[Christ]

Originally Posted by roflwaffle

What if you tweak/reverse your question? What impact does wealth have on resource consumption? Energy/resource consumption tends to correlate with wealth (although this can vary by a factor of ~3-4), so if people in Haiti were wealthier they would tend to hoover up more in the way of resources like the wealthier countries in the world do. Since they're very poor on average, they don't consume many resources.

It may be that people behave more based on the situation they're in than based on what sort of person they are, for instance it could be that anyone would be a Hitler given the right circumstances, but that doesn't mean it's O.K. for the people doing most of the damage to criticize people doing less damage.

The amount of damage they're doing (vs what we are) per capita/per unit of energy is actually subject to intense debate, because of the methods they use to produce their energy.

Sure, they're living proof that we probably don't "need" all the energy we use, but we're accustomed to the amount of consumption we currently support (without regard to the eventual limitations of our current consumption).

Per unit of energy, there is a possibility that we're doing less damage.

On a scaled basis, we're probably "dirty" compared to them.