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Imagine how it would feel to fly a flag with a leaf on it, or a bird—something living . How remarkably generous we could have appeared to the world by being the first to limit fossil-fuel emissions by ratifying the Kyoto agreements, rather than walking away from the table, as we did last summer in Bonn, leaving 178 other signatory nations to do their best for the world without any help from the world’s biggest contributor to global warming. I find it simply appalling that we could have done this; I know for a fact that many, many Americans were stunned, like me, by the selfishness of that act, and can hardly bear their own complicity in it. Given our societal devotion to taking in more energy than we put out, it’s ironic that our culture is so cruelly intolerant of overweight individuals. As a nation we’re not just overweight (a predicament that deserves sympathy); I fear we are also, as we live and breathe, possessed of the Fat Brother mindset.
    I would like to have a chance to live with reordered expectations. I would rather that my country be seen as the rich, beloved brother than the rich and piggish one. If there’s a heart beating in the United States that really disagrees, I’ve yet to meet it. We are, by nature, a generous people. Just about every American I know who has traveled abroad and taken the time to have genuine conversations with citizens of other countries has encountered the question, as I have, “Why isn’t your country as nice as you are?” I wish I knew. Maybe we’re distracted by our attachment to convenience; maybe we believe the ads that tell us that material things are the key to happiness; or maybe we’re too frightened to question those who routinely define our national interest for us in terms of corporate profits. Then, too, millions of Americans are so strapped by the task of keeping their kids fed and a roof over their heads that it’s impossible for them to consider much of anything beyond that. But ultimately the answer must be that as a nation, we just haven’t yet demanded generosity of ourselves.
    But we could, and we know it. Our country possesses the resources to bring solar technology, energy independence, and sustainable living to our planet. Even in the simple realm of humanitarian assistance, the United Nations estimates that $13 billion above current levels of aid would provide everyone in the world (including the hungry within our own borders) with basic health and nutrition. Collectively, Americans and Europeans spend $17 billion a year on pet food. We could do much more than just feed the family of mankind as well as our cats and dogs; we could assist that family in acquiring the basic skills and tools it needs to feed itself, while maintaining the natural resources on which all life depends. Real generosity involves not only making a gift but also giving up something, and on both scores we’re well situated to be the most generous nation on earth.
    We like to say we already are, and it’s true that American people give of their own minute proportion of the country’s wealth tohelp victims of disasters far and wide. Our children collect pennies to buy rain forests one cubic inch at a time, but this is a widow’s mite, not a national tithe. Our government’s spending on foreign aid has plummeted over the last twenty years, to levels that are—to put it bluntly—the stingiest among all developed nations’. In the year 2000, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States allocated just .1 percent of its gross national product to foreign aid—or about one dime for every hundred dollars in its treasury—whereas Canada, Japan, Austria, Australia, and Germany each contributed two to three times that much. Other countries gave even more, some as much as ten times the amount we do; they view this as a contribution to the world’s stability and