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As you have seen above, the current lifestyle in many countries
of the world could not be extended to all the world's population without
exhausting our planet's resources, and yet other countries are not able
to make full use of their resources. As was shown in the first
animation, it would take five planets to support humankind if every
person were to adopt a US lifestyle; by contrast, we would only use
one-third of the planet's capacity if we all lived like an inhabitant of
Mozambique (see the picture to the right).
If
the current trends in industrialised countries were to continue, either
other less-developed countries will not be able to adopt the same
lifestyle, or, if they do, this would come at the cost of depleting the
Earth's resources. Bringing everyone's lifestyle level with that of a
Mozambican is likely to be an unacceptable proposition to many people.
The notion of sustainable development has
been put forward as a way of escaping from these dead-end alternatives.
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