Prorata

So it occurred to me in the gym last night that the gym is one of the greatest signifiers of 21st century first world decadence. It is an embarrassing fact that we have places to go where we burn off the excess food we have eaten so that we do not look as outwardly greedy as we actually are. This all came to me after I noticed someone had left a bottle of Original Source lime shower gel in the shower. The bottle was almost empty, but there was probably enough left in it for me to have a shower. Clearly it's owner could not be bothered with the hassle of carrying it round just for one more shower. Now, as the label clearly states, 40 limes go into making one bottle of Original Source, meaning that whoever bought that bottle wasn't fussed about the last lime or so. Somewhere in the world a child has rickets for want of a lime. Is Original Source the most decadent shower gel we can buy, not because it is particularly expensive, but because it uses ridiculous amounts of raw materials that would otherwise be food? I'm sure Original Source is not the most decadent shower gel but it illustrates my point more clearly than many more decadent washing products.
Statistical scientists recently calculated that the impact of feeding all the obese people in the world is the equivalent to feeding 1 billion extra non-obese people. Whilst some might see this as just an excuse to have another go at fat people, I see it as a new approach to Malthusian statistics. Whilst we are all worrying about our carbon footprint, we have apparently no concern about what consequences our consumption has for the ability of others to live comfortable lives. Surely, if we can calculate how much of iithe earth's resources obese people use up we can also calculate a sustainability mean: an average of consumption that each person currently alive would be allowed if the world's (sustainable) resources were shared out equally. Surely it could then easily become a middle class aspiration to consume below the mean.
Obviously for it to be simple and measurable, we would need to create a unit of consumption, but this would be easy enough, we could just create a grain equivalent. It would not work in same manner as carbon trading, as there is nothing essentially to trade. Your grainscore is simply a positive of negative measure of your consumption against the mean. This does mean that unlike carbon trading, the wealthy cannot buy off their guilt. Equally, as it is not necessarily tied to monetary wealth, it cannot be seen necessarily as a wealth redistribution. However, it could be used for a form of resource redistribution, tax rates could be based on annual grainscore indexes rather than income or out of date house prices, with a portion of the tax levied going to international development budgets targeted at redistributing resources.
Obviously I can see a number of flaws in this instantly, most worryingly that it could encourage over-farming, or unethical land/animal management. However if the unit of grain is set at a sustainable level, producing more of a commodity for the land available would count against the producer's grainstore balance. In this way profit is not punished but profiteering is. Such issues could be ironed out, indeed the problems presented by resolving them may provide many resource solutions that had not been considered before.
The other obviously bloated question is why would anyone bother with an index of guilt that isn't obligatory. The answer to this one is easy: in the 'first world', people love that kind of thing. They can't get enough of measuring their guilt, and when they finally do, they try and impose it on everyone else. Calculating your carbon footprint has gone from being a middle class Sunday afternoon guilt generation exercise to an essential part of the commercial strategy of every major multinational. There's nothing to say that calculating your grainscore can't do the same. The world is facing a large number of issues around resource scarcity, and we need to raise awareness these issues. If something like a grainscore will start a debate, well that's a start.