Vital Signs, Volume 20: The Trends that are Shaping Our Future
Worldwatch Institute
Washington: Island Press
168 pages
July 15, 2013
Paperback $19.95
Online $100 per year; $65 for nonprofit and academic rate
If planet Earth were a hospital patient, she would be dehydrated, low on electrolytes, feverishly sick from poor nutrition and toxins, and morbidly obese around the middle while standing on sticks for legs. And when the doctor says the patient's life on its current course is not sustainable, she and her family refuse to listen.
This is the sense one gets from Vital Signs, Volume 20: The Trends that are Shaping Our Future, released by Worldwatch Institute this week. The planet continues to be besieged by apocalyptic horsemen called overpopulation, global warming, water scarcity and resource degradation (not to mention a lack of economic justice), yet our leaders mostly engage in denial when facing the catastrophes that lie ahead.
Vital Signs, which is also available by subscription online, has been published since 1992. It focuses on climate change, loss of natural resources and population growth as they affect basic human needs like water, energy, food and livelihood.
Outlined in the report are trends that probably will make you want to go back to bed and hide under the covers. The world economy has recovered from the Great Recession to the point where fossil fuel use and oil-guzzling automobile production are higher than ever. Investments in renewable energy are growing—but not fast enough. Agriculture is suffering from global warming-induced water shortages. Agribusiness and factory farms, in spite of causing pollution and disease, are expanding, while small farmers, especially the world's rural poor, struggle to survive. The world's population is projected to rise by 50 percent in the next 40 to 60 years, while billions of people struggle to live with lack of water and other vital resources, according to the report.
And yet there are a few hopeful signs. The land dedicated to organic farming around the world has tripled since 1999 (still only 1 percent of the total ag land). The Japanese, who since the 1990s have made waste reduction and recycling a national priority, are expecting to double resource productivity by 2015. (Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the United States.) U.S. power generation has seen natural gas usage increase 27 percent while coal usage has decreased 20 percent. (Burning natural gas emits half as many greenhouse gases as electricity produced by coal.) That means the US reduced its 2012 GHG emissions from energy consumption by approximately 15 percent, according to Vital Signs. Regardless of these signs of progress, the "patient" remains urgently, if not critically, ill, requiring action that our world leaders are not ready to embrace. Worldwatch's Michael Renner says:
It would be a mistake to think that the solution lies in science and technology per se. Scientists have enormously improved our understanding of the climate system, for instance, yet science alone is clearly not able to drive policy in the directions that are needed. Such an outcome rests on the more difficult task of changing the dominant ethics and values and reorienting our political and economic systems toward sustainability.
The first major area that needs immediate and drastic action is energy production, consumption and development. Oil still is the world's top energy resource at 33 percent, even as it has declined in comparison with other sources for the past 12 years. OPEC controls 72.4 percent of global reserves, and the United States still imports more than 60 percent of its oil. While easier-to-access deposits decline, the energy industry is using cutting-edge technology to tap deep-water deposits, Venezuelan heavy oil and Canadian oil sands. The proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which would bring oil sands from Canada to Texas refineries on the Gulf Coast, has been challenged due to environmental concerns (yet congressional Republicans appear hell-bent on approving it). Global consumption of oil rose 0.7 percent in 2011, with China's consumption rising by 5.5 percent. Use by the United States and the European Union declined 1.8 and 2.8 percent, respectively. China's growth constitutes 85 percent of global net growth, according to
Vital Signs.
While oil consumption has slowed, coal grew in 2011 to its highest share (28 percent) in at least 40 years among global energy sources. The primary reason for coal's resurgence is China, which uses almost half of the coal consumed in the world. Eighty percent of China's domestic energy supply comes from coal-fired plants, and coal usage is also rising rapidly in India. In spite of environmental and health concerns, coal will continue to play a growing role in the world energy scene, Vital Signs predicts. Natural gas consumption continues to rise but at a slower rate than coal. Natural gas accounts for about one quarter of the world's energy consumption. During 2011-12, the United States saw a 27 percent rise in natural gas consumption at the same time that its coal consumption for power generation dropped 20 percent. This is good news because natural gas contributes about half of the greenhouse gases that coal-for-electricity does. However, natural gas has its problems. Extraction using fracking causes environmental and health problems, and its relatively cheap, plentiful supply could undercut efforts to expand renewable energy sources.
Renewable energy resources are growing, but not nearly fast enough to wean the world off of fossil fuels, according to the report. Solar energy receives the bulk of renewable investment money ($147.4 billion in 2011). Wind-generated energy capacity grew 21 percent in 2011—the world has four times as much wind power now than eight years ago. Hydroelectric and geothermal power markets also are increasing, but growth rates are slowing. In Brazil, the Belo Monte hydro plant was started in 2012, and China's Three Gorges project came online the same year. Large-scale hydro projects have their downsides—disrupting ecosystems and displacing local populations. Geothermal energy offers great potential but lags behind other forms of energy due to high capital costs. However, new geothermal projects are under consideration or in development in 70 countries.
Investments in solar, biofuels and small hydro—which is less disruptive to ecosystems—are also growing, as is smart-grid technology, which makes energy systems more efficient and reliable. An average of $235 billion needs to be invested annually in renewable energy by 2020 to keep the global temperature from rising no more than two degrees Celsius. (A total of $257 billion was invested in renewable energy in 2011.) Several factors conspire to thwart this goal. Some of the investments have come from government stimulus funding after the recession; however, this money is drying up. The biggest factor slowing development of renewable energy is fossil fuel subsidies, which were estimated at almost $1 trillion in 2012 (subsidies for renewables were at $66 billion in 2010). The U.S. National Academies of Sciences has estimated that fossil fuel subsidies cost the United States $120 billion annually in pollution and related healthcare costs. Half of the subsidies, which include tax incentives and grants, go to oil. It is estimated that if fossil fuel subsidies were phased out by 2020, global energy consumption would be almost four percent lower. However, there has been little progress toward phasing out subsidies, in spite of the fact that in 2009 the G20 nations pledged to reduce them. World leaders have not had the will -- or the incentive -- to do the right thing.
Energy usage continues to be driven by automobile production. After a brief downturn caused by the global recession, car production "is roaring back to new peaks" with 80 million light vehicles in 2012, according to Worldwatch. There are about one billion cars and trucks on the planet. Japan, the European Union and South Korea are leading the world in mileage efficiency; the United States is among those lagging behind. Savings in efficiencies, unfortunately, are being erased by longer driving distances, especially in China, where cars are multiplying to keep up with a growing middle class. Still, U.S. driving distances are the longest of any country.
Our world's addiction to fossil fuels is playing out in global carbon dioxide levels. Carbon dioxide concentrations reached 391.2 parts per million in 2011—45 percent higher than in 1990 and far exceeding safe levels, Vital Signs reports. Carbon dioxide accounts for more than 70 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. The Kyoto Protocol mandated a 4.6 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2012. Some countries have not met their targets; the United States, which signed but never ratified Kyoto, has not able to meet its voluntary reduction target of 6 percent—in fact, U.S.-generated greenhouse gases have increased 12.9 percent since 1990. Climate change induced by global warming is more and more a fact of life. The year 2011 was the ninth warmest year since 1880. Weather events like heat waves, intense rainfall and hurricanes are growing in number and intensity. The Worldwatch report argues that linear cuts in greenhouse gases will not be sufficient—rapid and deep cuts are imperative. The London-based Royal Society has estimated that a four-degree global temperature increase in this century—which is in the middle of current projections—would result in half of the world's current agricultural land becoming unusable, sea levels rising by up to two meters and around 40 percent of the world's species becoming extinct.
One area in which global warming is having a profound effect is agriculture, Vital Signs reports. Droughts, floods and extreme weather are hammering human beings where they had already been living precariously. Reliance on grain crops for food security is threatened by extreme climatic events. It is expected that 375 million people will be affected by climate change disasters by 2015, according to various sources. And, by 2050, 10 to 20 percent more people will experience hunger because of climate change. The problem does not lie in production—global grain produced in 2012 reached 2.37 billion tons, the highest number ever. However, two-thirds of the world's food intake consists of three grains—wheat, maize and rice. Monoculture practice means the world's food supply is vulnerable to droughts and other extreme weather. For example, drought in the Great Plains and harsh winter weather in Europe has slowed maize (corn) production. Droughts produce cascading effects, with livestock feed prices driving up grain costs overall, resulting in hunger and economic migration.
Global meat production continues to grow in spite of drought, disease and rising feed prices. While the developed world is seeing its meat demand level off or even decline due to health concerns (obesity, heart disease, etc.), demand in the developing nations, such as China and India, is "staggering," Vital Signs reports. China's meat consumption quadrupled from 1980 to 2005, and its per capita milk consumption and egg consumption went up tenfold. India's milk consumption almost doubled from 1980 to 2007. It is hypocritical, however, to criticize the developing world for wanting a chicken in every pot—industrial countries still consume twice as much animal products as the developing world.
In addition to the pressures of climate change, meat production faces increasing challenges in the form of zoonotic diseases (those passed between animals and humans), which curtail production and sicken consumers. Factory farms, with cramped and unsanitary conditions, are breeding grounds for diseases such as swine and avian flus, foot-and-mouth disease, E. coli and mad cow disease. Producers turn to antibiotics as a preventative measure to control pathogens, which cause the animals—and those who consume them—to develop resistance to the drugs. According to one expert, "We're sacrificing a future where antibiotics will work for treating sick people by squandering them today [on] animals that are not sick at all."
Related to food production is the supply of clean water. More than one billion people live with physical water scarcity, and another 1.6 billion face economic water shortages. At the same time, many aquifers are being depleted beyond sustainable levels, resulting in salinization of soils. Drip irrigation use, which can result in water savings of 70 percent and higher production, is growing, but not nearly fast enough. In order to keep pace with crop requirements, an 11-percent increase in water withdrawals, many from already low aquifers, will be needed in the next 30 years.
What is especially helpful in Vital Signs is the way the researchers return again and again to the poorest of the poor in the world. One billion people live on less than $2 a day. While factory farms are popping up in the developing world, the poor continue to rely on livestock in ways their ancestors did, and these farming practices often are much more sustainable than industrial methods:
Livestock raised locally in a sustainable production system. . .contribute to gender equality and opportunities for women, improve the structure and fertility of the soil, provide draught power, and control insects and weeds. Manure from livestock can also provide cooking and heating fuel for the estimated 1.3 billion poor or rural families who lack access to electricity.
These poor, rural farmers need support as they "build resilience" to climate change, according to the report. Their needs range from education in sustainable practices to grazing rights. Moving toward organic practices in agriculture uses 50 percent less fossil fuel, helps stabilize soil and increases water retention while allowing for more biodiversity. Another barrier to strengthening the rural poor farmer is unequal distribution of land. "Land grabbing," a practice in which foreign countries and private investors acquire land for production and development as well as water rights, displaces local farmers. Since 2000, approximately 70 million hectares of ag land, mostly in poorer countries, have been sold or leased—about 2 percent of the world's agricultural land.
Women farmers especially need support. Vital Signs reports that women are responsible for producing more than half of all food in the world, yet there is a persistent gender gap in agriculture. More than two-thirds of the world's illiterate poor adults are women, and women represent 70 percent of the world's poverty-stricken people. They produce 60 to 80 percent of food in developing countries yet own only two percent of the world's ag land. Women reinvest up to 90 percent of their income in their families and households (compared with 30-40 percent by their male counterparts), so women's well-being is the path to ensuring the well-being of children.
There is much more to Vital Signs: the rise of cooperatives, the role of advertising spending in health and quality of life, and growing income discrepancies throughout the world. It does read like most white papers—lots of statistics and comparisons, which can cause the eyes to glaze over. It would be helpful for Worldwatch to insert some personal stories to bring home the important facts that are cited. Still, while the book is aimed at policymakers, nonprofits and students, it offers information that is vital to all of us as we seek to save our precious, endangered planet Earth.