As it stands, the consumption equation doesn’t add up, Moriarty says.

Question: What is the biggest hurdle facing the environmental movement?

Jim Moriarty: If you look at the American consumer of which that’s-- If you would call me anything, that would probably the- be the label that would be accurate and the most hurtful for me personally but that’s- I am a consumer but the American consumer needs to shift its tastes. We can’t buy with such disregard for the long-term impact of our decisions. We just can’t over time. The reason that we have been able to do it is because we were- in the entire world we consumed about 40% of the natural resources and that was okay because we were just the big consumers of the world. Well guess what. China’s coming online. They have the same aspirations we do. So is India. The math just doesn’t work. Things have to change. There isn’t an option. It’s the question of how fast and how radical they will be because the math-- There is not enough resources on earth to satisfy China, India and the United States at our consuming levels. It just doesn’t work and that leaves out the African continent, Europe and everything else, so there’s obviously- there’s more variables in that equation.

Recorded on: 9/27/07