As we welcome the new year, many of us will resolve to lose weight, start a new diet, workout or work less.  It disturbed me to see headlines for the newest fad diet - they appeared almost a few hours into Christmas day.  Jared Diamond's NY Times editoral on the world's consumption puts the new year in perspective.  He writes that Americans and other developed nations consume 32 times more resources than the developing world - a lifestyle that is clearly not sustainable or attainable for the world's 6.5 billion people. 

Just as it is certain that within most of our lifetimes we’ll be consuming less than we do now, it is also certain that per capita consumption rates in many developing countries will one day be more nearly equal to ours. These are desirable trends, not horrible prospects. In fact, we already know how to encourage the trends; the main thing lacking has been political will.