It's Time for Millennium Consumption Goals

original article:

http://blogs.worldwatch.org/transformingcultures/mcgs/

Snippets:

“a Sri Lankan scientist is calling for the drafting of “Millennium Consumption Goals” to [help] rich countries to curb their climate-damaging consumption habits, in the same way the poor have Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to get them out of poverty.”

For those unfamiliar with the Millennium Development Goals, these are a set of 8 goals for “underdeveloped” societies to halve poverty, lack of access to clean water, illiteracy, and other key indicators of underdevelopment by 2015... As the scientist, Mohan Munasinghe, noted, consumption is at the heart of overdeveloped countries’ environmental burden so tackling this issue head-on is key.

1. Halve obesity and overweight rates by 2020 (we’re starting the MCGs later than the MDGs). This will reduce mortality, morbidity, and economic costs, as well as reduce ecological pressures driven by overconsumption of food.

2. Halve the work week from the current 40+ hour per week to 20 hours per week. This will better distribute jobs, wealth, promote healthier living, and reduce economic activity, which is essential in our ecologically taxed world.

3. Better distribute wealth by raising taxes on the wealthiest members of society. That one will get me in trouble with the American Tea Party but let’s dust off the idea of Noblesse Oblige: to those given much, much is expected in return. The days of extreme wealth spent on luxurious living must draw to a close. The Earth can’t handle it any longer.

4. Double the rate of use of non-motorized transport (bikes, walking, etc.). Increasing these forms of transport will improve health, reduce fossil fuel and material use, and make for safer cities.

5. Guarantee access to health care for all. Yes, another minefield in the USA, but standard procedure in most industrial countries so that’ll be an easy goal for most countries to achieve.

Population Growth and Ecological Footprint - It's About Equity, Environment & Preventing Collapse by Matthew McDermott

Original Article:

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/02/population-growth-ecological-footprint-about-equity-environment-collapse.php?campaign=daily_nl

Snippets:

As it stands now, 500 million people on the planet (about 7% of the world population) is responsible for 50% of all CO2 emissions. At the other end of the scale, the bottom 3 billion people are responsible for just 6% of the total. The United States leads the world, with its 5% of world population roughly responsible for one-third of all global expenditures on goods and services.

If that level of resource consumption was extended globally, the planet could support just 1.4 billion people.

To equitably support current population levels and not continue to degrade the ability of the planet to support us, we'd all have to live like the average person in Thailand or Jordan--roughly $5,000 a year's worth of consumption.

And remember that population growth is expected to continue until we hit about 9 billion people (or perhaps more, if recent UN warnings bear out). Which means that the global resource pie gets sliced into even smaller and smaller equal pieces--or relatively equal at least, I'm not advocating absolute equality as the ideal.

The hard part of this should be obvious if we hold on to equity as a virtue (and make no mistake I think we should): If a minority of the world's people consume the vast majority of the world's resources, doing so ecologically unsustainably, and there's a large group of people claiming a right to have what that minority do, a recipe for collapse is quickly created.

Beyond the usual (and valid) suggestions of increasing women's education and reproductive freedom, creating more gender equity, and lifting people out of absolute poverty, there are several things to do that may be able to prevent this both concrete and conceptual:

Greater Efficiency Can Help, But Not Solve This Problem

Efficiency and waste. Improving the former and reducing the latter can certainly help everyone do more with less resource consumption. Will it make up for the fact that the ecological footprint of the average citizen in the United States is roughly four times the carrying capacity of the planet and even that of the average person in China is unsustainable as well? Probably not, but both are critically important.

Until Environmental Damage Is Incorporated Into Economics We Will Continue Making Bad Choices

Start measuring more than GDP, incorporating well-being and environmental factors (like depleting natural capital), and reporting this as the baseline of national worth. Plenty of more articulate people than I have written extensively on alternate economic indicators such as the Genuine Progress Indicator.

'Developed' Is A Bad Term For What Industrial Nations Are

Getting rid of the terms 'developed' and 'developing' as applied to nations. Even 'emerging economy' is problematic. Developed and developing signify complete in some way or being in the process of reaching completeness. Emerging is a variation on this. All imply inherent goodness in consuming resources like those of us in the US, in Europe, Japan, Australia, etc etc etc do, when in fact ecologically speaking that level of consumption extended globally is a disaster in the making.

Continued Idealization of Economic Growth Is Delusion

Going along with this is moving our expectations and language away from growth economics to steady-state economics. We have been so indoctrinated with the notion that growth is good always that this may be difficult, but given what we now know about the ecological limits of the planet and how in the highest consuming nations of the world any growth is likely uneconomic, to not cease talking about economic growth as an unqualified good thing is just delusional.

We Have to Be Able to Calmly Talk About Population Growth & Resource Consumption

Break the taboo on talking about population growth as somehow an infringement on personal liberty...If we cannot even have a nuanced discussion of the relation of how our personal reproductive choices, the group reproductive choices of nations, as well as how our individual and collective consumer choices combine into environmental and social impact, we will surely choose the to continue down the path of collapse.

Noam Chomsky: How Climate Change Became A "Liberal Hoax"

A 375-Mile Battery Range: Too Good to be True?

Full Article:

http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/03/a-375-mile-battery-range-too-good-to-be-true/

Snippet:

Last October, a Kolibri-powered Audi A2, converted by DBM Energy GmbH and Lekker Energie with funding from the German economy ministry, traveled from Munich to Berlin, around 375 miles, which the car covered in about seven hours without recharging. Upon arrival, its 115-kWh pack was only around 80 percent depleted, implying a total range of more than 400 miles from a pack weighing just 770 pounds. For comparison, the Tesla Roadster’s pack, which claims 245 miles of range, weighs 990 pounds.

If verified — and DBM states on its Web site that the inspection organization DEKRA checked the vehicle and also cites 30 eyewitnesses — it would be a world record. A specially designed battery-powered Daihatsu Mira went 623 miles on a track last May, but while only averaging 25 miles per hour. The 375-mile journey by the Lekker Mobil is notable because it was done on public roads in wet weather at an average speed of 55 m.p.h.

As for the controversy? The A2 disintegrated in a December fire while parked in a warehouse, though DBM claims that a makeshift battery unit, and not the one used during the supposed record run, was installed at the time. The fire is under police investigation, but it has prompted skeptics to further question whether DBM has anything to hide.