Life in the Rear-view Mirror

North America is Still the Problem

All the focus is now on China because it's the most populous country in the world, and the one with the fastest-growing economy. However, neither China nor India poses the threat to our biosphere as does the U.S. In 2011, per capita energy consumption in the U.S., China, and India was 7,030, 2,030, and 614 kg of oil-equivalent, respectively. India is still well behind China to be a concern. It's interesting to note that, after the year 2000, as U.S. per capita energy consumption started decreasing, that of China started increasing: a clear demonstration of the shift in manufacturing from high-cost U.S. to low-cost China.

Energy consumption is a good surrogate for environmental emissions because the two are well correlated. So the biggest pollution problem lies in the U.S. Even though the largest Chinese cities are heavily polluted, and reminiscent of Los Angeles of many decades ago, China is still far from being the biggest polluting country in the world. Moreover, North Americans have simply exported some of their pollution to China: they have not reduced pollution by being more efficient, or by conservation.

During the first decade of the new millennium, U.S. per capita energy consumption decreased by the same amount that it grew in China: 1,000 kg of oil equivalent per person. The pollution that is now created to make our running shoes, computers, toys, and many other household goods is now being attributed to the Chinese, but the average Chinese person is not polluting more, just as the average American is not polluting less. The American factories have simply moved to China, under the same ownership and control as before: only the location changed.

Even industrial powers such as Japan and Germany display the same recent trend of decreasing per capita energy reduction as seen in the U.S.: they too have exported manufacturing to China, although not to the same extent.

What I find most interesting is the fact that per capita energy consumption in the U.S. is almost double that of Germany and Japan, while the per capita GDP for all three is roughly the same. The most obvious conclusion is that North Americans are more wasteful of precious, non-renewable energy resources. And as energy usage is linked to pollution emissions, they are also bigger polluters than the Germans and Japanese, who are also highly industrialized and share the same standard of living.

CO2 emissions are another metric that is also a good surrogate for pollution emissions in general. At twenty metric tons of CO2 emissions per person, the U.S. is again the biggest polluter in the world. This number has come down in recent years, but held pretty steady for the past forty years. China's per capita emissions started growing significantly, in 2002, and now stand at six metric tons per person, about one third that of the U.S. Even Canada, with increasing oil production from the much-maligned tar sands has a per capita CO2 emission considerably lower than the U.S.

If Germans and Japanese pollute less than Americans, then their CO2 emissions should also be lower. And indeed they are! In 2011, the U.S. emitted 18, Canada 16, Germany 9, Japan 9, China 6 and India 2 metric tons per person. Both the Germans and Japanese emit half the pollution of Americans, which is consistent with the earlier numbers presented on energy usage.

The clear and loud message is that North Americans are consuming and wasting more than their counterparts in Europe and Japan. This is not a sustainable trend. North Americans have a lot to do with the sorry state of our biosphere, and have a bigger moral responsibility than anyone else in the world to correct the situation.

The mining and burning of fossil fuels has dumped untold quantities of cancer-causing substances into the environment, causing myriad health problems, both chronic and acute. It took a while for the problems to come to the fore, but now they are generally recognized as real, causing significant suffering to countless numbers of individuals and families. The American Cancer Society estimated the probability of dying of cancer during a person's lifetime at one in two for men and one in three for women. These are sobering numbers! That's how badly we have polluted our biosphere!

Unfortunately, it's still a cat and mouse game. Communities blame the offending industries for all their ills, and the offending industries downplay the consequences, while continuing to pollute. No one, from community leaders to federal politicians, has so far said that the answer to pollution is a reduction in emissions and less consumption. Even the most vocal antipollution activists are in the same camp as the biggest consumers. Nobody, it seems, wants to lead by example. Where are the Mahatma Ghandis of yesteryear?