a campaign pledge to impose limits on carbon dioxide emissions from U.S. power plants. Again, he said the regulation would be too costly, in light of the energy crisis that hit California and other parts of the country last year.

The economy is sacrosanct in American politics, and no elected leader, Democrat or Republican, is willing to do anything that would harm it--much less slow down its rapacious growth. But as we put increasing strains on the environment--and as the rest of the world realizes the prize they pay for our prosperity--we will have to come face to face with a troubling reality. The unbridled economic growth that we expect is not patriotic. It is not logical. It is not good for our relations with other countries. And it is not good, ultimately, for our own quality of life.

That troubling reality escapes us, for now. Today we are like New Year's revelers, high off our binging, heedless to the consequences. Tomorrow we will wake up, head in our stomachs, and the rest of the world will have to clean up our mess.

This month in Inthefray, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bob Keeler writes about his post-Vietnam conversion, from an "unquestioning servant of the nation's foreign policy" to a peace protestor. One of the lessons he learned through his long process of discovery, Keeler says, is that Americans desperately need to know more about what happens beyond their borders. Recent events have only reaffirmed that wisdom: "These times are so perilous that we can no longer afford the option of failing to study what our nation is doing in our name," Keeler writes. "We can't settle for slogans, for mindless flag-waving, for barroom rooting for swift victory, without thoughtful analysis of what happened to make September 11 possible."

Those are difficult words to say during these times of high emotion. But they need to be said. To meet the challenges that now face us, we will have to find common cause with the people of other countries, especially those in the developing world. We will have to get beyond the narrow interests of our class, culture, and country, and learn to be a team player on the global stage.

As things are now, we give the world far too many reasons to hate us. Let's hope that in this new era we will have the courage to pursue responsible growth, and to become responsible global citizens.

Victor Tan Chen
Editor, Inthefray.com
Boston

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When Corporations Rule the World By David C. Korten | Kumarian Press | 2001 (second edition) Purchase this book through Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble

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