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TODAY Tuesday 3 June 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site. |
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TODAY Tuesday 3 June 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site. |
TODAY IN THE WORLD: A New Measure
From the indispensable people at the World Resources Institute comes a report that changes the way you look at, and calculate, the consequences of human acts on the natural world. The report is called "Resource Flows: The Material Basis of Industrial Economies" (view details and/or order the report). It is not easy going, style-wise, but it's short, and it's definitely important.
"Resource Flows" proposes a new measure, Total Material Requirement (TMR), which calculates "the total use of natural resources that national economic activity requires." Most, but not all, of the natural resources measured by TMR are not assigned values by conventional economics (soil, for example) and thus are not captured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or other standard yardsticks. And yet the use of such resources entail costs: in the depletion of finite stores; in the disposal of wastes; and in the dispersion and remediation of pollutants.
The material flows of four advanced societies were compared by WRI and its three collaborators: the Netherlands Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning, and Environment, the Wuppertal Institute (Germany), and the National Institute for Environmental Studies (Japan). Rather than confine each national analysis to activities taking place on the national territory, the authors traced the overall national demand for materials, even if those materials were farmed or mined or disposed of in other countries. On a per capita basis, for example, the Dutch and the Japanese required far fewer domestic natural resources than we Americans. But their economies do require the extraction of natural resources from faraway places; from a sustainability point of view, neither society really comes close. The Japanese manufacture of automobiles compels mining on four continents; the Dutch dairy industry compels enormous imports of fodder and feed grains. Before TMR, there was no standard by which to calculate the Japanese-induced tailings at the bauxite mine in Jamaica or the Dutch-induced soil erosion from the wheat grown on the Argentine pampas.
Two significant generalities emerge quickly. The first is that service economies require material flows just as industrial economies do. The relative decline of the American manufacturing sector, for example, has not been accompanied by a relative decline in our demand for tangible things. The second generality is that, contrary to widespread impressions, advanced societies are not becoming more efficient in their use of materials. There was indeed such a trend in the period after the oil embargo of 1973, but in recent years the TMR has been on a trajectory nearly parallel with GDP.
Though three of the four societies under study have virtually the same per capita TMR (only the Japanese are significantly more efficient), they each have distinctive resource-flow patterns. In the US, we're almost as bad as the Germans at fossil fuel consumption but relatively efficient in our use of metals and industrial minerals. Where we really excel (if that's the word) is in our world-class levels of infrastructure excavation and soil erosion. We may have a national genius for ripping up the earth and then either dumping it somewhere or letting it wash or blow away.
The limitations on these activities -- and the cautionary message for the developing world -- comes less because humans are going to "run out of" materials (soil loss is probably a bigger worry in this regard than petroleum depletion) and more because we really haven't figured out how to handle the wastes and pollutants that are produced at the end of the line. Recycling and closed-loop manufacturing cycles are still exceptions to the rule. Here's a millennial challenge in every sense of the word.
TODAY ON THE SITE
Luckily for all of us, there's an in-house Liberty Tree expert on materials policy ready to take your further education in hand. Do check out John Young's High Five on Materials for the latest scoop on where to go for Websites with good information on resource flows.
6/02: My Front Yard
5/30: Funders
5/29: Quantification
5/28: Over the Top
5/27: Solar Hippies
5/23: Spiffy Cars, Clunker Bikes
5/22: Petroleum Heresy
5/21: We Irish
5/20: Shallow Backpackers
5/19: Songbirds
5/16: Fat, Fat, Fat
5/15: Our Forthright Administration
5/14: Coral Reefs of the Sahara
5/13: (Life Before) Death and Taxes
5/12: Kids
5/09: Free Trade and Hormones
5/08: Sherry Boehlert, Republican
5/07: Fort Davis, West Texas
5/06: Europe (yawn)
5/05: Divorce, Mothers, Equality
5/02: Killer Grannies and the Highway Bill
5/01: China
4/30: Pity the Mangrove
4/29: Grizzlies off Battery Park
4/28: Mighty Monsanto
4/25: Growth
4/24: Refrigerator Wars
4/23: The Day the Earth Day Stood Still
4/22: Doorman Ecology
4/21: Toyota Steps Out
4/18: Victims of Extremism
4/17: Our White Guy Problem
4/16: Coca-Cola and the Merrit Parkway