Trends and Facts
“A city is successful not when it’s rich but when its people are happy.” — Enrique Pe–alosa, Mayor, Bogotá, Colombia
“Consumption in the world’s richest countries can take a great but often hidden toll on distant peoples and places.”
“Everything we consume or use—our homes, their contents, our cars and the roads we travel, the clothes we wear, and the food we eat—requires energy to produce and package, to distribute to shops or front doors, to operate, and then to get rid of.”
The rise in international food trade and the proliferation of heavily processed and packaged foods has distanced most people from what they eat, both geographically and psychologically. But because humanity devotes such a large share of the planet’s surface to food production—25 percent, more than the world’s forested area—it is impossible to separate the way farmers raise food from the health of rivers, wetlands, forests, and our living environment.
“Compulsive worship at the altar of consumption has brought humanity to the edge of an environmental abyss—depleting resources, spreading dangerous pollutants, undermining ecosystems, and threatening to unhinge the planet’s climate balance.”
“Through the things they buy, institutions wield great influence over the future of our planet.”
“A sustainable and secure society is one that meets its water needs without destroying the ecosystems upon which it depends or the prospects of generations yet to come.”
“By virtually any measure—household expenditures, number of
consumers, extraction of raw materials—consumption of goods and services
has risen steadily in industrial nations for decades, and it is growing rapidly
in many developing countries.”
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