by Kumar David
It was Charlie Rose on Bloomberg TV, or was it someone on BBC’s Hardtalk team who engaged Singapore’s retired senior statesman Lee Kwan Yew a few years ago in a wide and far ranging interview. Lee is a ruthless and arrogant politician and while Singapore prospered materially under his domination it did so as a culturally sterile, intellectually supine and politically anemic society. (The joke in Hong Kong is "We have freedom but not formal democracy, they have formal democracy but no freedom"). But there is no gainsaying that Yew is an extremely bright fellow, one of whose great strengths is his ability to see the big picture. The interviewer’s final question was "What are the main concerns for mankind in the Twenty-first Century?" and Lee’s prompt and almost reflex answer was "Managing the Sino-US relationship and protecting the environment." I have often written in these columns on Sino-US affairs, so today I will try my hand at environmental issues from my background as an engineering academic and a professed Marxist.
All the polemical material in the public domain, in one way or the other lacks balance. Either, it’s a heated debate between the proponents of economic growth and conservationists, or one sees constant finger pointing between the large polluter economies and the poorer half of the globe. A variant of the latter spectacle is the standoff between an already large polluter, the USA, which is curbing emissions growth, and the new kids on the block China and India, who are increasing their pollution levels rapidly but in per capita terms are still behind the US. Note that the percentage of total global CO2 emission of the five largest polluters in 2008 were, China 28%, USA 18%, EU 14% and India and Russia nearly 6% each. China’s and India’s share is growing while that of the Americans and Europeans is declining, but the former countries each have a population that is three to four times larger than each of the latter two. However, this blame game can go on: I have assessed that China pollutes 3.8 times as much as the USA per dollar of GDP output and India 2.9 times as much, all calculated at nominal exchange rates.
However if per capita energy consumption in China, India and the continents of poverty (Africa, Asia and South America) were to rise to North American levels, the earth will not be able to bear the footprint. The air, the seas and waterways, and the last remaining forests will suffer such devastation that no known technology, or new technology likely to come on stream in this Century, will be able to cope. The effect will be catastrophic, literally.
Where does this leave us? Are we to tell the people of the poor world that the so-called American dream and freedom to consume with the same self-indulgence and intemperance as the developed world, can never be theirs; that a developmental myth pursued with insatiable greed is the road to hell on earth? I think the answer is "yes". If the per capita CO2 emission of all were to reach North American levels, back of the envelope calculations suggest that the total emissions will rise to about five to seven times current global levels, suffocating humankind to a premature death. I have Pope Benedict on my side; in his Christmas Message he weighed in against the spiritual wilderness of consumerism while this paragraph is about an environmental wasteland.
The nature of the animal
Ecological complexity has become a heady decoction beyond the ability of simple mortals to get a handle on. I looked into an encyclopedia entry on current environmental concerns and came up against a page-long enumeration. Having hacked it down to half its length, see what is still left!
* Climate change — Fossil fuels; Sea level rise; Greenhouse gas; Ocean acidification
* Conservation — Species extinction; Invasive species; Poaching; Endangered species
* Environmental degradation - Habitat destruction; Invasive species
* Environmental health — Air quality; Electromagnetic fields radiation and health; Lead poisoning
* Genetic engineering — Genetic pollution; Genetically modified food controversies
* Intensive farming — Overgrazing; Irrigation; Monoculture; Slash and burn
* Land degradation — Land pollution; Desertification
* Soil — Soil conservation; Soil erosion; Soil contamination; Soil salination
* Land use — Urban sprawl; Habitat fragmentation; Habitat destruction
* Nuclear - Radiation; meltdown; waste management.
* Overpopulation — Burial; Water crisis
* Ozone depletion — CFC
* Water pollution — Acid rain; Marine pollution; Ocean dumping; Oil spills
* Air pollution — Smog; Particulate matter
* Reservoirs — Environmental impacts of reservoirs
* Fishing — Blast, bottom, cyanide fishing; Ghost nets; Illegal fishing; Overfishing; Whaling
* Logging — Clear-cutting; Deforestation; Illegal logging
* Mining — Acid mine drainage; Hydraulic fracturing; Mountaintop removal; Slurry impoundment
* Toxins — Chlorofluorocarbons; DDT; Heavy metals; Herbicides; Pesticides; PCB
If my point was that it is an amazingly complex system involving myriad interactions, that would be nothing new; the scientific community and ecologists have been driving this home for some decades. However there are a few simple do’s and don’ts that we can adopt and have an impact on a seminal problem of this Century.
The needy and the greedy
There is no point telling the desperately poor of Bangladesh not to overfish or destroy the Sundarbans if their daily meal depends on it. True, you could say the rich American housewife, the world’s consumer of last resort, wallows in indulgence hence abstinence would be her virtue, but how’s that advice going to help a miserable human trapped in poverty elsewhere? It then follows that the message against consumerism relates to some people only. But hold it! About a fifth of the world’s population lives in dire poverty and about another three fifths belong to classes that rightly aspire to a better material life; that is seek to consume more. While moderating the excesses of the greedy classes (not in rich countries alone but in the poorer ones as well) will go some way towards ameliorating overexploitation of the planet, the real challenge lies elsewhere; providing a reasonable quality of life for all without overloading the earth.
There is an oft heard aphorism (Gandhi?) that the earth can provide for our needs but not our greed. The second part is certainly true, but is the first? I am not sure; I have seen no systematic scientific evaluation that proves that the earth can support a "reasonable quality of life" for say nine billion humans at the end of this Century, and an accompanying definition of what this reasonable standard is. The threshold, I believe, is far lower than you imagine; much lower, for example, than the moderately well-of Chinese middle class has recently achieved.
Let’s try out a simple one-off index. The Chinese middle class now numbers say 20 million families and each owns, or will soon own a car. (China has about 50 million vehicles on her roads but the majority consists of commercial vehicles and trucks). There are 300 to 400 million families in China and if automobile ownership were to multiply 15 to 20 fold, what will become of the world’s most polluted nation? I refer here particularly, but not only, to the scandalous air quality and desertification of Beijing and other big cities. (Don’t even think of the US as a benchmark; it has a population of 315 million persons, 110 million households, and about 260 million vehicles!).
Now repeat the China calculation for India, Indonesia, Brazil, etc. There are 11 countries with populations in excess of 100 million and all, except the US and Japan who have already made it, but including Russia, are expanding into fast track consumerism. Drop the car, pick up any other consumption good and the story is equally frightening; housing, water, food, sanitation and clothing. Global population growth must stop! There is no other way out.
Getting back to the car, the solution stares us in the face; public transport. I worked in Hong Kong for a quarter of a century and never owned a car except a ramshackle thing that a returning expatriate shoved on me and I equally readily gave away a few years later. The city has probably the best transport system in the world – better than London, New York and Sydney, the other well touted cases I am familiar with – hence vehicle ownership has been held down to 600,000 for a population of 7 million. True a highly efficient city state cannot be compared with a whole country, but the basic lessons for the future must be learnt.
This digression to public transport is not at all beside the point. I am linking together two strong arguments, viz: (a) Making available what we today call a comfortable middle class standard of living for 9 billion people by the end of this century is impossible for environmental reasons; (b) but we can go some way by socially organised and socially responsible measures.
Education and consciousness
Not much can be done in Lanka to improve the environmental consciousness of the adult population and this goes for even the educated classes. For example, there is a residential complex that I know of with quite a large arboreal estate, housing well-off and supposedly educated people. But the environmental awareness of the inmates is not much better than that of a lumberjack. The Colombo Municipal Council has over the years displayed the sensitivity of an agent-orange salesman to the city’s greenery; Galle Face Brown is a case in point. The Sinharaja forest and Knuckles wilderness are constantly under threat from politically well-connected philistines. Government departments and ministries are deplorable in executing their sacred mandate.
Forget the adults; let’s make a start with children and suddenly the response is excellent. Children in Sri Lanka with their still uncorrupted minds and free of attachment to the pursuit of filthy lucre are splendidly open to the need to protect the environment, that is, their future.
Margaret, are you grieving
Over golden grove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! As the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood, leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
The blight that man weeps for is the lost the innocence of the child. The answer to environmental degradation has to start in schools and I have noticed how receptive young minds I come in contact with are. There are a few elements included in the school curriculum, but not enough.
http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=42707
The needy and the greedy
There is no point telling the desperately poor of Bangladesh not to overfish or destroy the Sundarbans if their daily meal depends on it. True, you could say the rich American housewife, the world’s consumer of last resort, wallows in indulgence hence abstinence would be her virtue, but how’s that advice going to help a miserable human trapped in poverty elsewhere? It then follows that the message against consumerism relates to some people only. But hold it! About a fifth of the world’s population lives in dire poverty and about another three fifths belong to classes that rightly aspire to a better material life; that is seek to consume more. While moderating the excesses of the greedy classes (not in rich countries alone but in the poorer ones as well) will go some way towards ameliorating overexploitation of the planet, the real challenge lies elsewhere; providing a reasonable quality of life for all without overloading the earth.
There is an oft heard aphorism (Gandhi?) that the earth can provide for our needs but not our greed. The second part is certainly true, but is the first? I am not sure; I have seen no systematic scientific evaluation that proves that the earth can support a "reasonable quality of life" for say nine billion humans at the end of this Century, and an accompanying definition of what this reasonable standard is. The threshold, I believe, is far lower than you imagine; much lower, for example, than the moderately well-of Chinese middle class has recently achieved.
Let’s try out a simple one-off index. The Chinese middle class now numbers say 20 million families and each owns, or will soon own a car. (China has about 50 million vehicles on her roads but the majority consists of commercial vehicles and trucks). There are 300 to 400 million families in China and if automobile ownership were to multiply 15 to 20 fold, what will become of the world’s most polluted nation? I refer here particularly, but not only, to the scandalous air quality and desertification of Beijing and other big cities. (Don’t even think of the US as a benchmark; it has a population of 315 million persons, 110 million households, and about 260 million vehicles!).
Now repeat the China calculation for India, Indonesia, Brazil, etc. There are 11 countries with populations in excess of 100 million and all, except the US and Japan who have already made it, but including Russia, are expanding into fast track consumerism. Drop the car, pick up any other consumption good and the story is equally frightening; housing, water, food, sanitation and clothing. Global population growth must stop! There is no other way out.
Getting back to the car, the solution stares us in the face; public transport. I worked in Hong Kong for a quarter of a century and never owned a car except a ramshackle thing that a returning expatriate shoved on me and I equally readily gave away a few years later. The city has probably the best transport system in the world – better than London, New York and Sydney, the other well touted cases I am familiar with – hence vehicle ownership has been held down to 600,000 for a population of 7 million. True a highly efficient city state cannot be compared with a whole country, but the basic lessons for the future must be learnt.
This digression to public transport is not at all beside the point. I am linking together two strong arguments, viz: (a) Making available what we today call a comfortable middle class standard of living for 9 billion people by the end of this century is impossible for environmental reasons; (b) but we can go some way by socially organised and socially responsible measures.
Education and consciousness
Not much can be done in Lanka to improve the environmental consciousness of the adult population and this goes for even the educated classes. For example, there is a residential complex that I know of with quite a large arboreal estate, housing well-off and supposedly educated people. But the environmental awareness of the inmates is not much better than that of a lumberjack. The Colombo Municipal Council has over the years displayed the sensitivity of an agent-orange salesman to the city’s greenery; Galle Face Brown is a case in point. The Sinharaja forest and Knuckles wilderness are constantly under threat from politically well-connected philistines. Government departments and ministries are deplorable in executing their sacred mandate.
Forget the adults; let’s make a start with children and suddenly the response is excellent. Children in Sri Lanka with their still uncorrupted minds and free of attachment to the pursuit of filthy lucre are splendidly open to the need to protect the environment, that is, their future.
Margaret, are you grieving
Over golden grove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! As the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood, leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
The blight that man weeps for is the lost the innocence of the child. The answer to environmental degradation has to start in schools and I have noticed how receptive young minds I come in contact with are. There are a few elements included in the school curriculum, but not enough.
http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=42707
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