Prosperity

==Consumption and prosperity.==
The arguments that consumption means prosperity or freedom really
can't be defended. Conservation isn't a limit. Conservation is common sense.
===Pseudoprosperity===
Our (American & Pittsburgh region) prosperity is currently in jeopardy for numerous reasons. Our present political system has been able to deliver a pseudoprosperity funded by Asian central banks and massive borrowing from future generations of Americans.
===True prosperity===
True prosperity is not the amount of stuff that can be accumulated. In America
today that translates to debt. Only a bankrupt political ideology
would suggest that American consumers flush with borrowed money and
encouraged to spend it somehow represents a viable economy.
===Consider the moral dimension of using disproportionate resources relative to the rest of the world.===
===Consider the moral dimension of contaminating the environment.===
Parts of the Earth, and parts of our region have been used and become toxic to present and future inhabitants. 
Examples include ozone alerts and brownfields.
Another obvious example is the number of industrial
chemicals and pollutants found in the ground water and in fetal cord
blood. 
Does extending the argument that consuming anything you want
to whatever excess you want include these componds? Is it really a
good idea for infants to be born with perfluorochemicals in their
bodies? Even water is an example. 
One sixth of the world does not have access to safe drinking water. Waterborne diseases kill a quarter of a million people a month.
4. The ecological dimension of disrupting known cycles and equilibria
necessary for the maintenace of the environment. I have already
posted the clear example of the advance of the deserts in Africa but
there are many other examples.