Wednesday, May 9, 2007

God Bless America? Hasn't He already?

In thinking a lot about greed lately, I was re-listening to a sermon by Rob Bell that is simply amazing. His previous series had discussed helping the oppressed and less forunate and then in this series called "Calling all Peacemakers", he explored that much more. This sermon even led to a Nooma video called "Rich" about greed in America. You can listen to it here:

Some interesting stats he mentions:

Water:
12% of the world's population uses 85% of its water.
40% of the world lacks basic sanitation facilitation (which contributes to disease and all kinds of other factors)
1 billion people in the world are without safe drinking water, but Americans consume 26 billion liters of bottled water per year

Goods:
The US spends more on trash bags annually than nearly half the world does on all goods combined.
The US GDP is 21.4% of world capital, but its population is only between 5 and 6%.
Average wood consumption per day worldwide is 4 lbs, average US consumption 14 lbs/day. (Wood consumption includes all paper products).
Every 16 seconds someone dies of hunger, 2/3rds of Americans are considered overweight.

8% of people in the World own a car, 33% of American families own 3 cars.
Only 1% of the world owns a computer.
The US accounts for 25% of global oil consumption.
We use 20 million barrels of day of oil and have 5-6% of world population, China is in 2nd in terms of millions of barrels per day with 5.6 million, but has almost 20% of world population.
In 2001, 22 million people died of preventable diseases, meaning diseases that you or I could go to the doctor or ER and be cured of.

The US holds 42.8% of weapons worldwide and in 2002, the US spent more on defense than the next 18 biggest spenders combined.

1 out of 4 children worldwide have to go to work everyday instead of school, but 85% of Americans are high school graduates.
1% of the world has a college education, but close to 30% of Americans have a bachelors degree.

Average new home square footage:
US 2349 sq ft
Japan 1000 sq ft
Ireland 930 sq ft
UK 815 sq ft

Could you even sell a 815 sq ft home in the US? 700? 500?
80% of the world lives in what is considered substandard housing. Meaning it lacks running water, electricity, sanitation, etc.

There's more, but these were most interesting to me.