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Comment by ZeroGravitas | Hacker News Reader

It's not the "standard of living" that is unsustainable.

The USA wastes a lot more resources to achieve similar standard of living to Europe. And even Europe is putting a lot of effort into policies that simultaneously improve their standard of living and reduce waste or pollution.

Saying that "standard of living" is synonymous with "amount of fossil fuels you burn" is standard climate change denier rhetoric.

People with efficient cars and well insulated homes have higher standards of living than those who don't.

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> The USA wastes a lot more resources to achieve similar standard of living to Europe.

It's not similar though. Americans live in way bigger homes and on way bigger plots of land. Streets are wider. Everything is less cramped in general. Also, US has possibly the best health care quality (note I'm not discussing health care _insurance_) in the world. They can also afford more consumer niceties (iPhones, nice cars, foreign vacations etc.). All that extra stuff and quality requires extra fossil fuels and minerals.

How comes that you have the "best health care quality" but all the indicators of health care quality like life expectancy is among the worse in the Western world?

Because its's good (and expensive) that not everyone can afford it?

It's not only about fossil fuels. It's about all the resources that we use more of than is regenerated each year. I think both the US and Europe use too much.

Can you be more specific? What are they using too much of?

Water, Uranium, Gold, Copper, Sand?

Whatever it is, there's almost a certainly a way to use it more efficiently and therefore improve standards of living in Europe, and the rest of the world, at the same time.

Fossil fuels, fresh water, CO2 budget to limit warming, fertile soil, artificial fertilizer.

And things that are mined in general (like metals). They won't run out but as we mine the easy deposits first, the amount of energy it costs to mine a given amount will be forever increasing. E.g., eventually it will cost more energy to mine the materials for a wind mill than the electricity it will generate in its lifetime.

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