Interesting
and well written article about overpopulation and rates of
consumption from Jared Diamond. More reasons to find stuff on Craig's
List, at thrift stores, and consider how much you really need something
in the first place.
WHAT'S YOUR CONSUMPTION FACTOR?
To
mathematicians, 32 is an interesting number: it's 2 raised to the fifth
power, 2 times 2 times 2 times 2 times 2. To economists, 32 is even
more special, because it measures the difference in lifestyles between
the first world and the developing world. The average rates at which
people consume resources like oil and metals, and produce wastes like
plastics and greenhouse gases, are about 32 times higher in North America, Western Europe, Japan and Australia than they are in the developing world. That factor of 32 has big consequences.
To
understand them, consider our concern with world population. Today,
there are more than 6.5 billion people, and that number may grow to
around 9 billion within this half-century. Several decades ago, many
people considered rising population to be the main challenge facing
humanity. Now we realize that it matters only insofar as people consume
and produce.
If
most of the world's 6.5 billion people were in cold storage and not
metabolizing or consuming, they would create no resource problem. What
really matters is total world consumption, the sum of all local
consumptions, which is the product of local population times the local
per capita consumption rate.The estimated one
billion people who live in developed countries have a relative per
capita consumption rate of 32. Most of the world's other 5.5 billion
people constitute the developing world, with relative per capita
consumption rates below 32, mostly down toward 1.
The
population especially of the developing world is growing, and some
people remain fixated on this. They note that populations of countries
like Kenya
are growing rapidly, and they say that's a big problem. Yes, it is a
problem for Kenya's more than 30 million people, but it's not a burden
on the whole world, because Kenyans consume so little. (Their relative
per capita rate is 1.) A real problem for the world is that each of us
300 million Americans consumes as much as 32 Kenyans. With 10 times the
population, the United States consumes 320 times more resources than Kenya does.
People
in the third world are aware of this difference in per capita
consumption, although most of them couldn't specify that it's by a
factor of 32. When they believe their chances of catching up to be
hopeless, they sometimes get frustrated and angry, and some become
terrorists, or tolerate or support terrorists. Since Sept. 11, 2001, it
has become clear that the oceans that once protected the United States
no longer do so. There will be more terrorist attacks against us and Europe, and perhaps against Japan and Australia,
as long as that factorial difference of 32 in consumption rates persists.
People
who consume little want to enjoy the high-consumption lifestyle.
Governments of developing countries make an increase in living
standards a primary goal of national policy. And tens of millions of
people in the developing world seek the first-world lifestyle on their
own, by emigrating, especially to the United States and Western Europe,
Japan and Australia.
Each such transfer of a person to a high-consumption country raises
world consumption rates, even though most immigrants don't succeed
immediately in multiplying their consumption by 32.
Among the developing countries that are seeking to increase per capita consumption rates at home, China
stands out. It has the world's fastest growing economy, and there are
1.3 billion Chinese, four times the United States population. The world
is already running out of resources, and it will do so even sooner if China achieves American-level consumption rates. Already, China is competing with us for oil and metals on world markets.
Per capita consumption rates in China
are still about 11 times below ours, but let's suppose they rise to our
level. Let's also make things easy by imagining that nothing else
happens to increase world consumption — that is, no other country
increases its consumption, all national populations (including China's)
remain unchanged and immigration ceases. China's catching up alone
would roughly double world consumption rates. Oil consumption would
increase by 106 percent, for instance, and world metal consumption by
94 percent.
If India as well as China
were to catch up, world consumption rates would triple. If the whole
developing world were suddenly to catch up, world rates would increase
elevenfold. It would be as if the world population ballooned to 72
billion people (retaining present consumption rates).
Some
optimists claim that we could support a world with nine billion people.
But I haven't met anyone crazy enough to claim that we could support 72
billion. Yet we often promise developing countries that if they will
only adopt good policies — for example, institute honest government and
a free-market economy — they, too, will be able to enjoy a first-world
lifestyle. This promise is impossible, a cruel hoax: we are having
difficulty supporting a first-world lifestyle even now for only one
billion people.
We Americans may think of China's growing consumption as a problem. But the Chinese
are only reaching for the consumption rate we already have. To tell them not to try would be futile.
The only approach that China
and other developing countries will accept is to aim to make
consumption rates and living standards more equal around the world. But
the world doesn't have enough resources to allow for raising China's
consumption rates, let alone those of the rest of the world, to our
levels. Does this mean we're headed for disaster?
No,
we could have a stable outcome in which all countries converge on
consumption rates considerably below the current highest levels.
Americans might object: there is no way we would sacrifice our living
standards for the benefit of people in the rest of the world.
Nevertheless, whether we get there willingly or not, we shall soon have
lower consumption rates, because our present rates are unsustainable.