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Intensity Of Human Environmental Impact May Lessen As Incomes Rise, Analysis Suggests

ScienceDaily (Aug. 26, 2008) — The richer you are, the more of the world’s resources you can afford to consume. But in many parts of the world, rising incomes are not having the proportionate effect on energy consumption, croplands and deforestation that one might expect, a new 25-year study shows.

By examining a variety of government and industry data spanning 1980 to 2006, Rockefeller University’s Jesse Ausubel and his colleagues say that dematerialization — the declining consumption of energy and goods in comparison to a country’s gross domestic product — is actually driving a trend toward rising environmental quality. The results are published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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OilFinder2 wrote:--> LINK <--

Intensity Of Human Environmental Impact May Lessen As Incomes Rise, Analysis Suggests

ScienceDaily (Aug. 26, 2008) — The richer you are, the more of the world’s resources you can afford to consume. But in many parts of the world, rising incomes are not having the proportionate effect on energy consumption, croplands and deforestation that one might expect, a new 25-year study shows.

By examining a variety of government and industry data spanning 1980 to 2006, Rockefeller University’s Jesse Ausubel and his colleagues say that dematerialization — the declining consumption of energy and goods in comparison to a country’s gross domestic product — is actually driving a trend toward rising environmental quality. The results are published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[...]

Perfect timing for the global economic bone crushing thud...

Great notion though...on paper.

If the culture shifts away from wasteful consumption and towards personal fulfillment, a rich society need not be a wasteful society.

Productivity increases should result in fewer hours worked and more time for the things that we enjoy. Instead we squandered those productivity increases and bought more cheap plastic premade landfill from China.

But so long as people judge their lives by the stuff they own and the stuff they want to own...it's not going to work.

Quote
“For generations, people have lightened their environmental impact by multiplying their consumption less than their income,”

???? Okay I'm a bit confused how this is supposed to be comforting. We still continuously increase the amount of environmental destruction, just not at the same pace. One could point out that only a small portion of the population lives above what is considered poverty and we are already strip mining the planet.

^
Maybe this will help?

An especially striking example is China. Without the dematerialization from 1980 to 2006 by Chinese consumers, actual national energy use in 2006 would have been 180 percent greater, Ausubel says. In India, an initial trend toward poorer environmental performance appears to have reversed. Meanwhile, the effect has also occurred in the United States, France and other rich nations. In the U.S., dematerialization progressed steadily at about two percent a year throughout the study period, regardless of which political party was in power.

And just for reference . . .

--> Dematerialization <--

In economics, dematerialization refers to the absolute or relative reduction in the quantity of materials required to serve economic functions in society. In common terms, dematerialization means doing more with less. This concept is similar to ephemeralization as proposed by Buckminster Fuller.

Dematerialization is the counterargument to the idea that economics is only about 'more is better.' The idea that more is better, a common activist argument which likens economic logic to the logic of a cancer cell, ignores the differences between inputs and outputs, and it ignores the ratio of inputs to outputs.

Tyler_JC wrote:But so long as people judge their lives by the stuff they own and the stuff they want to own...it's not going to work.

So what do you suggest? That we all become buddhist monks? Take one look at the fate of Tibet these last few decades and you should understand that disdain of materialism and the embrace of passifism and spirituality are good for only one thing: getting your culture destroyed and your people beaten into a bloody pulp.

Productivity increases should result in fewer hours worked and more time for the things that we enjoy.

The trouble is that a heck of a lot of people use this leisure time to fly\drive\cruise to faraway destinations which obviously burns up massive quantities of hydrocarbons.

Cabrone wrote:

Productivity increases should result in fewer hours worked and more time for the things that we enjoy.

The trouble is that a heck of a lot of people use this leisure time to fly\drive\cruise to faraway destinations which obviously burns up massive quantities of hydrocarbons.

I don't. I just go hobo-ing across the country on industrial rail...

Nano wrote:

Tyler_JC wrote:But so long as people judge their lives by the stuff they own and the stuff they want to own...it's not going to work.

So what do you suggest? That we all become buddhist monks? Take one look at the fate of Tibet these last few decades and you should understand that disdain of materialism and the embrace of passifism and spirituality are good for only one thing: getting your culture destroyed and your people beaten into a bloody pulp.

I'm not talking about pacifism. I'm talking about each individual refocusing his or her life towards the pursuit of happiness rather than the pursuit of property.

More stuff doesn't mean more happiness. Countless studies confirm this. Once you get beyond a certain level of creature comforts, additional consumption doesn't significantly affect your quality of life.

Rather than work ourselves to death filling endless manufactured wants, we could spend our extra time playing baseball with our children, going fishing, making love, painting, playing music, etc. etc. etc.

It's all about values. You can call me a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.

Somehow we let ourselves get brainwashed by the TV People into thinking that we actually need Swivel Sweepers and Bowflex machines.

For generations, people have lightened their environmental impact by multiplying their consumption less than their income

Emphasis mine. Please note that consumption is not decreasing, it's still multiplying. (Just not as quickly as income.) As long as that is true, we still have exponential growth of environmental destruction.

Lightened their environmental impact? While multiplying their consumption? WTF are you trying to sell us?

An especially striking example is China. Without the dematerialization from 1980 to 2006 by Chinese consumers, actual national energy use in 2006 would have been 180 percent greater, Ausubel says.

This is ridiculous. China is a poster boy for environmental destruction. They're not finished yet - they're planning to build half a thousand new coal plants in the next decade, even with complete knowledge of their already disastrous effect on China's air and the world's climate. But the authors of this "study" are seeing rainbows and popsicles because income there managed to rise even more quickly.

Dematerialization. What a nice sounding word to make us feel better. What's the point? That some countries don't screw up quite as badly as other countries? Or just that things could have been even worse? Well yes, I suppose that's always the case, isn't it? Things could always be even worse.

I'm accelerating toward this brick wall, but look, my income's rising even faster than my speed! If they were rising at the same rate, I would have already hit! Isn't that nice.

Pollyanna bullshit doublespeak, misrepresentation of exponential growth, and ignorance of industry's impact on the environment. I'm disappointed in ScienceDaily for publishing this.

Global environmental destruction is accelerating. As the world gets richer. Our only hope is for the world to get poorer again. Which, of course, it will do. But will it do it in time to give our children half a chance?

Tyler_JC wrote:It's all about values. You can call me a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.

Somehow we let ourselves get brainwashed by the TV People into thinking that we actually need Swivel Sweepers and Bowflex machines.

so very very true.

shoot it!

throw it out your window~

stick it on a spike like the head of a war trophy,

coyote wrote:

Dematerialization. What a nice sounding word to make us feel better. What's the point? That some countries don't screw up quite as badly as other countries? Or just that things could have been even worse? Well yes, I suppose that's always the case, isn't it? Things could always be even worse.

I'm accelerating toward this brick wall, but look, my income's rising even faster than my speed! If they were rising at the same rate, I would have already hit! Isn't that nice.

Pollyanna bullshit doublespeak, misrepresentation of exponential growth, and ignorance of industry's impact on the environment.

You have to applaud the academic type for spending so much time and finding the greatest correlations between ... er ... anything they can correlate.

This one is kin to baseball stats. Any .100 player can look like DiMaggio if you find the right correlation.

I have a solution: just triple everyone's income overnight and the environmental impact will disappear. How about that?

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home ... 020466.cms

World's richest 10% produce 50% of CO2

the poorest half-most threatened by droughts and super storms linked to climate change–contribute a mere 10%

We have met the enemy...

"The richest 10% have, on average, carbon footprints 11 times that of the poorest 3.5 billion people on the planet"

Another reason that population is not the main problem.

At these moments, I'm always motivated to post a movie line...

Kneel before Zod!

As someone who lives a pretty quiet life in the country with as little FF use as possible, I am always amazed at the grandstanding protestors interviewed by the media who fly across the country or world in order to protest Climate Change. The biggest protest possible, and eventually the most noticeable, starts with buying a bus pass and vacationing like days of old; maybe with a day trip to the beach or country. Of course, it is just so chic to save a rain forest in Costa Rica.

Start with starving the beast.

+1

dohboi wrote:"The richest 10% have, on average, carbon footprints 11 times that of the poorest 3.5 billion people on the planet"

Another reason that population is not the main problem.

You're assuming that the poorest 3.5 billion people will be content to continue to be the poorest 3.5 billion people and keep the same impoverished lifestyle.

That isn' true.

What poor people in India and other third world poverty holes want more than anything else is your lifestyle. Just as China modernized and their carbon output exploded, now India, Indonesia, VietNam, Tanzania, Nigeria, Egypt, etc etc. also want to modernize and live like Americans.


What kind of car do you want when you grow up?