NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/sci/environm/14035

Text File | 1992-12-30 | 10.3 KB | 202 lines

Newsgroups: sci.environment
Path: sparky!uunet!think.com!spool.mu.edu!umn.edu!csus.edu!netcom.com!ladasky
From: [e-mail] (John J. Ladasky II)
Subject: Re: Save the Planet and the Economy at the Same time!
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1992 08:27:57 GMT
Lines: 191

In article <[e-mail]>,
[e-mail] (Jordan Hayes) writes:
>James L Wilson <[e-mail]> writes:
>
>    the real dilemma:  too many people putting too great a stress
>    on a planet with a finite amount of resources.  When we can
>    come up with a real solution for curbing the current population
>    growth ...
>
>Except that it's not really a population problem; as it is, a 2-kid
>family in the US puts something like 37 times the amount of strain on
>resources as a 15-kid family in Burma.
>
>/jordan


     Jordan, please provide the source for your statement concerning
the per capita resource burden in the U.S. versus that of Burma.
I'm with the Green Party of California.  The conventional wisdom
within our group is that Americans consume, on a per-capita basis,
about fifty times as much as the world's poorest people.  This is
still a staggering number, but your figures would indicate that
Americans consume about 170 times as much per capita as do the
Burmese.

     I'm also curious as to how these resource burdens are computed.
For example, how do you compare food consumption to, say, oil
consumption?  Obviously, most American families own at least one
automobile, and most Burmese families do not.  A lot of Burmese
probably never even take a bus ride.  I would bet that it's safe to
say that the average American consumes hundreds of times the amount
of petroleum that is consumed by the average Burmese.  But how do
you decide how important petroleum consumption actually is versus
food consumption?  Do you compare the cash values of the items?  Do
you compensate for the cost of living in various countries?  Do you
look at consumption in terms of the energy expended to prepare the
item consumed?

     The Green Party of California has been debating the population/
resource consumption issue for the last year at least, and we have
not reached a consensus.  We wanted to include a Population plank in
our 1992 platform, but the folks who drafted a plank for this year
only talked about resource consumption, and did not say a word about
population control.  This concerned a lot of us.  The California
Green Party requires an 80% approval in order for a plank to be
adopted into the platform, and this year's draft didn't even come
close.  We'll have another chance in 1994.

     It's obvious then that, even within a strongly pro-environ-
mental organization like the Greens, most people agree that there
is in fact a population problem.  Here are my personal reasons why
I believe this is so:

 - Most people in Third World countries aspire to a lifestyle
   that offers them more comforts than they currently posess.
   This is not simply a Madison Avenue, television propaganda
   issue - a lot of these people work very hard for a straw
   roof over their heads and 2,000 calorie-per-day diets.  The
   near-enslavement of women in many Third-World nations is
   well-documented.

 - We are unable to restrict the flow of new opportunity to
   Third World countries.  Even in strict environmental and
   labor laws were in place in every nation of the world, the
   cost of labor would remain significantly lower in Third
   World countries for quite some time.  And when First World
   companies go overseas to take advantage of low-cost labor,
   we would be unable to convince the locals to reject an
   opportunity to improve their opportunities.  Over the past
   few decades, Korea, Mexico, Brazil, and numerous Southeast
   Asian countries have industrialized at a phenomenal rate,
   despite environmentalists' admonitions that "it's not smart"
   to do so.  See above for probable reasons why.

 - The First World already posesses many of the comforts that
   the Third World is trying to obtain.  What kind of hypocrites
   must American environmentalists seem to Third Worlders?
   Most, I'm sure, own and use automobiles, have balanced, 3,500
   calorie per day diets, have relatively good access to health
   care and education, and the freedom to travel and entertain
   themselves when they're taking a break from saving the world.

 - Given that asking the Third World to reject consumption is
   immoral, if not impossible, asking First Worlders to consume
   less is no more likely.  The governments of the largely-
   defunct Second World conducted a propaganda war which attemp-
   ted to convince people that the creature comforts of the First
   World were "decadent" and "anti-revolutionary."  We all know
   how that situation has played out.  This is not to say that
   education won't help. First Worlders are gradually switching
   to "green" products, and some people have found a way to
   structure their lives so that they consume less (for example,
   I purchased my home within biking distance of work, and I have
   reduced the meat in my diet to about one-fifth of what it used
   to be) - but the fact is that First Worlders are still consum-
   ing.  (And one of the things they consume in America is guns -
   well-fed people with something to protect make a much scarier
   army than do starving folks with nothing to lose :^)

 - We must therefore find a way to provide nearly the same
   quality of life enjoyed by the First Worlders today, but to
   do so with fewer resources.  We must also expect and accept
   that the Third World will eventually rise to the same standard
   of living as the First.  The total resource burden of the
   human race will be a function of three factors: the quality of
   life, the efficiency of resource use, and the population.
   I contend that the only fair solution is to provide the entire
   world's population with the opportunity to enjoy a First-World
   quality of life.  This leaves us with two factors to manipulate:
   efficiency of resource use and population.

 - What level of resource consumption is sustainable?  Most
   environmentalists I've spoken to think that pre-industrial,
   Third World countries, like Zaire, or economically isolated
   countries, like Cuba, are models of local sustainability.
   I would expect Zaire's level of resource consumption to be
   a lot like Burma's - somewhere between 1/50 and 1/170 as
   much per capita (to use our numbers from above).  Cuba is
   probably consuming a little more than Zaire.  For the sake
   of argument, I'll assume the 1/50 figure.

 - How much more efficient can the First World be with its
   per capita resource use?  Certainly not fifty times.  Maybe
   ten times.  Some examples:

      A book called "Diet for a Small Planet" (sorry, I can't
   remember the author's name) claimed that seventeen pounds of
   vegetable matter were needed to produce one pound of meat.
   (The book broke the analysis down into several categories by
   animal type - I think these were the figures for beef.)  So,
   if the American public went vegan tomorrow, we would increase
   our resource efficiency in the food arena by about a factor
   of seventeen.  There would be some residual savings in the
   transportation arena as a result of decreased meat shipments.
   But, if we decided to feed the rest of the world with our
   new-found excess, those transportation benefits might be
   lost. (We might get another factor of two if we could just
   convince Americans to consume only 2,000 calories per day -
   yeah, right)

      I'm replacing the incandescent lights in my house with
   compact fluorescent lights.  These use 1/4 the electricity
   of standard incandescent lights, and last ten times as long.

      In many Third World countries, one does not frequently
   travel to places one cannot reach on foot.  It would appear
   that most people in the First World will continue to require
   personal transportation with some kind of cargo-carrying
   ability.  Even if this personal transportation ran on solar-
   generated hydrogen fuel or electricity, metals, rubber,
   plastics, and petroleum (or synthetic) lubricants would be
   consumed.  The manufacture of solar cells and batteries
   also require toxic chemicals.

 - Let's assume that one billion people consume at an American
   rate (consumption rate = 50), and that the remaining 4.5
   billion or so consume at the Burmese rate (consumption rate
   = 1).  The total world resource consumption rate would there-
   fore be (1 x 50) + (4.5 x 1) = 54.5.  If the Burmese rate is
   the sustainable one for the world, then the total world con-
   sumption rate will be about 5.5 (assuming that the rich coun-
   tries' sustainable per capita resource base is no higher than
   the other countries, and that the current, higher resource
   consumption rates in First World countries are solely due to
   exploitation of reserves).

 - Let's assume further that the "fair and reasonable" per
   capita consumption rate is about one tenth that currently
   practiced in the First World (consumption rate = 5).  If the
   total, sustainable world consumption rate is 5.5, then the
   world's population must be 1.1 billion people.

     Folks, that's not just birth control, that's an 80% reduction
in the world population.  So, what do people think?

     P.S.  I would love to read any references that netters might
know of on the subject of population.  The Green Party platform was
not annotated, so I don't know how the authors of the proposed
Population plank reached their conclusions.  Additional insights
will help us to form an intelligent statement concerning population.


--
== John J. Ladasky II ("ii") ========================= [e-mail] ==
"Great composers do not borrow -         "Talking about music is like
 they steal."  - John Ladasky          ~ -     dancing about architecture."
(quote stolen from Stravinsky, who    o o     - Elvis Costello?  Laurie
 stole it from a statement made by     >        Anderson?  Frank Zappa?
 Pablo Picasso about painting, who    \_/    -------------------------------
 stole it from...)                 "Property is theft." - Groucho
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