Well, you know, I live in Chine since 8 years and, in some ways, there is a profound influence of the "American way of life", mostly through the channel of Holywood movies. The matter could be worse: Chinese have the weight on their side, they can't change so fast as to lose their identity, but still, they have an idea of what should be an happy life that is formatted by these f* movies (really hate then, sorry). For instance, they think everyone should ought to live in an appartement in a tower, own a car, drink canned soda, eat industrial food cooked in microwave, have only one overprotected child, work in suits, go shopping each Saturday, watch baseball on a gigantic TV on Sundays, etc.
They can't believe it when I tell them I am living in a cheap courtyard house, rides a bike to work, never drinks soda, eat home cooked food, never watches TV, know nothing about baseball, climbs mountains on the week-end. In fact, it is the way their parent and grand-parents lives (eg. my neighbors) and the younger generation don't want that, they want the "American way", the supposed "comfort". Maybe a personal taste, but I think Chinese way is better, for me, my family and even for the little big blue ball floating in the universe.
Don't get me wrong: I know US citizen do not live like described, and I tell my friends and colleagues as much as I can. But the problematic part is, again, those f* Hollywood movies that have too much worldwide influence. (I therefore welcome any other influence, Mangas, Bollywood, Hong-Kong kungfu, anything else is better.)
Ok, it may be "trollish" to say that the American way of life is unhealthy and bad for the environment and to express disapproval when this country spread its bad habits around the world. It is true nonetheless.
(Or maybe you think it is OK to eat 1kg of meat/day, own 1 car/person, drive 2h/day, eat burgers and watch TV?)
So facing this issue, two solutions:
1- Human being should be able to consume more, and therefore there need to be less of them.
2- Human being do not need to consume that much to be happy and, therefore, their demographics is not that much of an issue.
