The Story of Stuff - Annie Leonard [125]
According to the State of the World 2004 report, calculations of overall global growth in consumption mask massive disparities. The 12 percent of the world living in North America and Western Europe accounts for 60 percent of global personal consumption expenditures,91 while the one-third of the world’s population that lives in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa accounts for only 3.2 percent.92 Globally, the 20 percent of the world that lives in the highest-income countries accounts for 86 percent of total private consumption expenditures—the poorest 20 percent a minuscule 1.3 percent.93 More specifically:
Source: World Bank Development Indicators, 2008.
The richest fifth of the global population consumes 45 percent of all meat and fish; the poorest fifth 5 percent
The richest fifth consumes 58 percent of energy generated globally; the poorest fifth less than 4 percent
The richest fifth has 74 percent of all telephone lines; the poorest fifth 1.5 percent
The richest fifth consumes 84 percent of all paper; the poorest fifth 1.1 percent
The richest fifth owns 87 percent of the world’s vehicle fleet; the poorest fifth less than 1 percent94
For the first time in history more than 1 billion people on our planet—one-sixth of the total population—are living in serious hunger, eating fewer than 1,800 calories a day. This milestone was reached in June 2009 and means that 100 million more people are going hungry in 2009 than in the previous year.95 While we in the United States are reaching never-before-attained levels of wealth-related diseases like obesity and a return of gout (caused by high-fat foods and traditionally associated with aristocracy),96 half the world’s population lives on less than three dollars a day.97 Clearly, many people across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and even right here in the United States need to consume more just to meet their needs.
Sometimes I think that for those of us who count among the world’s haves (as opposed to the have-nots), our comfort dulls our imagination. It is hard to imagine what it means to really be without. At an all-day meeting last year, I turned to the woman next to me, who had spent many years in Haiti, and unthinkingly said to her, “I hope this ends soon. I am starving.” She turned to me and gently reminded me, “My dear, you are not starving.” When we’re not starving, when we’re not anywhere near the edge of survival, it is hard to imagine what it is like for those who are. During my international travels, I’ve had moments where the absolutely miserable truth of poverty shook me, but then I went back home where, in the chaos of parenting and modern life, most memories fade. Most, but not all.
One that I will never forget happened in Cité Soleil, a shantytown with more than a quarter million residents living in extreme poverty on the edge of Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti. Their single-room homes are made of scraps of metal or plastic and often contain not even one piece of furniture on the dirt floor. There are open ditches of rotting trash and sewage forming a network throughout the slum. There are no stores, no place to get clean water, almost no electricity. Few residents live past the age of fifty.
On the material side, it’s as bad as it gets. For someone like me, who can mistake a mild stomach grumbling for being starving, visiting Cité Soleil is a profound event, one that is not easily forgotten. I remember one woman in particular whose situation brought home for me just what desperate poverty