ALL Greens have a deep passionate desire to make sure we live well without doing serious damage to the environment, but apart from that are a motley lot impossible to accurately define.
This is one of the messages that have emerged from my series entitled ‘Defining the Greens’.
But I can’t agree.
In the 70s there was some agreement that protecting the planet required fewer people, less wealth and simpler technology – I’m paraphrasing John Tierney from an article in Monday’s New York Times.
But today, according to Mr Tierney, the old wealth-is-bad theory while perhaps making intuitive sense, doesn’t accord with the data. Graphs of environmental impact don’t produce a simple upward-sloping line as countries get richer. The line more often rises, flattens out and then reversed so that it sloped downward, forming the shape of a dome or an inverted U — what’s called a Kuznets curve. (See nytimes.com/tierneylab for an example.)
There are exceptions to the trend, explains Mr Tierney, especially in countries with inept governments and poor systems of property rights, but in general, richer is eventually greener. As incomes go up, people often focus first on cleaning up their drinking water, and then later on air pollutants like sulfur dioxide.
As their wealth grows, people consume more energy, but they move to more efficient and cleaner sources — from wood to coal and oil, and then to natural gas and nuclear power, progressively emitting less carbon per unit of energy.
So according to Mr Tierney, “Use energy, get rich and save the planet” – and that’s the title of his article in the NYT.
There are a percentage of environmentalists who agree whole heartedly with this assessment, but for the most part these people would not like to be referred to as ‘Greens’ or ‘Greenies’. Those who have an affinity with the word ‘Green’ tend, to be more of the old school, stuck back in the 1970s and believe preventing serious damage to the environment means less wealth and simpler technology.
***********************
Relevant Notes and Links
Use Energy, Get Rich and Save the Planet
By JOHN TIERNEY, Published: April 20, 2009 , The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/science/earth/21tier.html?_r=3&scp=5&sq=John%20Tierney&st=cse
Environmental Kuznets Curves PERC, Yandle, Bhattarai, and Vijayaraghavan
http://www.perc.org/pdf/rs02_1a.pdf
The graph (click on the image for a larger/better view) shows that since 1850, the amount of carbon emitted per unit of energy used globally has declined as people around the world move to more carbon-efficient sources of energy http://phe.rockefeller.edu/docs/IsRicherGreener2Dec.pdf
Data sources: IIASA, BP (1965-2001), CDIAC http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/trends/emis/em_cont.htm
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
However, if the amount of energy being used has increased then this isolated factoid would only imply a overall reduction in ‘carbon’ if the rate of carbon/energy intensification was faster than the growth in energy consumption – which it isn’t.
Jennifer,
Are you again just cherry picking to support this superstition of yours. Each time you raise it you use inductive reasoning and each time you are shot down.
Why do you stick with this superstition? Or is it just that your ideology has become a religion to you.
Lomborg was pilloried because he dared to argue, convincingly, that material prosperity had never been so widespread while natural integrity was maintained at a high level; it was an argument Lomborg could not win because material prosperity is anathema to a green perspective; this apathy extends to humanism, capitalism, consumerism, propery rights and an extolation of primitivism and the superiority of unfettered natural process. The thought that humanity has brought conscious intelligence to the blind, dumb and random destructiveness of nature is never is considered by the green. Nature is incredibly wasteful and profligate; the irony, as Indur Goklany has shown, is that as people achieve a material prosperity, which is essemtially independence from nature, that they then act to enhance nature, not just for their benefit but to the extent of preserving elements of nature that would be otherwise eliminated. The key to this is energy and again the great hypocrisy of the greens is that nuclear is not on the table.
I think that your general simplification of the kinds of people who call themselves “Green” is what is stuck in the 1970s:)
In developing countries, people depend on nature. They hunt bush meat/wildebeast, pick wild plants, fish, and cut firewood. They use dynamite on coral reefs to catch fish. This can push many species to extinction. Prosperity means that people are too busy and wealthy to go forage in the woods and eat everything edible, and many species recover. People burning firewood in their homes are exposed to heavy doses of smoke and suffer from respiratory diseases. Those who extol a primitive lifestyle have never lived it for more than a week as a tourist or camping out.
Thus richer is generally greener but not necessarily in terms of a carbon footprint. That is a separate question. Greener with wealth is in terms of water quality, air quality, protection of nature preserves and endangered species. Terms are easily conflated in this debate. For example “clean coal” is a term that has been around for a while to mean low-sulphur coal and burning with reduced particulates/more scrubbing. Now it means “low carbon” (ie carbon capture) which leads to confused discussions, where someone says “clean coal” is here now but means reduced pollution, not carbon capture.
sorry Jennifer, but Mr. Tierney has (again) written an unbelievably stupid piece.
a fast reality check can be found here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/todd-palmer-and-rob-pringle/nyts-tierney-wrong-on-sav_b_190377.html
for a start, using CO2 per energy unit is simply a false approach, while we are still increasing our use of energy.
Those who have an affinity with the word ‘Green’ tend, to be more of the old school, stuck back in the 1970s and believe preventing serious damage to the environment means less wealth and simpler technology.
this is simply false. again. the “stone age green” people that you talk about, don t really exist at all. they definitely don t make up a significant portion of the green movement.
you might want to talk to someone in the solar energy business once in your life. greenpeace is really famous for their rowing boats!
the I=PAT formula is taking into account a positive effect of technology since at least the 90s. the 2001 IPCC report is taking this into account already.
The IPAT identity states that environmental impacts (e.g., emissions) are the product of the level of population times affluence (income per capita, i.e. gross domestic product (GDP) divided by population) times the level of technology deployed (emissions per unit of income)
http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_sr/?src=/climate/ipcc/emission/050.htm
the main problem with your “The Richer-Is-(AUTOMATICALLY)-Greener Curve” is again a simple one:
1. while things get greener, they don t get green. middle europe is a natural wasteland. the wilderness is gone and wont return. natural parks and protected woods are ok, but it simply isn t what it was before. it would be a shame, if we allow this to happen on the whole planet.
2. the things don t get greener by themselves. bears returning, rivers cleaned, woods protected are all results of GREEN PEOPLE fighting hard fights against people like you, who oppose every regulation and protection effort. fact.
sod; you and other greens disavow the tag of misanthropy which has been levied against green zealotry; what’s your take on this;
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25376991-20261,00.html
sod; you and other greens disavow the tag of misanthropy which has been levied against green zealotry; what’s your take on this;
nothing of it is a mainstream green position. it is irrelevant.
where is the “back to stoneage” manifest of the australian green party? any significant green movement?
Not “a mainstream green position” is just a disingenuous statement sod; John Holdren is a committed advocate of Erhlich’s views; look at Lovelock’s views on population, or Gus Speth’s; Clive Hamilton, Glenn Albrecht, Kirk Hoffman are all mainstream commentators who espouse drastic reductions in population because of the damage humanity is doing to pristine nature; PETA is the cause celebre of the jet-setter nincompops of Hollywood and they would trade humanity in for 2 squirrels and a donkey; then there is this from John Reid;
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/ockhamsrazor/stories/2006/1807002.htm#transcript
Misanthropy is an essential part of the green mantra and to simply assert otherwise smacks of hypocrisy; what’s the matter sod, does it embarrass you that you are travelling with human-haters?
Jeremy C “Why do you stick with this superstition? Or is it just that your ideology has become a religion to you”.
Good work, Jen, you’re getting through to the loonies.
The IPAT equation was devised by Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren in the early 1970s to help promote the argument that the growth of population was a substantial, and perhaps the major, contributor to environmental impact.
In a contribution (‘Population and the American Predicament: The Case Against Complacency’) to a symposium on ‘The No-Growth Society’ which was published in the Fall 1974 issue of the Proceedings of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Holdren was so keen to demonstrate the crucial role of population growth ‘in aggravating [US] problems and impeding the success of attempted nondemographic remedies’ that he made an elementary arithmetical error in the course of illustrating an application of the IPAT equation:
‘As an example, consider the potential effect of population growth on total energy consumption. Most forecasts show energy consumption per capita increasing at 3 percent per year in the United States during the remainder of this century. Although I think this estimate too high for a number of reasons, it is instructive in the present context to explore the effect of two different scenarios for population growth under the assumption that the per capita energy forecast is correct. My “high” population possibility … [assumes] 265 million Amerixcans in the year 2000. The “low” possibility … gives 238 million. The lower population scenario cuts IN HALF the increase in total energy consumption between 1973 and 2000, assuming 3 per cent per year growth in total energy consumption in each case’ (footnote 13, Holdren’s EMPHASIS).
Well, no. On the assumptions that Holdren stated, plus the fact that the US population was 211 million in 1973, it can be calculated that the lower population growth cut the predicted increase in energy consumption to the end of the century by only 16 percent, not by half. Holdren’s calculation would only have been correct if per capita energy consumption had been predicted to stay constant between 1973 and 2000 rather than increasing by 3 percent annually (which in itself yields growth by a factor of 2.22 over the 27-year period).
I invite your readers to check my arithmetic. As it turned out, US energy consumption per head DID remain constant between 1973 and 2000, so the whole of the MUCH smaller increase in energy consumption than was implicit in Holdren’s calculation was, according to the IPAT equation, attributable to population growth (because the upward effect of rising ‘affluence’ was fully offset by the downward effect of improved ‘technology’).
Holdren is now President Obama’s science adviser, and Head of the White House Office of Science and Technology.
Sod, Your link to the I=PAT definition is to the IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES, 2000), which claims that ‘the level of energy intensities in developing countries today is general comparable with the range of the now-industrialized countries when they had the same level of per capita GDP’ (section 2.4.10, p. 97). This is similar to claims made by Nebojsa Nakicenovic, later the Coordinating Lead Author of the SRES, in a paper (‘Freeing Energy from Carbon’) published in the Summer 1996 issue of ‘Daedalus’, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences:
‘The present energy intensity of Thailand resembles the situation in the United States in the late 1940s. The energy intensity of India … [is similar to that of] the United States about a century ago’ (p. 100).
These assertions are incorrect because Dr Nakicenovic (and later the IPCC) used a flawed measure for the ‘A’ [=Affluence] term in the I=PAT equation: in order to make cross-country comparisons of GDP volumes, allowance must be made for differences in price levels between countries (e.g. for the fact that the price level in India is lower than in the United States). Dr Nakicenovic and the IPCC failed to do this.
My apologies. I inadvertently keyed in the word ‘total’ rather than ‘per capita’ in the last phrase of the quote from John Holdren’s 1974 paper. What Holdren actually said in his paper (as noted above, he made an arithmetical error) was as follows:
‘As an example, consider the potential effect of population growth on total energy consumption. Most forecasts show energy consumption per capita increasing at 3 percent per year in the United States during the remainder of this century. Although I think this estimate too high for a number of reasons, it is instructive in the present context to explore the effect of two different scenarios for population growth under the assumption that the per capita energy forecast is correct. My “high” population possibility … [assumes] 265 million Americans in the year 2000. The “low” possibility … gives 238 million in 2000. The lower population scenario cuts IN HALF the increase in total energy consumption between 1973 and 2000, assuming 3 per cent per year growth in per capita energy consumption in each case’ (footnote 13, Holdren’s EMPHASIS).
Sorry Ian, the US energy consumption per capita(per head as you say) DIDNOT remain constant between the years you indicate. Based upon 1983 statistics US per capita energy consumption was about 80 million kilocalories in the early 80’s. The figure for the year 2002 is 85.8 million kilocalories. So the consumption is gone up by 7.25% since then.
http://www.iaea.org/inisnkm/nkm/aws/eedrb/data/US-encc.html
The estimate for 2007/08 was about 92 million kcal/capita. I am giving the energy figures in kilocalories so people can have a fealing of what such figures mean.
It is accepted that adults should consume food having about 2000 kcal of energy value daily for healthy survival. This makes a yearly value of 730000 kcal/year. Let us take this figure as one million and assume that we can get this food ready as edible and near our mouths with 10% efficiency (not including the solar and wind energies used), then we need to spend 10million kcal/capita/year of energy (mostly non-renewable so far) for our diet for healthy survival. In general this should hold, on the average, for all adult humans worldwide.
Here are some energy consumption per capita for some countries for the year 2002 as determined by the US DOE in the year 2005 in millions of kilocalories:
USA 85.8 , Australia 65, UK 41.5, Germany 43.9, France 46.7, Turkey 11.3, China 8.2, India 3.3
We see that some countries are spending much more non-renewable energy than necessary for the survival of their citizens while others have to survive with less than 2000 kcal/capita/day.
As non-renewables are becoming more scarce and as world population shows no signs of slowing down, unfortunately, there is no way to avoid conflict. Here is where I have always hoped that the “GREENS” would do something. So far, I remain disappointed!
Sorry Abdullah, but the US figures of total energy use per head of population DID remain constant between the years I indicated: according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency’s ‘Energy Balances of OECD Countries (2008 edition)’ the total primary energy supply used in the US declined fractionally from 8.1876 to 8.1518 tonnes oil equivalent per capita between 1973 and 2000. They were the years I indicated: I don’t know why you’ve used ‘1983 statistics’ of consumption in the early 1980s from an International Atomic Energy Agency database as your base period – Holdren explicitly stated that his prediction was from the base year 1973 and that’s the year that I used. But in any case, the table from which I drew my figures shows that there was a further decline of 4 percent in US energy use per head between 2000 and 2007.
I’m surprised that you think that the world population shows no signs of slowing down. You obviously haven’t read the UN Population Division’s ‘World Population Prospects: the 2008 Revision.’ As I commented critically on Dr Nakicenovic’s claims about energy intensity, I’m happy to quote here his evidence to the House of Lords Select Committee on Economic Affairs’ inquiry into ‘The Economics of Climate Change’ on the progressive change in the global population projections of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA):
‘In the early 1990s it was felt that the most likely or medium population projection for the world was about 12 billion people [in 2100], the top range perhaps 18 or so. By the time we were writing this [SRES] report [about 1998] the medium [projection of global population] was 10 billion people. The highest range about 15, the lowest about six billion… Ever since this [SRES] report was published the population projections have been revised [downward] … [T]he medium projection is no longer 10 billion people but about 8 billion people: the higher is in the range of about 12 and the lower is in the range of about 4 instead of 6 [billion]’ (Evidence, 8 March 2005, pps. 135-36).
These assertions are incorrect because Dr Nakicenovic (and later the IPCC) used a flawed measure for the ‘A’ [=Affluence] term in the I=PAT equation: in order to make cross-country comparisons of GDP volumes, allowance must be made for differences in price levels between countries (e.g. for the fact that the price level in India is lower than in the United States). Dr Nakicenovic and the IPCC failed to do this.
Ian, you are simply wrong. again.
the GDP in different countries is actually always measured in (gross domestic product (GDP) at) purchasing power parities (PPPs)”
(under the graph on the side)
the IPCC did their homework. you did not.
but those errors aside, the main point has not been disputed: greens (and even the IPCC) take into account a positive effect on technology, at least since the 90s. Tierney and Jennifer simply got this one wrong!
Sod, You are simply wrong. Again.
I don’t know what graph you’re looking at, but Figure 2.10 on p. 97 of the SRES (which is cited in support of the statement I quoted) shows the trends in energy intensities in different countries and regions in MJ per US dollar and per capita in US dollars in 1990 prices and exchange rates. Similar details are repeated in Figure 3-13 on p. 125 of the SRES, and again the energy intensities are plotted on the vertical axis in MJ/1990$US converted at exchange rates. There is no suggestion that purchasing power parity converters were used, and they weren’t.
In his written submission prepared at the request of the House of Lords Select Committee on Climate Change on ‘The Economics of Climate Change’, Professor Angus Maddison, the world’s leading expert on comparisons of GDP and GDP per head across the world and down the ages, provided the Committee with
‘an explanation of the importance of using PPP converters rather than exchange rates in comparing levels of performance between countries and in establishing measures of aggregate world output, with an illustration of the implausibility of using exchange rate converters in historical analyses or futurology (as in the IPCC, “Special Report on Emissions Scenarios”, Cambridge University Press, 2000)’ (Evidence, p. 249).
In their unanimous report published in July 2005, the all-Party Committee criticised the IPCC SRES authors for insisting on the “methodological soundness of the use of MER [market exchange rates] for developing long-term emissions scenarios”. The Committee stated that “We found no support for the use of MER in such exercises, other than from Dr Nakicenovic of the IPCC” and went on:
“We consider that Professor Henderson and Mr Castles were right to raise the [PPP v. MER] issue. In so doing, they have helped to generate a valuable literature that calls into question a whole range of issues in relation to the IPCC SRES … It seems likely that the debate over the emissions scenarios would have occurred at all had Professor Henderson and Mr Castles not persisted in their views. We consider that they have performed a public service” (Report, para. 53).
I suggest that you do some homework on the PPP vs MER issue before posting further on the subject.
i am still looking at the page that i cited and linked to above:
http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_sr/?src=/climate/ipcc/emission/050.htm
and the Figure on the right:
Figure 3-1: Historical trends in energy-related CO2 emissions (“carbon emissions” shown as bold gray line) and broken down into the components of emission growth: growth or declines of population, gross domestic product (GDP) at purchasing power parities (PPPs), energy use per unit of GDP (Energy/GDP), share of renewables in energy use (Renewable energy/Energy), and carbon intensity per fossil energy (Carbon/Fossil energy) since 1970, in million tons elemental carbon (MtC). From top to bottom: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD90, countries that belong to the OECD as of 1990), former USSR (FSU), Developing Countries (ASIA and Africa, Latin America and the Middle East (ALM)), and World. Source: Gürer and Ban, 1997.
to me, this looks like the IPCC is well aware of PPP.
Sod, All that you’re demonstrating is the IPCC’s hopeless confusion. The fact that they used what they mistakenly supposed was ‘PPP’ in one Figure doesn’t mean that they are ‘well aware of PPP’. In its notorious news release of 8 December 2003, in which the Panel accused David Henderson and me of spreading ‘disinformation’, the IPCC said ‘The economy does not change by using a different metrics (PPP or MEX), in the same way that the temperature does not change if you switch from degrees Celsius to Fahrenheit.’ So you think it would be OK if the IPCC compared temperatures measured in Celsius and Fahrenheit in different places, as if they were interchangeable? Please do some homework on this subject before you dig yourself into an even deeper hole.
sod is fond of holes, hence his sobriquet.
Sod,
It is not just Tierney and Jennifer who are confused, many of us do not understand what the Greens really stand for. The impression is that you are generally against technological solutions to problems like global warming, assuming of course that it exists.
Could you, or perhaps Matt or Jeremy, explain the position of those who identify as Greens, on the issue of technology?
look Ian, it is obvious that this matter is of great interest to you. so i am sorry, that my very first link contradicted your claim, even before you brought this up. (you simply can t deny the letters PPP prominently written on the page i linked. or will you?)
apart from that, this is an unimportant point to my original argument (they are well aware of the technology effect being positive) and as studies have shown, PPP vs MER also is not important for the IPCC projection results, as errors balance each other.
http://econpapers.repec.org/paper/ssbdispap/366.htm
Could you, or perhaps Matt or Jeremy, explain the position of those who identify as Greens, on the issue of technology?
anti nuclear technology and pro solar technology, for a start?
Sod,
I suspect Dr Castles is more interested in the facts than your “links”.
And the gentleman probably knowns something about these issues:
“Ian Castles, AO is a Visiting Fellow at the Asia Pacific School of Economics and Government at the Australian National University, Canberra, he was the Australian Statistician (1986-94) and Secretary of the Australian Government Department of Finance (1979-86).
He has also been Executive Director and Vice President of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (1995-2000) and President of the International Association of Official Statistics.”
Now, Sod, what was your original argument?
Sod,
I see you have now commented on the issue of Greens and technology. Appreciated.
Can you explain why you are pro solar technology and anti nuclear technology. I understand about 80 per cent of the electricity generated in France is nuclear. Should they convert to solar?
Ian, pls do your own calculations. Don’t rely on someone elses figures unless they are the data source. I gave you the source and link of my figures. If you go to the link you can multiply the energy figures given in KWH by 860 to get the values in kcals.
Speaking of UN reports, they are usually presented in such a way as to bias people’s thinking so that international money is channeled to certain directions and to certain people. They never seem bothered by the daily increase of 220000 people worldwide. They try to condition people to think that because of slight declines in birth rate the world population will be wiped out. I dont know why they do that. It seems like it is serving “some” policy.
Have you any UN reports about global unemployment and suggestions for coping with it?
Do they have any reports on wiping out poverty? How to wipe out international crime?
Do you also deny that world population will reach (and most likely exceed) 9 billion by 2050? or are you of the “lets wait and see” kind?
Wow, I started to act as a “green” or what I believe how a green should act like.
The greens must divert attention to more immediate issues. The UN has not done much so far and I doubt that they will be affective in the near future.
here is a short timeline of events:
1. jennifer makes the claim, that “n the 70s there was some agreement that protecting the planet required fewer people, less wealth and simpler technology and continues that it si the same with green today.
2. i contradict her, pointing out that greens since at least the 90s are aware of the positive effects of technology. as an example i quote the IPCC report, that shows that the formula brought up my Tierney does indeed take into account a positive effect of technology. (technology as emissions per unit of income)
http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_sr/?src=/climate/ipcc/emission/050.htm
3. Ian shows up, and makes the claim that i am wrong, because they use a wrong method to calculate GDP (not the PPP approach)
4. i point out, that the original page i linked to uses the PPP approach.
and:
that this does not contradict what i wrote.
and:
that the method used to calculate PP is not very important anyway.
i fear his résumé will be of little help to Ian here. he was simply wrong on all accounts. (and should feel free to continue his academic discussion with the IPCC)
Sod, Ian’s position was communicated to the IPCC some time ago with David Henderson. I gather there has been some criticism of the IPCC along these lines by other economists – that the IPCC is muddling its economics. So using the IPCC as your defense is perhaps not such a good idea. Better you perhaps argue from first principles. Do you understand economics and in particular these issues or are you just relying on the IPCC – the climate modellers?
It is rather grotesque that disingenous commentators like sod should blather on and take the high ground in respect of greens being technophiles; Holdren and Erhlich’s I=PAT ‘formula’ from the 70’s has never been disavowed;
http://www.reason.com/news/show/27702.html
Abdullah, The IEA is not a UN agency but it is the most widely used source for international energy data. But if you have some objection to using the statistics compiled by that organisation, please go to the US official data from its Energy Information Administration. The trend is charted in Figure 2 of the ‘Energy Perspectives Overview’ page of their latest International Energy Annual (which is available separately online at http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/pdf/perspectives.pdf). The EIA’s figures are in Btu per person rather than the tons of oil equivalent per person used by the IEA, but the trends are virtually identical in the two sources. According to the EIA chart, the peak level of energy consumption per person in the US was 359 million Btu in 1978 and 1979, declining to 337 million Btu per person in 2007. The datasets that I’ve used are the standard sources and they both show a slight but clear downward trend in energy consumption per head in the US since the 1970s.
We tend to group and categorise people, for instance in Australia we talk about the Aboriginal community when we know such a thing really does not exist. To say the “Greens” most of us on this blog would mean people who see the planet “Gaia” to have an intrinsic right separate from humans. For them there is some sort of ideal state when all was well before that pollutant humanity corrupted it. I have read that this is by no means a new idea but a modern manifestation religions based on the natural world. I see the “Greens” as quite a disparate group which presents varying opinions. This is because there has not been sufficient time to consolidate their scripture and individuals in any religion will depart from the central tenants. The “greens” that concern me are the ones who express the view that because of emissions we are all going to hell in a hand basket and we should do something about it.
The do something is the vexed question. It ranges from the inconsequential to the extreme. Kyoto, energy saving lights and cutting emissions by 50% are expressed in the same breath as if they are equal. Meeting the Kyoto target does not seem likely even though any change it might make could not be measured. Energy saving lights is the most trivial futile of gestures that will only help make more money for the manufacturer. Reducing emissions by 50% would end the economy of any country that does it, because without nuclear the only way it could done would be to shutdown industry and transport. Meanwhile all the coal and oil will still be used, so in a global sense nothing is achieved.
I know several people I would call green who advocate we should go solar or wind because it so easy. One has spent $30000 on environmentally friendly solar cells and water heating. This make him feel he is doing something and he imagines that if everyone were to do as he has then the country could have its energy needs met. He is totally opposed to nuclear, something that might have a chance.
Persons taking this position have a narrow view of the world and history. When challenged they responded with abuse as do many on this blog. I take this as being a frustration with someone like me who does not believe. It is because their own beliefs are threatened. This anger is the same that had people burnt at the stake and Galileo recant.
Some home truths for the believers. Our world is very near to the lowest CO2 and temperature in the last 600 million years. The temperature has risen marginally since 1750 but for most of that 600 million years it has been about 8 degrees hotter. CO2 has been also in the 1000s not the 100s as it is now. Even the short history we have shows many times of extreme weather before the industrial age. All these things happened at a time when humans could not possibly have influenced it. Now you expect me to believe that there is an ideal state we as humans can achieve? We may be able change in the weather in the future but not any time soon. I any case if we could what would we choose as ideal?
The intellectual poverty of the green movement is amply demonstrated by Haldon’s sad little attempt at analysing the value of life. He calculates that basic food supply requires 1 million kcalories per capita and then would have us conclude that the remaining 84 to 91 million kcalories used by OECD residents are some sort of lifestyle based excess or inefficiency.
So all those additional kcalories spent on educating the kids, getting them to school and back safe, and providing them with enriching experiences, building and maintaining the school etc are mere lifestyle inefficiencies. Ditto for all that silly expense involved in building and maintaining quality housing, quality health care, effective law and order, justice and equity, good governance, aged care, and the transport infrastructure to make all this possible.
To our little anal retentive mate all the kcalories that these functions involve are all mere affluent indulgence. The great failing of the green movement is that they almost invariably revert to the narrow, parsimonious, strategic vista of the costing clerk. Yes, costing clerks perform a very valuable function that effective organisations ignore at their peril. But there is no place for them at the boardroom table where tunnel vision is a serious handicap.
1970s lifestyle ‘protects planet’
In the 1970s the UK population was far slimmer than it is now
Getting back to the relatively slim, trim days of the 1970s would help to tackle climate change, researchers say.
The rising numbers of people who are overweight and obese in the UK means the nation uses 19% more food than 40 years ago, a study suggests.
That could equate to an extra 60 mega-tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions a year, the team calculated.
Transport costs of a fatter population were also included in the International Journal of Epidemiology study.
Dr Phil Edwards, study leader and researcher at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said they had set out to calculate what the UK energy consumption would be if the weight of the population was put back a few decades.
Staying slim is good for health and for the environment
Dr Phil Edwards
A “normal” adult population, where only 3.5% are classed as obese, was compared with a population where 40% are obese.
These populations reflect the proportions of overweight and obese people living in the UK in the 1970s – and what is predicted for the UK in 2010, the researchers said.
In addition to calculating the increased food costs of the heavier population, the team worked out how much additional fuel would be needed for transportation of modern-day UK compared with the 1970s version.
Greenhouse gas emissions from food production and car travel in the fatter population would be between 0.4 to 1 giga-tonnes higher per 1bn people, they estimated.
Heavier
And people are generally bigger than they were three decades ago.
Between 1994 and 2004, the average male body mass index (BMI) in England increased from 26 to 27.3, with the average female BMI rising from 25.8 to 26.9 which equates to about 3 kg – or half a stone – heavier.
“This is not really just about obese people, the distribution of the whole population is what’s important,” said Dr Edwards.
“Everybody is getting a bit fatter.”
“Staying slim is good for health and for the environment.
“We need to be doing a lot more to reverse the global trend towards fatness, and recognise it as a key factor in the battle to reduce emissions and slow climate change.”
It is not just a UK issue – in nearly every country in the world, the average BMI is rising.
Professor Alan Maryon-Davis, president of the Faculty of Public Health said shifting the population weight distribution back to that of the 1970s would do quite a lot to help the planet.
“In the 1970s we had bigger portions of vegetables and smaller portions of meat and there’s been a shift in the amount of exercise we do.
“All these things are combining to hurt the planet and this is a calculation that deserves a bit more attention,” he said.
As I said before, costing clerks have no place at the boardroom table. The reasons for reducing weight are for induividual well being, not some imaginary planet salvation.
BMI is a function of weight and height. Only one of these is under the control of the individual. Human height has been increasing with improved nutrition for centuries. So if we are to turn back the clock then why not back to 1750?
Once a society gets into the business of targeting weight it is only a small jump to discriminating against taller people because of their greater food requirements. And it would be no small irony that the first people to get the shaft if these kind of feral bean counters have their way will be african americans, known for both height and weight.
birdie,
Thanks for that. It hadn’t occurred to me that the fat industry has lost out so comprehensively to the hot industry. Nice try at piggybacking, but I don’t think it will work. The hot industry is well on the way to establishing the need for food to replace petrol which will guarantee that the 5 billion or so who are not affluent will automatically get thinner.
Ian,
Yes, tax the tall.