Jared Diamond has an insightful op-ed in the NYT today.  He makes a point that is at once obvious yet still in need of a wide hearing: the developed world, and especially the US, enjoy a level of material consumption that is simply unsustainable on a global level.  He reminds us that there are insufficient resources in the world for everyone to live as wastefully as we do.  China’s economic rise – and its reach for US-style living standards and lifestyles – focuses the issue:

We Americans may think of China’s growing consumption as a problem.
But the Chinese are only reaching for the consumption rate we already
have. To tell them not to try would be futile.

The only approach
that China and other developing countries will accept is to aim to make
consumption rates and living standards more equal around the world. But
the world doesn’t have enough resources to allow for raising China’s
consumption rates, let alone those of the rest of the world, to our
levels. Does this mean we’re headed for disaster?

No, we could
have a stable outcome in which all countries converge on consumption
rates considerably below the current highest levels. Americans might
object: there is no way we would sacrifice our living standards for the
benefit of people in the rest of the world. Nevertheless, whether we
get there willingly or not, we shall soon have lower consumption rates,
because our present rates are unsustainable.

 He maintains an optimistic tone throughout the piece, but is pointing to a politically fraught issue.  What American leader is going to get out in front of a movement to encourage lowering consumption standards in the US?  We see only a very little of this on the energy front, but there are many other angles of consumption that never really get talked about (think about food!).  Conservatives, of course, will say that markets will find answers to such problems (just don’t talk about the sub-prime mortgage mess…); and they will, no doubt, point to the warnings of resource depletion from the 1970s that proved too dire.  But even if those estimates then were too pessimistic, they certainly did not account for the dramatic rise of China, and now India.  Diamond is right to resuscitate the "running out of resources" argument in light of these new global dynamics.

     All of this is utterly obvious to a Confucian or a Taoist.  In both schools of thought material consumption clearly takes a back seat to moral behavior (yes, I think we can say that Taoism suggests a "moral" practice).  Here is Confucius:

The Master said: "Poor
food and water for dinner, a bent arm for a pillow – that is where joy
resides.  For me, wealth and renown without honor are nothing but drifting
clouds. (7.16)

The
Master said: “The noble-minded devote themselves to the Way, not to earning a
living. A farmer may go hungry, and a
scholar may stumble into a good salary. So it is that the noble-minded worry
about the Way, not poverty and hunger.” (15.32)

     And, also, the Tao Te Ching:

The five colors blind
eyes.
The
five tones deafen ears.
The
five tastes blur tongues.
Fast
horses and breathtaking hunts make minds wild and crazy.
Things
rare and expensive made people lose their way.
That’s
why a sage tends to the belly, not the eye,
always
ignores that and chooses this. (12)

     "Tending to the belly" here suggests focusing on essentials.  The "eye" can be distracted by the superfluous and transient, while the belly can be filled with the simplest of food.

     These sensibilities push against the "American dream."  But that dream has always come at the cost of global inequality, and as that inequality is transformed (but never, I suspect, wholly eradicated) by new patterns of world economic growth, the dream may have to be leavened with a bit more reality.

     The ancients would understand.