A world full of Americans?

Many in the US believe that the rest of the world should follow in our economic footpath and if they do, they can benefit from the "American Dream."  Philosophical questions aside, is this even possible?  Can the planet support a world full of people who consume in the same way as a typical American?

How do Americans consume?  This slide will give you a sense.

We represent about 5% of the world population which is indicated by that blue piece of the pie.  That is our fair share of resources from the planet.  The amount we actually consume is shown in blue + purple.  As you can see, we consume much, much more than our fair share.

Although 1/20th of the world's population we consume
     1/4 of the world's fossil fuel;
     1/3 of the world paper
     1/5 of the worlds minerals

And America, 5% of the world's population produces 75% of the worlds toxic waste.

So, how many "Americas" can the planet support? 

The United States, at 5% of the world population (about 300 million people) consumes about 25% of the worlds resources.  Let's imagine that another 300 million people develop in the same manner and live a similar lifestyle.  Now we have 10% of the world consuming 50% of the world's resources.  Add another 300 million people and we have 15% of the world consuming 75% of the world's resources.  One more time and we have 20% of humanity using 100% of the worlds resources.

Hmmn.  So 1.2 billion people are living very well.  But the current global population is 6.8 billion.  What happened to the other 5.6 billion people?

Well, they are dead.  We are using up all their resources.

Following our Lead
It is clear that the world cannot even support 4 "Americas."  Turns out that the world is now following in our footsteps.  Most societies have some form of capitalism in place and they are succeeded in creating millions, and millions of new consumers.  People who are now living the same type of lifestyle we do in the US.

Let's add them up:

1. Unites States
2. Europe (that is about 300 million people who live about as well as we do)
3. China (china's economy has been booming for the last 30 years...now have at least 300 million middle class consumers)
4. India (India's economy has been booming for the last decade or so, and have created roughly another "America")
5. Asian Middle Class (Add up the middle class from Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Korea, Japan and you get another 300 million consumers)
6. Russia/Central Europe (Add up the growing wealthy elite in these countries and you get another 300 million)
7. China@2030 (At the current rate of growth, China will add another 300 million to their middle class in the next 20 years)
8. India@2030 (At the current rate of growth, India will add another 300 million to their middle class in the next 20 years)

Sooooo, in the next 20 years we are going to have 8 Americas come on line.  There is nothing subtle about this.  No room for negotiation.  There is no technology, or "greater efficiency" or production improvement that can deal with this.  

For the current population to live like Americans, we would need five Earths.  We don't have five earths but we are hurling ahead as if we do.

This last graph says it all.  Somewhere in the 1980's we passed the carrying capacity of the earth.  The longer we stay above that horizontal line the more we are eating away at the earths natural resource capital.

Every day above that line we reduce the earths ability to support life on the planet.  For future generations to survive and flourish, we cannot take resources from the planet faster than the planet can regenerate them.

Our sense of what is a "realistic" lifestyle is simply off the charts.  We need to dramatically change our lives before mother earth does it for us.

1. Buy Less
2. Work Less
3. Drive Less (get rid of one of those cars)
4. Reduce, Re-use, Recycle
5. Buy local (when you must)
6. Live more.  Family.  Friends.  Self

Check out:
Simple Living.net

When you are in a hole......stop digging

Remember that pithy ditty, what was it again, all yeah, "Drlll baby, Drill"?  Michael Steele, the current head of the Republican National Committee came up the phrase and the party faithful chanted it gleefully at the 2008 Republican National Convention.  It made for good TV and it was kind of catchy.

It is also one of the f*%$# stupidest things I have ever heard in my life. ( I tried to find a more eloquent way to phrase my disdain, but after sitting here for 10 minutes I gave up.)  For any elected official to say such a thing reveals that s/he is unfit for any office of responsibility because s/he is either criminally incompetent or completely corrupted by special interests.

And the fact that any person, government official or just your average American can be so gleefully unaware of how the world works is, well, terrifying.

Why is the expansion of off-shore drilling such a bad idea?  Let us count the ways:

Climate Suicide
Global warming represents a profound threat to the survival of most life forms on the planet.  We need a "Man to the Moon" sense of urgency in stopping the burning of ANY fossil fuels.  ANY law, program, activity, incentive, tax break, or subsidy that promotes the continuation, or worse, the expansion of the use of fossil fuels is insane.  It represents societal suicide.

For me, that is a slam dunk, argument over.  But if you want more:

Energy Independence
Proponents argue that the United States should tap into all domestic reservoirs of oil so we can rely less on foreign oil and reduce the price we pay at the pump.  For this to make sense the US domestic oil supply would have to represent a significant percentage of the world oil supply to have any impact on price.  Here is the reality:

Do you think that little yellow slice is going to change our reality?

Simple Fact:  If you drilled EVERYWHERE in the United States that might have oil (on land, in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, and at all off-shore sites) the US, might be able to produce 3% of the worlds oil. 
 
And remember, this doesn't happen overnight.  It would take 10-20 years before that oil would come online.

And this oil is sold on the world market, not uniquely in the United States.  So the world market determines the price.

The United States consumes 24% of all the worlds oil.

So, we invest billions, wait 10 to 15 years, to add a sliver to the world's oil supply.  Saudi Arabia simply shuts off  a tap or two and the world market is now down by whatever amount we just added.  Nothing changed.  Drilling would have no impact on the price of gasoline.


Drilling does nothing to improve our energy independence.  And I would argue that following this path makes us much worse off.  Drilling is a costly and dangerous diversion.  While the rest of the world is racing ahead and creating the energy technology of the future, solar technology, wind technology, battery technology, we are investing our time and money in last century's technology.  During testimony before the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works venture capitalist John Doerr stated: “If you list today’s top 30 companies in solar, wind and advanced batteries, American companies hold only 6 spots. That fact should worry us all.” (Read his full, crisp, powerful testimony here).


Wasting time on more drilling ensures that we will simply trade one energy dependence, oil, for another -- solar, wind and battery technology.

Peak Oil
Any oil executive will tell you that the world has already reached peak oil or will do so within a decade.  Every aspect of our society is based on the premise of cheap oil.  Our food production system is incredibly oil intensive.  Our transportation system relies on the private automobile -- think about our towns and suburbs where you must use your car to go get a loaf of bread, or take the kids to soccer practice, or get to work. Most of our "cheap" products travel up to 12,000 miles from factories in China and other countries.  The world's demand for oil is growing exponentially -- the day there is not enough oil to meet demand, our deck of cards economy will be devastated.  The financial crisis of 2008 will look like a quaint garden picnic.(Think about what happens to a company when their rate of profit INCREASE is less than expected -- their stock price can plummet.  Not a drop in profits, not a loss, but just less growth in profits than expected -- chaos!).  A mere drop of 5% in oil supply can cause a global economic meltdown.  More data and details on peak oil can be found here.

Life as we know is about to change forever. The sooner we shift away from relying on oil, the better chance we have of surviving the day of reckoning from peak oil.

Human Imperfection
Stubbornly, even maniacally i would argue many still believe that we can create perfect technology.  That we can control all the risks associated with our increasingly complex world.  Get over ourselves.  The BP oil spill may not be contained for 3 months.  It may represent the greatest ecological disaster seen in modern history.

It only takes one mistake to wipe out years of perfection. 

Drill, baby, Drill, is the rant of an drug oil-addict --delirious and disconnected from reality as any heroin addict.

Given these facts, how could a rational person support expanding drilling for oil?

Think, Baby, Think!  (Now that is a ditty with a future.)

Story of Stuff

This great animated film offers some powerful insight into the nature of the society we created and the impact it has on ourselves and communities far from our own.  In just 20 minutes Annie hits all the key notes in a fun and creative way.  Check it out.  Send it on to your friends and family.  And check out her website to see other great videos and tons of education information.

If you can only read one book...

make it this one:

The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability

In just 320 pages you will get the whole package.  The book explores all of the key topics you need to understand the problems we face and the pathways toward solutions.

I think this review captures it well:

"In The Bridge at the Edge of the World, James Gustave Speth gives us new lenses with which to see what we have done to our environment and, more important, to see what we can do to restore it. He challenges us all to act not for ourselves, but for our children and grandchildren. In particular, he takes on the most powerful guardians of the status quo -- our mindsets. The bridge he hopes to construct has its bridgehead firmly based in today, because Speth asks us to think about it and then to use our creativity, imagination, and the power of common purpose to act to restore the environment and create a healthier world."

-Honourable Gordon Campbell, Premier, Province of British Columbia



This book might just change your life....and if we are lucky, your grandchildren's lives.

Dying to Grow....

What represents the greatest threat to mankind?  Climate Change?  A massive earthquake?  An asteroid from space?  Believe it or not the most likely candidate is this:

This is a graph of exponential growth and it represents one of the most powerful forces on the planet.  If nothing else, remember the shape of it.  Growth is exponential when it grows at a fixed rate.


Let’s say we have $1000 in savings and this amounts grows at 7% each year.  After one year our savings have grown to $1,070 (7% x $1,000 = $70).  In year two we now multiply 7% by $1,070 (7% x $1,070 = $75) and our new total is $1,145.  In year 3 we will multiply 7% by $1,145 and add $80 and our new balance will be $1,225.  Notice that although the rate is fixed the amount we add each year is getting bigger.  Anything that grows at a fixed RATE will follow this pattern.  If the growth rate is relatively small (say 1%) the flat part of the graph on the left will extend over a longer period of time.  But eventually, all exponential functions will make a dramatic turn and skyrocket upwards.  Again this is because with each year the function is adding a larger and larger amount so eventually the amounts added become gargantuan.  In the world of mathematics the function heads toward infinity.  There is no infinity in our world, and that is where the danger comes in.  Let me give you some examples of exponential growth happening right now.

Population Growth

It took humanity millions of years before, finally in 1804, we reached 1 billion people on the planet.  Miiiilllions of years.  We added another 1 billion people in just another 123 years!  We added another billion people in just 33 years.  In a mere 200 years we added 6 billion people to the planet. 

Say hello to the power of exponential growth.

The Great Collision

These graphs are from this book.

Just back away from your computer a few feet and take it all in.  James Gustave Speth refers to this as the Great Collision -- the global economy is crashing against the earth.  We are obliterating the planet's resources and life support systems.

• Half of the world's tropical and temperate forests are gone.  In the tropics we are losing about an acre a second.
• Half of all wetlands and third of mangroves are gone
• 90% of all predator fish have been wiped out
• Every 20 minutes a new species goes extinct (about 1000 times the normal rate)
• Water use is skyrocketing.  The water tables in the United States, India and China are dropping rapidly -- these are the three major food producers in the world.
• We are losing 24 billion tons of top soil each year.
• Fertilizer use is growing exponentially (much of it runs off into our rivers and streams causing massive destruction)
• Carbon dioxide concentrations are growing exponentially in the atmosphere driving global warming.
• The number of cars on the highways is growing dramatically.  China is now adding 14,000 new cars to the road EVERY DAY.
• In just the United States we used almost 30 billion (with a "B") plastic bottles in one year.  And growing.

Pick just about any material or resource that you can think of and I get you a graph that looks those above.  Pick a toxic waste, chemical or pollutant and I will find a graph that shows how we are dumping exponentially more every day.  Exponential growth is happening all around us.

In 1992 (18 years ago), 1,500 of the world's leading scientists, including a majority of living Nobel Prize winners issued a warning  (the full statement can be found here)

The earth is finite. Its ability to absorb wastes and destructive effluent is finite. Its ability to provide food and energy is finite. Its ability to provide for growing numbers of people is finite. And we are fast approaching many of the earth's limits. Current economic practices which damage the environment, in both developed and underdeveloped nations, cannot be continued without the risk that vital global systems will be damaged beyond repair.

Kenneth Boulding said it best:

Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite planet is either a madman or an economist.

Our economy is based on exponential growth.  Just listen for the word.  Growth.  In the news, in magazines, on TV.  Profits must grow.  Sales must grow.  Gross Domestic Product must grow.  Stock prices must grow.  Everything must grow for our system to function.  We have to sell more.  We have to build more factories to make more stuff for us to buy.  We have to cut down more trees, use more water, mine for more minerals...all on a planet that is not getting any bigger.  You don't need a PhD to see the folly in this.

That is the path we are on.  If we keep living our lives like we did yesterday.  If we do nothing to change this trajectory, the earth will solve the problem for us.

Solutions?

• Learn about the issues that really impact your life
• Discuss and share with others
• Take action
• Ask you elected leader what they are doing about this.  Demand action. 
• Buy less.  
• If you must buy, buy local
• Work fewer hours.  
• Drive less.  Not feasible?  Demand public transportation so it is possible.

Watch this GREAT video explaining why exponential growth is so important. (it gets a little geeky at times, but watch till the end, it has some great visuals)

Give Earth a Hand

What do we really want?





If you like this video, consider supporting the creators.

Climate Chorus Growing Every Day

Short on time today but I figured I would post a short follow up to last week's post Why Al Gore Doesn't Matter.  In that missive I tried to demonstrate why it doesn't matter what I think or what Al Gore thinks about climate change.  We should be listening to the experts, and if you cut through all the propaganda, lies and mistruths, 99% of the world's leading scientists are to put it technically, freakin out.

And the chorus of support for this concern is growing every day.  Many of the worlds business leaders are lining up demanding action.  It makes sense if you think about it.  In the business world those who thrive are the ones who do the best job of deciphering trends and predicting the future operating environment.  Some are driven by concerns over the environment while others see that the future "industrial revolution" will be an "energy revolution."  The country that makes that shift first will lead the world.

Below are several articles.  Make sure to follow the links in RED to really see who is speaking out.  You might be surprised....

Here is an article that highlights how more and more business leaders want the US government to pass climate legilsation.

• BUSINESS
• APRIL 27, 2010

Business Groups Say Climate Impasse Undermines Clean Energy

By IAN TALLEY

WASHINGTON—The Capitol Hill politics bogging down a climate bill in the Senate are also hobbling investments in low-carbon energy and prompting calls from some business groups for action.

President Barack Obama is scheduled to travel Tuesday to a Siemens Corp. wind turbine facility in Fort Madison, Iowa, Tuesday as part of the White House effort to tout the economic, environmental and national security benefits of clean energy investments. The company expanded the plant, adding more than 600 jobs with capital from the stimulus package and tax credits.

Siemens, a unit of the German parent company Siemens AG, is representative of thousands of companies looking to capitalize on a carbon-constrained economy. It is building a range of products that would be attractive if there was a cost for emitting carbon. Besides efficient motors and generators, they are also developing technology to capture emissions from coal plants, have a retro-fitting business that installs energy-efficient equipment in buildings, and plan to expand their solar power unit in the U.S.

Nearly every sector of the energy industry is in some way affected by Congressional deliberations on climate and energy policy, whether it is makers of wind turbines and solar plants, utilities planning nuclear power projects or companies that make natural-gas generators and clean-coal technology. While some want to see a carbon market that will create demand for their products, others say they want to get clarity on how the new emission rules will affect their plans.

"The U.S. faces a critical moment that will determine whether we will be able to unleash billions in energy investments or remain mired in the economic status quo," the U.S. Climate Action Partnership said after the meltdown in negotiations over the weekend. USCAP represents nearly two dozen Fortune-500 companies that have urged Congress to pass a climate bill, including General Electric Co., Duke Energy, and NRG Energy.

The American Business for Clean Energy, a group representing 3,000 businesses that support passage of a climate bill, urged lawmakers to keep pushing it as a legislative priority. "American businesses, large and small, are urging Congress to act in order to make the United States a world leader in clean energy technology, reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources, and create millions of new jobs," the group said.

Portfolio managers, investment firms and businesses have been betting that Congress would act this year on legislation that would put caps on greenhouse gas emissions, and offer incentives to companies investing in technology to produce or use energy without heavy carbon dioxide emissions.

But the latest effort to craft legislation that could pass the Senate appears to have foundered after the lone Republican working on the bill, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) said he will pull out of the talks because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid could move a controversial immigration bill to the floor before the climate bill. Mr. Reid has suggested Mr. Graham's real problem is pressure from other Republicans to stop working on the climate measure. Sens. John Kerry (D., Mass.) and Joseph Lieberman (I., Conn.) say they will continue to work for a bill.

The impasse leaves utilities that have worked with the Senate trio to craft climate legislation, such as Exelon Corp., American Electric Power Co. and FPL Group, flummoxed.

"We are disappointed by this temporary setback. We remain hopeful that the issues will be resolved quickly, and that the U.S. Senate will make passage of an energy and climate bill an urgent priority," said Exelon spokeswoman Judy Rader.

A senior lobbyist that works for a large utility said the political intervention is frustrating because, "We thought progress had been made and we were moving in the right direction."

With businesses fearing their work on the bill will have been in vain, he said there is "an effort to try to get many people to weigh in with Graham, and say, 'please go back to the table.'"

The setback—which some say may be fatal for the bill this year—happens as the White House has been ramping up the rhetoric about how vital passing the climate bill is to invigorate the U.S. economy and compete with China. Obama administration officials have been hitting the public-speaking circuit to fan support for putting a price on carbon to stimulate clean energy investment.

Write to Ian Talley at ian.talley@dowjones.com

And this:

175 Companies Urge Senate to Move Forward with Climate Legislation

On April 28, 175 U.S. companies sent a letter to Senate leadership, urging them to continue working to enact comprehensive climate and energy legislation this year. The letter was brought together by the We Can Lead coalition, a project of the Clean Economy Network (CEN) and Ceres. The businesses come from some of the nation's largest electric power, manufacturing, and clean tech companies, including Nike, Exelon, PG&E and eBay. "Today, the United States is falling behind in the global race to lead the next global industrial revolution. U.S. businesses need strong policies and clear market signals to deploy capital, harness innovative technologies, and compete in the global marketplace," the letter stated. "Every day the Senate fails to pass comprehensive climate and energy legislation is a day our economy falls another step behind and delays our ability to create millions of new American jobs. America's energy future is not a partisan issue. Now is the time to bring the parties together and finish what we started."

For additional information see: We Can Lead Letter

And another addition to the choir are leaders from our armed forces.  Many of the top brass in the US military now understand the profound threat climate change represents to the future of our country.  This community is not typically considered card carrying members of any tree hugging group.

Check this out:

33 Retired Military Leaders Call for Climate Legislation

On April 28, 33 retired military leaders issued a statement, calling on “Congress and the administration to enact strong, comprehensive climate and energy legislation to reduce carbon pollution and lead the world in clean energy technology.” The statement goes on to note that the “Pentagon and security leaders of both parties consider climate disruption to be a ‘threat multiplier’ – it exacerbates existing problems by decreasing stability, increasing conflict, and incubating the socioeconomic conditions that foster terrorist recruitment.” The statement, released in conjunction by The Truman National Security Project and Operation Free (OPFREE), is another attempt by the military community to inform the public about the national security issues connected to climate change. OPFREE says America’s dependence on oil puts money into the hands of dangerous enemies. In January, the United States imported 506,000 barrels of oil each day from Iraq, 911,000 from Venezuela and 463,000 from Russia, according to the Energy Information Administration. “At the same time, the climate change caused by carbon pollution is destabilizing nations like Somalia, Yemen, Sudan, Nigeria and Afghanistan — creating safe havens for terrorists,” Operation Free campaign manager Jonathan Murray said.

For additional information see: Truman Project Press Release
Why aren't our leaders, leading?