Dave Pollard's environmental philosophy, creative works, business papers and essays.

trust your instincts

< £ Salon Bloggers & >

	February 15, 2004

VITAL SIGNS I've been a reader of the Worldwatch Institute's annual State of the World report for many years. I just discovered that, in between, they publish a report called Vital Signs: Trends That Are Shaping Our Future. The latest edition has the following interesting data: 1. Ratio of average income of CEOs ($,000) to average income of manufacturing workers ($,000), selected countries: CEOs Mfg Workers Ratio US 10926 31 350 Mexico 867 4 233 Brasil 530 5 110 Italy 600 20 30 Canada 787 27 29 Spain 430 16 27 France 519 22 24 UK 669 28 24 Australia 547 23 23 Netherlands 605 29 21 New Zealand 287 15 19 South Korea 215 12 18 Sweden 414 29 14 Japan 508 37 14 Germany 455 35 13 Switzerland 405 35 12 2. Ratio of percentage of wealth owned by the richest 20% to the percentage of wealth owned by the poorest 20%, selected countries: Richest 20% Poorest 20% Ratio Brasil 64 2 29 Zambia 57 3 17 Mexico 57 4 16 Nigeria 56 4 13 Russia 54 4 12 US 46 5 9 China 47 6 8 UK 43 6 7 France 40 7 6 Yemen 41 7 6 India 46 8 6 Indonesia 41 9 5 Denmark 35 10 4 Egypt 39 10 4 Japan 36 11 3 These two tables suggest that income disparity does not correlate at all with democracy or capitalism. The first table shows just how obscenely out of whack US executive salaries have become in recent years, bearing no connection whatsoever to productivity or performance. The second table ratios are the inverse of the 'Gini index'. These ratios correlate closely to crime and incarceration rates, validating recent studies that show that wealth inequality, rather than poverty, determines crime rate. 3. Global annual grain and meat production, millions of tons Grain Meat Ratio 1962 858 66 13 1972 1156 108 11 1982 1552 140 11 1992 1797 187 10 2002 1833 242 7 This chart shows that not only is the world continuing to produce more food than it needs, resulting in more overweight people on the planet than underweight, and more deaths from obesity-related diseases than malnutrition, but that the mix of food production is getting much more inefficient -- meat production consumes 10 times the resources per calorie produced that grain production does, and most of the grain production now comes from non-native grains on heavily irrigated, heavily fertilized land that costs more in energy to grow than it produces in food energy. 4. Global consumption of energy, millions of tons of oil equivalent, by source Coal Oil Natural Gas Nuclear Wind 1962 1490 1100 500 10 0 1972 1540 2556 1032 158 0 1982 1863 2776 1322 840 1 1992 2204 3170 1810 1617 12 2002 2300 3529 2207 1765 158 Despite the massive pollution and land degradation caused by coal mining, our voracious Western appetite for energy is driving us to increase, rather than decrease, coal-burning. Likewise, although nuclear power's environmental damage, accident risk and enormous cost has reduced the number of new reactors being built, use of existing reactors continues to rise. And although renewable energy is off to a promising start, it still accounts for only 1.5% of global consumption. 5. Global carbon emissions, millions of tons, versus millions of cars in use globally Emissions Autos 1962 2700 110 1972 4200 215 1982 5000 340 1992 5900 470 2002 6500 560 There's nearly a perfect correlation between global energy consumption, total carbon emissions, and average global temperature, but the world's greatest polluters continue to fund massive PR campaigns and phony research to try to convince us there is no need for action. Fortunately, this is one corporatist lie very few people are buying. And not only is the number of cars on the road growing at twice the rate of population, the average miles per car per year is also rising rapidly as drivers live further and further from where they work and shop. 6. GDP versus Genuine Progress Indicator, per capita, US GDP/cap GPI/cap 1962 14 7.6 1972 20 9.1 1982 23 9.5 1992 30 8.9 2000 40 9.5 Since the late 1990s, the momentum that was building to replace the discredited and worthless GDP as a measure of economic health has stalled. This is unfortunate, since it allows the Bush regime to claim the economy is rebounding while it continues to stagnate. The Genuine Progress Indicator, which subtracts from GDP the costs of traffic, pollution, non-renewable resource use and crime, and adds back the value of unpaid work, is a flawed but certainly superior measure. Unfortunately, producing this data on a more timely basis (it's available for only eight countries, and the latest available data is for 2000) will require governments to invest in calculating this data, and to publicize and use GPI, rather than GDP, in making economic and political decisions. Huge lobbies are working to prevent this, since it threatens their massive subsidies, and governments would prefer, especially in an election year, to be the bearer of good tidings, even if they're patently false, than bad news that suggests most of what our economy now does detracts, rather than contributes, to well-being. 2:52:29 PM  trackback []  comment []

© Copyright 2004 Dave Pollard. Last update: 01/03/2004; 11:12:21 AM.