With its mouth wide open

...the West eats into the world's resources, leaving the developing nations and its poorest struggling against ecological degradation wreaked by the huge consumption rates. The wide gap in consumption between the rich and poor takes its toll on local and global resources. Today some 800 million people remain chronically malnourished -- while the rich over-consume, squander vital resources and generate vast amounts of waste in the process. The ecological security of the nation depends upon reducing such inequity.