From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   What’s Your Consumption Factor?   
   By Jared Diamond, Jan. 2, 2008, New York Times   
      
   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.   
      
   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.   
      
   Real sacrifice wouldn’t be required, however, because living standards are   
   not tightly coupled to consumption rates. Much American consumption is   
   wasteful and contributes little or nothing to quality of life. For example,   
   per capita oil consumption in    
   Western Europe is about half of ours, yet Western Europe’s standard of   
   living is higher by any reasonable criterion, including life expectancy,   
   health, infant mortality, access to medical care, financial security after   
   retirement, vacation time,    
   quality of public schools and support for the arts. Ask yourself whether   
   Americans’ wasteful use of gasoline contributes positively to any of those   
   measures.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)