Outside of Bangor, Maine — on a long road trip toBoston — I pulled into a coffee shop and ordered alarge cup of my favourite addiction. I was expecting agenerous cup — a sizable snort of get-up-and-go. Butwhat arrived was not just a big cup of French Roast,nor even a giant mug of black java. No, what arrivedwas a bucket of coffee. I was incredulous.

Later, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, I stopped at afamily restaurant for dinner. And as with the coffee,what the waiter placed in front of me was anexaggerated indulgence: a plate piled impossibly highwith food. Again, I was incredulous. But lookingaround, I was amazed to see that all the plates weresimilarly piled high. And stranger still, the food wasbeing eaten — all of it, every bite.

Later still, as I neared my destination in Boston, Ilooked around with greater care. Not only were thecups of coffee oversized, and the plates of foodoversized, but so were the cars, the trucks, even thehouses.

And while staying at my friend’s place, I read in Timemagazine that designers were actually incorporatingthe growing girth of Americans into their work: theclothes were now oversized, door frames oversized,even furniture oversized — right down to the seats inthe movie theatres. I felt I was suddenly a travellerin Gulliver’s land of the giants.

When I gently broached the subject ofwide-eyed-consumption-without-limits with my friend,suggesting that perhaps moderation might be in order,she suggested that moderation was un-American, anattack on freedom of choice.

I couldn’t help thinking back to the words of thatgreat modern-day defender of freedom, George W. Bush.When searching for the right words of comfort afterSeptember 11, he urged his fellow Americans to buymore.

Maybe my friend was right: moderation was un-American.

Back in Canada, high taxes — if nothing else — keptjumbo-consumption at bay. Or so I thought. When Ireturned home, I started looked around with greatercare. To my horror, I watched people at the fancy newmovie theatres sitting in new over-sized chairs withnew buckets of Pepsi washing down new grocery bags ofpopcorn. And I surveyed the new jumbo-sized housesbeing built on the outside of town and realized thatthe age of the super-sized had arrived in Canada.

Long ago, I once started writing a science fictionstory about a race of super-sized people. Ripplingwith fat, their mouths made wider by naturalselection, these super-sized simian sorts aggressivelyconsumed the Earth — until all the food was gone. Onlythe super-sized people were left orbiting the sun withnothing left to eat — except each other.

Of course, I abandoned the story as being too silly,too far fetched. But after my trip to the land of thesuper-sized, I got to thinking: maybe my story wasn’tso silly, as much it was deadly serious.

We are eating the planet, the whole damn thing,right down to the last blade of grass.

Our ecological footprint is one way to understand thedegree of this consumption. If we measure the world’sproductive land — and graciously grant that a modest12 per cent is necessary for the biodiversity of otherspecies — what remains is the productive landavailable for sustaining humanity.

When the math is done, and the productive land isparcelled out — relative to our present population — every man, woman, and child is entitled to 1.8hectares of productive land to sustain the Earth andits humans. And if the human population peaks at 10billion — as is expected in the next 30 years — thenthe land per person shrinks to one hectare.

Our problem, of course, is that we consume far morethan that. The ecological footprint of the averageAmerican is 10.3 hectares (first place, globally), ofthe average Australian, 9.0 (second place, globally),and of the average Canadian (globally in third place),7.7. Comparatively, India’s footprint per person is0.8; China’s, 1.2; and Bangladesh’s, 0.5.

The world ecological footprint average is 2.8 hectaresper person. That is, we presently need an additionalworld as a resource to happily continue on ourrapacious ways.

Maybe that’s why George Bush wanted to settle Mars.

Now before I prattle on about driving efficient carsor no cars at all (for most cities, cars are thesingle greatest source of pollution), about eatingless meat or no meat at all (a meat-based dietrequires seven times more land than a plant-baseddiet), or about using less fossil fuels or no fossilfuels at all (wind and solar are here and ready foruse), we first need to acknowledge our problem:

We eat too much. We buy too much. We want too much.

We are the super-sized people in my science fictionstory, busily eating our way through the Earth, busilyexpanding our jiggling girth and growing our widermouths. And we do see moderation as an attack on ourfreedom.

And frankly, we just don’t care.

In the climax of my story, the corpulent Canucks areleft sharing the empty cosmos with the portly Aussiesand the super-sized Yanks, all preparing to consumeeach other in the great Battle of the Wide-Bodies.

Given the gruesome prospect of having to eat aCanadian, an Australian, or an American, I hope mystory remains fiction.

But somehow, I doubt it.