{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.02352551358515573, 'fraction_numerical': 0.005964214711729622, 'mean_word_length': 5.1361788617886175, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
The State of Consumption Today: State of the World 2004

The environmental impacts of the growing consumption and the changing consumption patterns are severe, and the book gives many examples of the effects on air pollution, water pollution, water shortages, soil degradation, and so forth. Also, the social effects are briefly touched on. The increasing affluence is far from equally distributed, and the emergence of the new consumer coexists with a growing divide between the haves and the have-nots inside most of the newconsumer countries. On top of this, the increasing demand for feed grain related to meat consumption drives up grain prices, with disastrous effects for poor countries. Myers and Kent emphasize that the new consumers have as much right as anyone to enjoy their new-found affluence, but a scenario prolonging the present tendencies will inevitably lead to disastrous environmental effects. Thus they argue that both old-consumer countries and new-consumer countries should actively deal with the environmental impacts. Technological change can take us part of the way, but active policies are necessary to promote such change. Furthermore, we have to consider whether everincreasing material consumption actually improves our quality of life, or whether we could have a more fulfilling lifestyle by consuming less and being less pressed for time. The book does not really point out much new that, for instance, the Worldwatch Institute has not already argued for years. In the 1995 report, the Institute introduced “the China factor” and gave illustrative examples such as this: the Chinese “are also acquiring a great enthusiasm for beer, and raising individual consumption for all adults by just one bottle takes another 370,000 tons of grain” (p. 17). As Lester Brown said when presenting the Danish edition, “when you work with China, you learn one thing—when you multiply by 1.2 billion you get some very big numbers.” This message, though, has obviously passed both politicians and the general public by, so Myers and Kent deserve thanks for helping to get this important issue onto the agenda. The book is first and foremost a descriptive overview: it is written for those who love numbers and the rattling off of empirical observations. And for those who do not mind having things repeated: the book has a matrix-like structure, starting with some chapters on different consumption fields, followed by some chapters on different countries, implying many repetitions. Analytically, the book is weak. The authors do not really analyze the processes behind the phenomena described, and their suggestions for change are based mostly on good intentions, technological optimism, and consensus strategies. They do not consider the complexity related to power structures, the ways in which the old consumers appropriate resources from the poor countries, and the understandings legitimating this appropriation. Unfortunately, the problems are even more complicated than this book demonstrates.