> planet has a relatively limited amount of nonrenewable, crucial raw
> materials, so it is not possible for the entire world population to live
> like the privileged few in industrialized nations.
I'm with you up to this point, but we First Worlders really shouldn't be playing the game of setting limits on consumption in the semiperiphery and periphery, not even as a rhetorical move.
Yes, we urgently need to switch to a carbon-neutral, resource-neutral economy, which reuses materials instead of ripping new ones from the Earth. But we also need a broad agenda of raising real wages and consumption throughout the world. Our utopia should be an immensely higher standard of living for *everyone* on the planet -- but a standard built on green jobs, equal planetary exchange, and green production.
This isn't just a rhetorical issue, it's also practical politics: attacking consumption has no traction when you can't get a job or put food on your family's table.
-- DRR