National G Study find Americans are least poor

Yep, out of all of the nations surveyed, we buy the most new stuff and use the most energy.

Technically, the focus of their study was to determine how "green" various nations are, but instead, they basically just put together an inverse ranking of GDP per capita.

If you're poor, you repair stuff instead of buying new. You only buy what you need. You buy basic items with as little processing as possible. And you don't use very much fossil energy, because fossil energy is expensive. Some goes for clean water.

I just wish we were all poor enough to make this world a better place.

This is my favorite line:

"Consumers in Brazil, Russia and Mexico increased their Greendex score the most, when compared to last year’s results."

Maybe Nat G failed to notice this, but Brazil, Russia, and Mexico are amongst the countries most strongly impacted by the recent economic mess. Remember the riots in Mexico over grain prices last year? Neither does Nat G. They do strongly approve of the decrease in wanton tortilla consumption, though.

A useful study of relative greenness might consider what efforts are made to reduce the impact of consumption. Such as smokestack scrubbing, water management laws, portions of land that are permanently off limits to use. All things that the US has led the way in developing.

Any study that puts China's "foggy" cities and India's exploding population of grinding poverty on the #1 and #2 pedestals as examples to follow is 100% bad for humanity.

The link.