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I started reading the PDF, and I found several errors on just the first couple of pages. I also found information that was sourced to warresisters.org, greenpeace, commenweal.org, etc.

I'm not trying to be harsh -- I'm sure the video is of high quality -- but when you say things like "In 2003, humanity’s Footprint exceeded the Earth’s biological capacity by over 25 percent" or "In the past three decades, one-third of the planet’s resources, its ‘natural wealth,’ has been consumed" there is certainly room for debate about these things.

Debate which probably doesn't belong here.

Flagged.



I agree that there are serious problems with this article. Consider the statement:

"Our personal consumption in the U.S. is already in overdrive. It's now equal to 70% of our GDP (about double that of China and nearly a third more than that of Canada)."

This is a nonsense claim. GDP is defined as consumption + government spending + net exports. It doesn't seem obvious that increasing the relative share of government or exports would do anything for the environment.


Which PDF?

The URL I followed brought me to a interesting blog post with good but speculative discussion about the perspective of 'hackers' vs 'greenies' on mass consumption.

Did you really flag this link because somewhere within it there is a link to a PDF that includes unreliable sources? That's a pretty tough standard! :)


Reading all the comments, I came to the conclusion he probably refers to this coment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=940369

It would be great if he can confirm so.


Yes.

I didn't have bandwidth for the video, so downloaded the PDF and scanned it as I had time.

If I missed the point of the article, doh! I was relying on the other comment.


The PDF is a transcript of a video that is linked from 15th paragraph of the article, but is just one of many linked videos. The actual article is a response from the author (approximately) of the recent HN post about the 100 square foot house.

The article itself is good, and you might enjoy it. I skipped the video, which is probably flawed in the ways you suggest. But maybe you could unflag the interesting link to the response in the meantime? :)


done


A very scientific approach.




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