"Our personal consumption in the U.S. is already in overdrive. It's now equal to 70% of our GDP (about double that of China and nearly a third more than that of Canada)."
This is a nonsense claim. GDP is defined as consumption + government spending + net exports. It doesn't seem obvious that increasing the relative share of government or exports would do anything for the environment.
The URL I followed brought me to a interesting blog post with good but speculative discussion about the perspective of 'hackers' vs 'greenies' on mass consumption.
Did you really flag this link because somewhere within it there is a link to a PDF that includes unreliable sources? That's a pretty tough standard! :)
It would be great if he can confirm so.
I didn't have bandwidth for the video, so downloaded the PDF and scanned it as I had time.
If I missed the point of the article, doh! I was relying on the other comment.
The article itself is good, and you might enjoy it. I skipped the video, which is probably flawed in the ways you suggest. But maybe you could unflag the interesting link to the response in the meantime? :)
I'm not trying to be harsh -- I'm sure the video is of high quality -- but when you say things like "In 2003, humanity’s Footprint exceeded the Earth’s biological capacity by over 25 percent" or "In the past three decades, one-third of the planet’s resources, its ‘natural wealth,’ has been consumed" there is certainly room for debate about these things.
Debate which probably doesn't belong here.
Flagged.