Name(s):
Excessive environmental demand per capita
Lifestyle overdemand on resources
Disproportionate environmental damage by rich
Nature
As world population increases and incomes rise, the growing demand for goods and services results in greater derived demands for non-renewable natural resources. Not only is agricultural land used more intensively and extensively, but mineral resources (including liquid resources, such as water and petroleum, and gaseous resources, such as natural gas) are used more intensively. The extraction of land resources and their transformation into products reduce the concentrations of these resources in the earth's crust, making it more and more difficult to obtain them.
Incidence
India and China each grow at the rate of 17 million people plus per year but together account for only 13 million tonnes per annum of carbon dioxide, whereas the USA with only 2.6 million new people a year produces 52 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.
Counter-claim
The fact that 20 percent of the world's population use 80 percent of global resources is an instance of the rule-of-thumb law of systems analysis that 20 percent of customers always account for 80 percent of sales; and 80 percent of stock items also account for 20 percent of turnover.