worldwatch report 186
Creating Sustainable Prosperity
in the United States
The Need for Innovation and Leadership
Gary Gardner
worldwatch report 186
Creating Sustainable Prosperity
in the United States:
The Need for Innovation and Leadership
Gary Gardner
lisa mast ny, e d i to r
wor l dwatch i n st i t u te
© Worldwatch Institute, 2011
Washington, D.C.
ISBN 978-0-9835437-2-5
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The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily
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On the cover: The old and the new in Illinois.
Photograph by Dori (dori@merr.info).
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Table of Contents
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
The Urgency of Our Times . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Population: Numbers Matter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Renewable Resources: Appreciating Nature’s Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Non-Renewable Resources: Going, Going, Gone? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Waste and Pollution: Inefficiency Incarnate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Creating Sustainable Prosperity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Endnotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Figures, Tables, and Sidebars
Figure 1. U.S. Population, 1960–2010, with Projections through 2030 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Figure 2. U.S. Total Fertility, 1960–2010, with Projections through 2030 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Figure 3. U.S. Life Expectancy at Birth, 1960–2010, with Projections through 2030 . . . . . 11
Figure 4. Median Age of U.S. Population, 1960–2010, with Projections through 2030 . . . 13
Figure 5. Annual Net Carbon Storage in U.S. Forests, 1953–1996 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Figure 6. U.S. Water Use, Total and Per Person, 1950–2005 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Figure 7. U.S. Energy Consumption by Source, 1775–2009 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Figure 8. U.S. Minerals Production and Consumption, 1950–2009 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Figure 9. U.S. Import Dependence, Selected Metals and Minerals, 2010 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Figure 10. U.S. Carbon Dioxide Emissions, Total and Per Person, 1960–2007 . . . . . . . . . 27
Figure 11. Change in Waste Composition in the United States, 1900, 1960, and 2000 . . . 27
Figure 12. U.S. Municipal Solid Waste, Total and Per Person, 1960–2008 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Figure 13. U.S. Municipal Solid Waste Management, by End Disposal, 1960–2008 . . . . . 28
Table 1. U.S. Total Fertility Rate in a Global Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Table 2. U.S. Ecological Footprint and Biocapacity, Overall and by Sector, 2007 . . . . . . . . 15
Table 3. Changing Prevalence of U.S. Bird Species, 1966–2009 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Table 4. Price Increases of Selected U.S. Minerals, 2001–2011 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Table 5. Contraceptive Use and Unintended Pregnancies in the United States . . . . . . . . . 32
Table 6. Selected Results of Japan’s Top Runner Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Table 7. Per Capita Electricity Consumption in California versus United States, 2005 . . . 37
Sidebar 1. Age and Consumption: Lessons from Abroad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Sidebar 2. Efficiency Is Not Enough . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Sidebar 3. One Vision of a Sustainable Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to the Worldwatch Institute for the opportunity over many years to write about cuttingedge issues in sustainable development. For this report, I am particularly grateful to Robert Engelman,
Tom Prugh, Chris Clugston, Andrés Edwards, and Michael Renner for their comments on various portions of the text. I also am indebted to Curley Andrews, Stephan Lutter, and Cutler Cleveland for supplying key information that shaped the report. The Weeden Foundation provided generous support of the
effort, for which I am deeply thankful. Any errors or omissions, of course, are mine.
About the Author
Gary Gardner spent 17 years as a researcher and writer at the Worldwatch Institute, an environmental research organization based in Washington, D.C. He has written on a broad range of sustainability
issues, from cropland loss and water scarcity to malnutrition and bicycle use, for the Worldwatch publications State of the World, Vital Signs, and World Watch magazine. He is the author of the 2006 book
Inspiring Progress: Religions’ Contributions to Sustainable Development. In addition to his research and
writing, Gary has done interviews in both English and Spanish with international media outlets including the BBC, Voice of America, National Public Radio, and the Los Angeles Times.
Before joining Worldwatch in 1994, Gary was project manager of the Soviet Nonproliferation Project
run by the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California, where he authored Nuclear Nonproliferation: A Primer. He has developed training materials for the World Bank and for the Millennium
Institute in Arlington, Virginia. Gary holds Master’s degrees in Politics from Brandeis University and in
Public Administration from the Monterey Institute of International Studies. He earned his Bachelor’s
degree from Santa Clara University in California. He now serves as the Director of Grants Administration at the Resources Legacy Fund in California.
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Crea ting S us ta ina ble Pro s perity i n t he Uni t ed S t a t es
w w w. w o rl dw at ch.org
Summary
T
he United States finds itself at a critical
juncture, as environmental degradation and resource depletion threaten
the capacity of the economy to generate wealth for the indefinite future. Despite growing awareness of the need to build a sustainable
national economy, U.S. output continues to be
characterized by linear flows of materials, heavy
dependence on fossil fuels, disregard for renewable resources, and resource use that is strongly
connected to economic growth. Entire sets of
assumptions, beliefs, and practices will need to be
overturned regarding renewable and nonrenewable resources, consumption, waste, and population growth if the United States is to build a sustainable economy in the decades ahead.
The U.S. record of stewardship of natural
resources is sub-par relative to many other industrialized countries and especially relative to the
country’s capacity to fund improvements. In a
comparative analysis of sustainability, the United
States ranks barely in the top third of nations,
far below its #1 ranking as the world’s largest
economy. It scores moderately well in mitigating the impact of environmental degradation
on humans, but poorly in mitigating ecosystem
stresses and waste. Environmental problems of
note in the United States, at least at a regional
level, include water scarcity, declining bird populations, carbon emissions, toxic waste, and water
pollution, including numerous “dead zones”
resulting from agricultural runoff.
Nonrenewable resources such as metals and
fossil fuels, the signature inputs that make industrial civilizations possible, show signs of steady
depletion in the United States. Often described
as being blessed with an ample endowment
of resources, the country is nevertheless a net
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importer of 73 percent of the non-fuel minerals
and metals used in the U.S. economy. For about
20 percent of these minerals and metals, the
United States relies entirely on imports.
Meanwhile, China, India, and other rapidly
rising developing nations are turning increasingly to world markets to meet their own voracious appetite for resources, raising the specter of
increased competition for resources. In 2010–11,
China moved to restrict its own exports of rareearth minerals, some of which are critical to a
range of industrial applications in the United
States. And some 60 percent of world oil reserves
are located in countries where relatively unstable
political conditions could restrict oil output and
exploration, making U.S dependence on foreign
oil an increasingly risky situation.
Resource degradation and scarcity are exacerbated by population growth, which increases
the demand for renewable and nonrenewable
resources alike. The U.S. population increased
by about 25 percent between 1990 and 2010,
the equivalent of adding another California,
New York, and Texas, the three most populous
U.S. states in 1990, to the 1990 population. And
the population is expected to swell by another
16 percent over the next 20 years as 52 million
Americans are added to the national family.
The United States has one of the fastest rates
of population growth among industrialized
nations, at just under 1 percent per year, in part
because the country is relatively young. Meanwhile, the environmental impact of growing
numbers of people is multiplied by consumption
levels of Americans, which are among the highest
in the world.
Creating a sustainable U.S. economy will
require a thoughtful and strategic set of national,
Crea t i ng S ust a i na b l e P ro sp eri t y i n t he Uni t ed S t a t es
5
Summary
state, and local policies that essentially remake
the economic playing field under a new set of
principles. Renewable resources cannot be consumed faster than they are regenerated. Nonrenewable resources must be reused or recycled
to the greatest extent possible, creating a circular
economy. Ongoing development should focus
less on ever-higher levels of consumption and
more on increased quality of life. A sense of fairness, especially around wealth distribution, is
needed to generate social and economic stability across society. Meanwhile, a deceleration of
population growth will make the creation of a
sustainable economy far easier.
These broad principles suggest an entirely
new way of building and operating an economy
that will require innovative overarching national
policies for the United States. Four in particular
are key:
Get the prices right. Perhaps no policy would
do more to create a sustainable U.S. economy
more quickly than internalizing the cost of air
pollution, species extinctions, carbon emissions,
and other environmental damage into the price
of goods and services. A key challenge for policymakers is to ensure that prices “tell the ecological
truth,” through imposition of, for example, a pollution tax that would transfer the cost of pollution to the polluter.
Create a circular economy. Policymakers
would do well to ensure that waste is radically
reduced or even eliminated, by reusing and
recycling materials and remanufacturing products to the maximum extent possible. In Japan,
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Crea ting S us ta ina ble Pros perity i n t he Uni t ed S t a t es
where the concept of a circular economy has
been a national priority for nearly two decades,
resource productivity is on track to more than
double by 2015 over 1990 levels; the recycling
rate is projected to roughly double over the
same period; and total material sent to landfills will likely decrease to about one-fifth of the
1990 level by 2015.
Dematerialize the economy. The United
States must embrace the concept of “decoupling,”
or de-linking the arm-in-arm march of economic
growth and the use of materials and fuel. Some
decoupling is already under way—energy intensity has fallen by a third, for example, since the
1980s—yet overall materials use has continued to
increase. A key challenge for policymakers will be
to design policies that consistently and comprehensively “dematerialize” economic activity by
emphasizing services over goods (providing car
sharing when possible, for example, rather than
cars) and by promoting long-lasting goods over
planned obsolescence.
Seek development over growth. Finally, reembracing the concept of sufficiency—the idea
that limits on consumption produce greater wellbeing than full-throttled consumption—will be
part of any sustainable economy. The concept of
sufficiency suggests that increased quality of life
in a wealthy country like the United States means
ensuring that people can reclaim the space and
time they desire in their lives for nonmaterial
assets such as friendship, family bonding, leisure
time, and community involvement.
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The Urgency
of Our Times
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Kevin Kovaleski
A
quarter century after the term “sustainable development” entered mainstream
use, and 20 years after it headlined the
1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro,
the concept is at a crossroads. On one hand,
institutions as diverse as businesses, universities,
and churches proudly call themselves sustainable, suggesting that the concept resonates deeply
across a broad swath of American society. On the
other hand, relatively few people and institutions
embrace the profound, original vision of sustainability: the wholesale economic and societal
makeover that would generate clean prosperity
today while preserving resources and ecological
functions for use by future generations.
More than two decades into the quickening
U.S. interest in sustainability, the question looms:
Will this historical moment mark a turning point
when the country committed itself to a new economic framework for a fresh and enduring prosperity? Or will it be little more than a historic
flirtation, and ultimately a lost opportunity for
renewed economic greatness?
The question is an urgent one. The conditions that brought the term sustainable development into being 25 years ago—robust population
growth, water shortages, species losses, and coastal
“dead zones,” to name a few—have largely worsened in the United States, while new concerns
like coral reef die-offs, ocean acidification, and
invasive species demand attention. Meanwhile,
dwindling reserves of mineral resources and fossil
fuels, the bone and blood of industrial economies,
will eventually disable critical economic functions
unless they are managed sustainably.
And the wild card of climate change looms
over the entire economy, with major consequences projected for infrastructure, health, and
The Capital Bikeshare program was launched in the District of
Columbia in September, 2010.
the ecological services that underpin economic
activity such as pollination and nutrient cycling.
In sum, America’s renewable and non-renewable
resource base, the foundation of its economy, is
at risk because U.S. management of resources is
fundamentally unsustainable.
On the positive side, the technological and
policy tools needed to create sustainable economic activity have advanced rapidly around the
world, although few have been deployed widely.
Renewable energy technologies are robust: wind
generating capacity, for example, has grown
some 16-fold in the United States over the past
10 years, yet renewables still account for a small
share of U.S. energy generation.1* More-efficient
products such as energy-saving appliances and
lighting, and fuel-efficient cars, have cut pollu* Endnotes are grouped by section and begin on page 40.
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7
The Urgency of Our Times
tion and waste per unit of consumption in some
economic sectors, even if these advances are
often offset by increases in consumption overall. Meanwhile, innovative policy tools—from
guaranteed market shares for renewable energy
to pollution taxes and “take-back” laws for spent
products—have proven successful in some
parts of the world, although they remain largely
untried in much of the United States.
In sum, the need for a sustainable U.S. economy is great, and the tools to create it exist. Yet
at the national level, policymakers have been
slow to claim a sustainable future for America.
The window for shifting to sustainable economic
processes relatively painlessly is closing, and each
year of inaction makes the eventual shift to a sustainable economy potentially more jarring and
costly for a growing number of Americans.
In principle, the United States should be a
leader in the global shift toward sustainable economies because of its long tradition of environmental leadership. Teddy Roosevelt, John Muir,
and Aldo Leopold were champions of American
conservation, and Rachel Carson warned eloquently about the impact of unbridled industrial
development. In the 1960s and 1970s, the United
States became a world leader in environmental
policy when it established a series of progressive
laws and institutions.
Much of this advance rested on a bipartisan foundation: the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) was established under Richard
Nixon, and the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts,
which set world-class standards for environmental protection, were passed by large majorities
of the U.S. Congress. Indeed, today’s countertrends—recent efforts to strip the EPA of some
regulatory powers, or the media’s under-reporting of climate change, the story of our times—
are out of step with the much longer progressive
environmental tradition in the United States.
Reclaiming and building on that tradition is
critical to creating a sustainable and prosperous
U.S. economy.
The sustainability challenge also tees up nicely
for the United States because of sustainability’s
heavy emphasis on innovation, traditionally an
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Crea ting S us ta ina ble Pros perity i n t he Uni t ed S t a t es
American strength. Sustainability solutions are
often systemic, requiring creative thinking across
issues and across toolboxes. A sustainability
response to air pollution, for example, would promote not just catalytic converters, but also greater
use of public transportation, bicycling, and walking, as well as innovative tools like car sharing.
The chosen solutions, in turn, would not
merely cut pollution, but also reduce congestion, materials use, and social inequality while
increasing access to mobility and advancing
health. Today, the sustainability challenge is far
more complex than the environmental challenges of the 1960s. But in that complexity lies
opportunity—the chance to tap America’s knack
for innovation to create a new foundation for
lasting prosperity.
The creative, systemic response demanded
by the sustainability challenge requires that the
United States rethink many deeply rooted habits and assumptions. A nation without a formal
population policy will need to wrestle with how
large the U.S. population can sustainably become.
A nation that harnesses consumption to drive its
economy will need, at a minimum, to “dematerialize” consumption by emphasizing services over
goods where possible—and may need to reduce
consumption altogether. A nation endowed with
resource abundance will need to understand and
manage resources as though they were scarce,
for indeed many are. These cultural shifts, which
underlie the technological and policy shifts
required for sustainability, will perhaps be the
most difficult adjustments ahead for Americans.
The transition to sustainable prosperity is
undoubtedly achievable for a country that prides
itself on its “can-do” spirit. But America’s long
“maybe” in response to history’s invitation to sustainable prosperity is no longer viable; the time
for commitment is here. Indeed, an indecisive
America might ponder this truth: the choice is
not between the status quo and sustainability. A
sustainable America is inevitable. The question is
whether the United States builds sustainable prosperity through prudent choices now, or declines
into sustained impoverishment because it failed
to steward its assets when it had the choice.
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Population:
Numbers Matter
D
U.S. Population Growth
In contrast to many industrial countries, U.S.
population growth has been relatively robust
over the past two decades, although it is slowing. The total number of Americans increased by
63 million between 1990 and 2010, or about 25
percent.1 (See Figure 1.) This is the equivalent of
adding another California, New York, and Texas,
the three most populous U.S. states in 1990, to
the 1990 population.2
In 2011, the U.S. population growth rate* was
estimated at just under 1 percent (0.894 percent),
which puts the country roughly in the lower middle-third of the family of nations. Total population in some 141 countries grew faster than in the
United States, while in 88 countries population
grew at a slower pace.3 Of the U.S. growth, some
* The population growth rate is the net of births over
deaths and immigrants over emigrants.
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Figure 1. U.S. Population, 1960–2010, with Projections
through 2030
400
Source: UN
300
Million People
emography affects the natural environment in the United States in two
key ways: 1) through the activities of
the total number of Americans, all
of whom depend fundamentally on the environment to supply resources and to absorb wastes,
and 2) through the particular makeup of the
U.S. population—its age structure, household
size, geographic distribution, and other characteristics. Of these two demographic thrusts, the
overall number of people is the stronger environmental stressor. Thus, we begin this discussion of
population with a review of the total number of
Americans and the drivers governing U.S. population growth, then move to a discussion of the
composition of U.S. population and its impact
on the environment.
200
100
0
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
2010
2020
two-thirds was a natural increase (the net of
births over deaths) while one-third resulted from
immigration.4 The estimated net migration rate
for 2011 is 4.18 migrants per 1,000 people, the
23rd highest rate in the world. Some 22 nations
have higher immigration rates than the United
States, and 198 nations have lower rates.5
Immigration could grow into a substantial source of U.S. population growth. The Pew
Research Center estimates that a continuation of
recent immigration trends would mean that 82
percent of the increase in population between
2005 and 2050 could consist of immigrants and
their U.S.-born descendants.6
Although the country saw steady growth
over the past three decades, population expansion in the United States is slowing: growth over
the 2001–10 period was 9.7 percent, down from
13.2 percent in the 1990s, and the second lowest
decennial growth rate in the past 100 years.7 (The
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Population: Numbers Matter
1930s, the decade of the Great Depression, posted
the greatest slowdown of the past century; similarly, the 2001–10 slowdown in growth is attributed in part to the Great Recession.8)
Yet even with this deceleration, U.S. population growth is still well ahead of the rates found
in other industrial nations. The populations of
France and England each grew at about 5 percent
over the past decade, and China grew at roughly
6 percent.9 Japan’s growth has plateaued, and the
population in Germany is actually declining.10
Although expanding less rapidly than in most
recent decades, U.S. population is nevertheless
expected to swell by 52 million people over the
next 20 years, an increase of 16 percent.11 Many
factors account for this, including the relative
youthfulness of the population. The number of
women of childbearing age (15–49) grew from 67
million in 1990 to nearly 76 million in 2010, and
is expected to reach nearly 82 million in 2030.12
This helps explain why the United States has a
relatively high birth rate by industrial country
standards, at 13.8 births per 1,000 population.13
One of the key drivers of overall population
growth is the number of children the average
woman will have over her lifetime, known as the
Total Fertility Rate (TFR). In the 20th century,
this fertility rate tended to decline more slowly
than the drop-off in death rates that accompanied
the introduction of antibiotics, immunization,
clean water, and improved food availability.14
In most developed countries, a TFR of 2.1 is
“replacement level” fertility—the level at which
a population will eventually reach an unchanging size—since parents are essentially replacing
themselves in the population with their children.
(It generally takes a lifetime or so to arrive at this
more stable fertility rate, however, because so
many young people are giving birth in comparison to the fewer older people leaving the population through death.)15 According to United
Nations data, some 95 countries had fertility rates
of 2.1 or less in 2009 and were poised to eventually end their contribution to global population growth, although this transition may take
decades.16
The TFR for the United States is 2.1, down
substantially from a half century ago when the
rate was nearly 3.5 children per woman.17 (See
Figure 2.) Yet the U.S. rate is still somewhat high
for developed countries, which together posted
an average TFR of 1.6 in 2009.18 Across Mediterranean Europe, fertility rates hover in the 1.2–1.4
range.19 Overall, the U.S. total fertility rate is closer
to the average for less-developed countries than it
is for more-developed countries.20 (See Table 1.)
Increased life expectancy helps to expand the
size of the population, although modestly. Longer life spans means that more people are alive
at a given moment than if lifespans were shorter.
Figure 2. U.S. Total Fertility, 1960–2010, with Projections through 2030
3.5
Source: UN
Children per Woman
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2.5
2.0
1.5
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Population: Numbers Matter
Largely because of improvements in health care,
life expectancy in the United States has advanced
from some 70 years in the early 1960s to about
80 years today.21 (See Figure 3.) Higher levels
of child survival also boosts population growth,
although child survival rates have been relatively
high in the United States for some time and thus
are not likely to drive future population growth.
The Problem with an Expanding Population
Population growth is a key stressor of the natural
environment, because greater numbers of people
require more food, housing, transportation, and
energy, all of which have environmental impacts.
But in the United States, population growth combines with a second environmental stressor—
high average consumption levels per person—to
compound environmental impact. The average
U.S. citizen uses 11 times as many resources as
the average Chinese, and 32 times as many as the
average Kenyan.22
Americans also consume intensively compared
to their counterparts of just a few decades ago,
as seen in trends in U.S. housing size. Despite a
steady decline in household size in the second
half of the 20th century (described below), the
average house in the United States grew from
1,595 square feet in 1960 to 2,137 square feet
in 2009, a 34 percent increase.23 And the larger
homes incorporated more energy- and materi-
Table 1. U.S. Total Fertility Rate in a Global Context
Region
Total Fertility Rate,
2005–10
More developed countries
1.6
United States
2.1
Less developed countries (excluding the
least developed countries)
2.5
World
Least developed countries
2.6
4.4
Source: See Endnote 20 for this section.
als-intensive features. In 1975, only 20 percent of
new single-family houses had 2.5 or more bathrooms and 46 percent had central air conditioning, but these shares rose to 55 percent and 87
percent, respectively, by 2002.24
Thus, the addition of one person to the American population represents far greater resource
and environmental impact than an additional
person does in most other countries, making
even moderate U.S. population growth a sustainability concern. This concern is especially acute
in the case of the United States, where “green”
patterns of consumption are less rooted than in
many other parts of the world.
In a 2010 survey of consumers in 17 developed and developing countries, conducted by
Figure 3. U.S. Life Expectancy at Birth, 1960–2010, with Projections through 2030
85
Source: UN
Years
80
75
70
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65
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Crea t i ng S ust a i na b l e P ro sp eri t y i n t he Uni t ed S t a t es
11
Population: Numbers Matter
National Geographic, Americans ranked last in
green consumption habits (although their score
had improved over the 2008 survey).25 As long as
the U.S. strategy for prosperity is linked heavily
to greater and greater use of materials and fuels,
and as long as Americans are not persuaded to
adopt green consumption habits, growth in U.S.
population will be a disproportionately worrisome problem in the United States and for the
world as a whole.
Composition of U.S. Population
The composition of a nation’s population—how
old people are, or where they live—can also affect
environmental impact. The young and old, for
example, tend to consume less than those in the
broad middle of a population, in part because
children and seniors have limited or no income,
and because seniors tend to steward resources to
last during a retirement of unknown duration. In
addition and more indirectly, aging populations
are associated with lower rates of labor productivity and therefore with lower rates of economic
growth, which can translate to lesser environmental impact.26 (See Sidebar 1.)
If these general trends hold true in the United
Sidebar 1. Age and Consumption: Lessons from Abroad
In one of the clearest documentations of the relationship between age and environmental impact, a 2005 New Zealand study
of seven consumption indicators (use of water, land, phosphorus, and energy; and generation of solid waste, wastewater, and
carbon dioxide) found that children under age 15 consumed 20
percent less than the average New Zealander, and that those
over 65 consumed 2 percent less than the national average. On
the other hand, people in the broad national middle—those
between 15 and 64—consumed 7 percent more than the average
New Zealander.
A 2008 study from the European Union similarly found that
the elderly “are generally less mobile, take up new consumption
patterns at a slower speed, and consume on average the same
or less resources than other groups in society.” One exception is
the consumption of fuels. Consumption per person was higher
for the elderly than for the rest of the population because the
elderly have smaller households (often one or two persons) than
younger groups, which translates to larger living space per inhabitant and greater energy consumption per person.
Source: See Endnote 26 for this section.
12
Crea ting S us ta ina ble Pro s perity i n t he Uni t ed S t a t es
States, the aging U.S. population could dampen
environmental impact somewhat in the coming
decades. The median age in the United States
increased from 30 years in 1960 to nearly 37 years
in 2010.27 (See Figure 4.) Meanwhile, the share of
the U.S. population over the age of 65 increased
from 12.3 percent in 1990 to 13 percent in 2010,
and is projected to reach 19.8 percent by 2030.28
For this reason, a 2010 study suggests that
aging in the United States could lower carbon
emissions by some 12 percent by 2100, compared
with scenarios in which aging is not taken into
account.29 Meanwhile, the share of high-spending 15–64 year-olds is expected to drop to 62.2
percent by 2030.30 At the same time, the demographic group with the smallest footprint, those
under 15, will fall from 21.7 percent in 1990 to 18
percent in 2030.31
Overall, then, the emerging age structure of
the U.S. population is likely to lessen environmental impact compared with population growth
under assumptions of no change to the current
age structure. To be clear, this does not mean that
an aging U.S. population translates into lowered
environmental impact in absolute terms, but
rather that the impact will likely be less than it
would have been without aging.
In contrast to the beneficial environmental impact of aging, smaller household size in
the United States is a demographic shift that
will increase environmental impact. In general,
small households tend to consume more fuel and
materials than large ones because each household
typically has its own heating, cooling, and lighting systems, and its own set of consumer products, from TVs and other electronics to refrigerators, stoves, and other appliances.
In addition, each household, no matter the
size, tends to have at least one car, one of the most
materials-intensive products in the U.S. economy.32 A European Environment Agency study
reported that “one-person households consume,
on average, 38% more products, 42% more packaging and 55% more electricity per person than
four-person households.”33 The pattern is likely to
hold roughly true for the United States as well.
The environmental impact of small households makes U.S. housing trends worrisome. The
average household size in the United States fell by
w w w. w o rl dw at ch.org
Population: Numbers Matter
www. worldwat ch. or g
Figure 4. Median Age of U.S. Population, 1960–2010,
with Projections through 2030
50
Source: UN
40
30
Years
nearly 29 percent between 1960 and 2010, from
3.33 persons to 2.59 persons.34 Indeed, the share
of households with just one person more than
doubled, from 13.1 percent in 1960 to 26.7 percent in 2010. Both trends, however, have roughly
plateaued since 2000.35
Finally, urbanization is an important demographic variable with strong, though divergent,
environmental impacts—an important consideration for a country like the United States. The
country has been urbanizing steadily for more
than a century, and by 2010 some 82 percent of
Americans lived in urban areas, although this figure includes suburban dwellers as well, who typically demonstrate a much greater environmental
impact than city dwellers.36 In general, cities have
a mixed record regarding sustainability: they are
economic engines and centers of innovation that
drive the global, unsustainable use of resources,
but they are also the places where sustainability
innovations are likely to emerge.37
City residents tend to need less living space.
They often reside in more compact dwellings
and in high-rise buildings with larger numbers
of people per square mile than suburban and
rural residents do. This is true even when large
houses are built for efficiency: a small house with
moderately good energy performance uses much
less energy for heating and cooling than a large
house that is highly efficient.38 Moreover, when
properly designed, urban living can mean lower
levels of energy use through co-generation of
electricity and waste heat, reduced dependence
on private cars (with correspondingly lower levels of pollution and energy use), and increased
opportunities for recycling and remanufacturing
of materials.39
The U.S. Energy Information Administration
has reported that urban residents with vehicles
own 1.8 vehicles per household and use these to
travel 21,600 miles annually, while rural households have 2.2 vehicles per household and cover
28,700 miles per year.40 Overall, given the sprawling, low-density, car-centered pattern that characterizes most American development, urban
Americans tend to consume resources and generate waste at lower rates than their suburban and
rural counterparts.
20
10
0
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
2010
2020
Population Overall versus
Demographic Composition
Despite their differential impacts on the environment, the age, household size, urban makeup,
and other characteristics of the U.S. population are less important than the sheer numbers
of people and their consumption habits. In a
2004 study of transportation use in the United
States by population cohort, the composition
of the population accounted for just 11 percent of changes in demand for transportation
over an 11-year period.41 Growth in population
and changes in transportation habits, by contrast, accounted for 89 percent of change in miles
driven per person.42
Similarly, the 2010 study examining carbon
emissions reductions in the United States showed
that while an aging U.S. population would
account for a 12 percent reduction in emissions by 2100, slower population growth would
reduce emissions by 37–41 percent over the same
period.43 And the study from New Zealand documents that even when lessened environmental
impact from aging is augmented with assumed
increases in efficiency of resource use, the total
decrease in impact is more than offset by the
increase in the overall number of people. In sum,
the number of people, not the makeup of a population, matters most.44
Crea t i ng S ust a i na b l e P ro sp eri t y i n t he Uni t ed S t a t es
13
2030
Renewable Resources:
Appreciating Nature’s Services
A
merica’s renewable resources—its forests
and crops, rivers and lakes, and living creatures—have always been vital
inputs to the U.S. economy as sources
of wood, food, fiber, and water. Now scientists
reveal that renewable resources are more than a
set of goods: they also provide many services vital
to economic activity.1 Trees purify the air, wetlands provide flood protection, and bees pollinate
crops—just a few of the many economically critical services that nature provides. As ecosystem
science reveals the full value of the goods and services that make up America’s natural endowment,
the importance of stewarding these resources to
build a sustainable economy for the United States
becomes increasingly evident.
Despite their importance, however, the United
States has a mixed track record in caring for
renewable resources. Whether assessed at the
national level and across all renewables, or at the
level of individual resources, it is clear that management of these assets requires greater attention
than it has received to date.
Overall Assessment
Assessments of the nation’s environmental
health are proxy measures of America’s renewable resource base, because environmental issues
are often renewable resource issues. Many environmental assessments are framed in a global
context, ranking the United States against other
countries. Three are considered here: Columbia
University’s Environmental Sustainability Index
(ESI), the Environmental Performance Index
(EPI) from Yale University, and the Ecological Footprint. Each uses different performance
yardsticks, but all suggest that the United States
has a great deal of room for improvement in
14
Crea ting S us ta ina ble Pro s perity i n t he Uni t ed S t a t es
its stewardship of the environment and natural
resources.
The ESI, last published in 2005, averages the
values of 21 environmental and social indicators
to give an overall sustainability score for most of
the world’s countries.2 The data offer a sobering
view of America’s environmental performance.
Of the five clusters used to categorize the 21 indicators, the United States scored highest in Social
and Institutional Capacity (78 out of 100) and
Reducing Human Vulnerability (74), suggesting
that the country does a reasonable job of managing environmental risks to humans. It earned a
60 on the Environmental Systems component,
meaning that its land, air, water, and biodiversity bases are in moderate shape. But the United
States received only a 38 in Global Stewardship,
reflecting its minimal support for global environmental institutions and treaties. And it scored 27
on the Reducing Stresses component, meaning
that America performs poorly in mitigating air
pollution and water and ecosystem stresses, and
in reducing waste and consumption.
The United States also performed poorly in
the ESI relative to other countries, especially
given its wealth and high capacity for environmental stewardship. The ESI ranked the United
States 45th out of 146 countries, barely within the
top third of countries assessed.3 And the United
States scored worse than the average of its peer
group (countries with similar GDP per capita) on
13 of the 21 indicators measured.4
The Environmental Performance Index generates roughly similar results for the United States.
The EPI uses 25 performance indicators covering
Ecosystem Vitality (measuring climate change,
agriculture, fisheries, forestry, biodiversity and
habitat, water, and air pollution) and Environw w w. w o rl dw at ch.org
Renewable Resources: Appreciating Nature’s Services
mental Health (the environmental burden of
disease and the effect on humans of air pollution
and water availability).5 Of the 163 countries covered, the United States ranks 61st—not even in
the top third of countries, and with a score about
the same as that of Paraguay and Brazil.6
In contrast to the ESI and EPI, Global Footprint Analysis (GFA) assesses the utilization of
renewable resources more directly. GFA measures
demand for biological goods and services, typically at the national level, against the biological
capacity (biocapacity) of the country—the ability of its ecosystems to produce useful biological materials and to absorb human-generated
wastes.7 The demand for forests, croplands, and
water, for example, is measured against a country’s productive capacity of these resources. Footprint analysis can be done for an entire nation or
on a per capita basis.
A nation is an ecological creditor if its biocapacity is greater than its footprint, and it is
an ecological debtor if it uses more of nature’s
capacity than it generates. Ecological debt is generated by running down a country’s endowment
of natural capital—by overcutting forests, for
example, or overpumping aquifers, practices that
cannot be sustained indefinitely. Many economies worldwide are now habituated to overconsuming natural capital: the global economy has
been in a situation of chronic ecological debt
since roughly 1980 as a growing number of the
world’s economies use more of nature’s goods
and services than they generate.8
The United States is one of the world’s largest ecological debtor nations. According to the
Global Footprint Network (GFN), the U.S. ecological footprint began to exceed the country’s
biocapacity in 1967, and the country’s ecological
debt has increased steadily since then. By 2007
U.S. biocapacity was measured at 3.9 global hectares* per person, but its footprint was 8.0 global
hectares per person.9 Thus, the United States
consumes some 207 percent of its ecological
* A global hectare is an area measure that reflects the average productivity of biologically productive land and water
in a given year. A unit of cropland, for example, would
have a higher global hectare value than a unit of pastureland, because cropland is more biologically productive
than pastureland.
www. worldwat ch. or g
capacity and is the 46th greatest ecological debtor
of the 151 countries evaluated by GFN. This puts
the country in the top third of the world’s ecological debtors.10 (Stated in reverse, the United
States ranks only 105th of 151 nations in ecological stewardship, defined here as the inverse of
ecological debt.11)
On a per capita basis, the picture is worse: at
about 8 global hectares per person, the United
States has the fifth largest ecological footprint per
person in the world. Only the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Denmark, and Belgium have greater
per capita footprints.12
Interestingly, however, the U.S. status as an
ecological debtor is largely the result of its heavy
carbon footprint. In all other categories—cropland, grazing, forest, fishing grounds, and builtup land—the U.S. footprint is still below its
biocapacity, often significantly so.13 (See Table
2.) This is good news: addressing the country’s
carbon problem would go a long way to reducing
America’s ecological debt.
Table 2. U.S. Ecological Footprint and Biocapacity,
Overall and by Sector, 2007
Ecological
Footprint
Biocapacity
Footprint as Share
of Biocapacity
global hectares per capita
Overall
Cropland
Forest
Fishing Grounds
Grazing
8.0
1.08
1.03
0.10
0.14
3.9
1.58
1.55
0.41
0.26
percent
205
68
66
25
55
Source: See Endnote 13 for this section.
Notably, however, even with exemplary policies to protect renewable resources, population
growth is a continuing stress on nature’s capacity to provide the United States with clean water,
timber, soil fertility, and other natural goods
and services. In contrast to the general expansion of America’s economy and population, its
biocapacity is largely fixed. (The biocapacity of
farmland, managed forests, and other cultivated
land systems can be increased through the addition of nutrients, but this increase is relatively
Crea t i ng S ust a i na b l e P ro sp eri t y i n t he Uni t ed S t a t es
15
Cibola National Forest in New Mexico.
small.) Thus, as the U.S. population expands, its
biocapacity per person shrinks. U.S. biocapacity
was nearly 7 hectares per person in 1960 but was
closer to 4 hectares by 2007.14
In sum, while no single indicator can give a
definitive assessment of a country’s environmental sustainability, the three assessments considered here put the United States well down in the
global rankings—much lower than the country’s
economic standing would seem to predict. America is wealthy and ecologically well endowed, with
the world’s largest economy and the 25th richest
biocapacity in the world, according to GFN.15 Yet
it ranks only in the top third of nations in the ESI
and EPI, and is one of the world’s leading ecological debtors.16 In short, relative to its capacity, the United States is an ecological underperformer, a nation that to date has lacked the will,
rather than the means, to become environmentally sustainable.
Select Indicators of U.S. Environmental Health
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s
2008 Report on the Environment summarizes
the condition of ecosystems in the United States
and the renewable resources they contain.17 The
report’s data is often spotty, covering only select
regions or subsets of an issue, and trend data is
often lacking. The analysis uses the health of forests, wetlands, and land as proxies for the overall
ecological health of the nation. The indicators
16
Crea ting S us ta ina ble Pros perity i n t he Uni t ed S t a t es
suggest that the United States continues to experience levels of environmental degradation that
undermine the biological integrity of ecosystems
at the regional level, and are therefore unsustainable. Here is a summary of their findings:
Forests. After declining by more than 16 million acres between 1938 and 1977, U.S. forested
area has increased over the past three decades by
5.3 million acres, although there is great variation across regions. Despite the expansion, forest
quality is an issue: the composition of tree species has changed, and almost one-fifth of forested
area is considered “patchy,” with edges that border on non-forested land, which adversely affects
habitat functions.18 Only 26 percent of forested
area is core forest, where forests dominate the
landscape, but even in these areas some fragmentation is common.
In addition, the carbon storage capacity of
U.S. forests may be slowing. Since 1953, forests in
the continental United States have absorbed more
carbon than they have emitted. But while net
carbon storage in forests increased to 210 million metric tons of carbon per year in the 1977 to
1986 period (compared with 1950), absorption
fell to 135 metric tons per year in 1987–96, the
last period for which data is available, suggesting that an important component of America’s
capacity to absorb atmospheric wastes is diminished.19 (See Figure 5.)
Wetlands. Wetland acreage in the continen-
Figure 5. Annual Net Carbon Storage
in U.S. Forests, 1953–1996
250
Source: EPA
200
Million Tons per Year
USDA Forest Service
Renewable Resources: Appreciating Nature’s Services
150
100
50
0
1953–62
1963–76
1977–86
1987–96
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Renewable Resources: Appreciating Nature’s Services
www. worldwat ch. or g
Figure 6. U.S. Water Use, Total and Per Person,
1950–2005
2,500
Source: USGS
Total Use
400
2,000
Use per Person
300
1,500
200
1,000
100
500
0
1950
0
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
and irrigation, held steady compared to 1980 or
decreased, while withdrawals for public supply and domestic use continued their long-term
upward trend.31
The encouraging performance of the water
sector can be credited in part to greater efficiency.
More farmers are using micro-irrigation technologies, for example, and public water use is more
effiicient as well. Although the U.S. population
increased by 5 percent between 1980 and 2005,
public water use increased by only 2 percent.32
Despite the encouraging trends, water scarcity
is a very real prospect for a growing share of the
country. The U.S. Government Accountability
Office surveyed water management officials in 47
states in 2003 and found that officials in 36 states
expected to face water shortages at the local,
regional, or state level within 10 years.33
The signs are clear: groundwater in the High
Plains aquifer that underlies eight western states
has been significantly depleted, now containing less than half of the water that it held before
groundwater pumping started. Meanwhile, California, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada, which
already are stressing their current water supplies,
are expected to see their populations increase
more than 50 percent from 1995 to 2025. The
potential effects of climate change create additional uncertainty about future U.S. water availability and use. The predicted decline in snow
pack, for example, could harm states that rely
Crea t i ng S ust a i na b l e P ro sp eri t y i n t he Uni t ed S t a t es
17
Gallons per Person per Day
500
Billion Gallonds per Day
tal United States covers less than half the extent
it did when Europeans first arrived in North
America.20 And much of that loss has occurred
over the past half century, although the trend has
reversed over the past decade, with modest net
additions to acreage.21 Between the 1950s and the
1970s, some 458,000 acres of wetlands were lost
per year, a rate that slowed to about 58,000 acres
between 1986 and 1997.22 Between 1998 and
2004, the extent of U.S. wetlands grew by some
32,000 acres per year.
In sum, well over 13 million acres of wetlands
were lost in the second half of the 20th century,
while expansion in the past decade totals just a
few hundred thousand acres.23 The greatest losses
have been to forested wetlands, which have lost
about 9 million acres since the 1950s.24 Shallow freshwater ponds have seen the greatest area
expansion and now cover more than twice the
area that they did 50 years ago.25
Causes of wetlands disappearance have
included urban and rural development, silviculture (the cultivation and management of trees,
especially in forests), and flooding to create reservoirs.26 Causes of wetland creation have included
restoration and conservation efforts on agricultural and other lands.27
Land Use. Between 1982 and the early 2000s,
timberland (the two-thirds of forest land available for productive purposes) increased by some
3 percent, farm acreages fell by 12 percent, and
developed lands increased by about 48 percent.28 Developed land increased almost twice as
fast as the increase in population from 1982 to
2003, suggesting more extensive use of developed land.29 According to the EPA’s National
Land Cover Data, the southeastern United States
accounts for 53 percent of new coastal development in the country.
Water Use. The most recent assessment of
water use in the United States, from the U.S.
Geological Survey in 2005, reveals some encouraging trends. Some 410 billion gallons per day
were withdrawn for all purposes in 2005, about
5 percent less than in 1980, while per capita use
was down a full 37 percent.30 (See Figure 6.) Also
of note, groundwater extraction levels fell by 4.3
percent between 1980 and 2005. The two largest
uses of water, thermoelectric power generation
Renewable Resources: Appreciating Nature’s Services
Table 3. Changing Prevalence of U.S. Bird Species, 1966–2009
Habitat Type
Urban
Grassland
Scrubland
Woodland
Wetland
Number of
Species Observed
Share of Observed Species
Showing a Substantial
Increase in Population
Share of Observed Species
Showing a Substantial
Decrease in Population
percent
percent
33
7
11
29
21
67
54
39
27
16
15
28
87
131
86
Source: See Endnote 34 for this section.
extensively on melted snow runoff for gradual
seasonal distribution of their freshwater supply.
Biological Diversity. Data on U.S. biological
diversity are limited, with few reliable national
statistics for amphibians, reptiles, mammals,
and plants, or for the numbers of threatened,
endangered, and invasive species. Nationally
representative data on birds and fish, however,
are more robust.
The status of birds is mixed, with some
observed species registering substantial gains
in population and others showing substantial
declines.34 (See Table 3.) Urban and grassland
bird species tended to experience more declines in
population than gains, while scrubland, woodland, and wetland species tended to register more
gains than declines. Meanwhile, an Audubon analysis of “citizen science” bird-counting data shows
that all 20 of the birds on their Common Birds in
Decline List—including certain herons, sparrows,
and hummingbirds—have lost at least half of
their populations in just over four decades.35
Meanwhile, fish species are showing widespread stresses, although these are generally moderate in impact. Only 21 percent of the area of
the lower 48 states saw no decline in native fish
species in the 1997–2003 period compared with
historical levels.36 In more than half of the area
(55 percent) of the continental United States, fish
species declined by less than 10 percent.37 In the
remaining area—about a quarter of the land area
of the continental U.S.—native fish species have
declined by between 10 and 50 percent.38
18
Crea ting S us ta ina ble Pros perity i n t he Uni t ed S t a t es
Climate. Over the past three decades, average temperatures in the continental United States
rose five times more (0.59 degrees Fahrenheit per
decade) than for the century-long period since
1901 (0.12 degrees per decade.)39 Moreover, five
of the warmest years on record for the continental U.S. have occurred since 1990.40 The greatest
warming occurred in Alaska, which is consistent with the expectations of scientists from the
United Nations-created Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC) of greater warming at
higher latitudes.41
Because rising temperatures increase evaporation, a warming United States can expect
increased levels of precipitation. Data indicate
that annual precipitation has increased 6.5 percent over the continental U.S. since 1901.42 In
addition, rising average global temperatures have
caused a rise in relative sea levels (changes in sea
level combined with changes in land elevation
because of subsidence or other factors) of up to
3 millimeters per year between 1950 and 1999.43
Higher sea levels increases the likelihood of
flooding, and salination of coastal inland waters.
Warming also affects wildlife: the Audubon analysis of its bird surveys suggests that 60 percent of
birds that winter in North America have shifted
their ranges northward by an average of 35 miles
because of warming temperatures.44
Hypoxia. Low levels of dissolved oxygen in
water, a condition known as hypoxia, create an
environment in which many forms of aquatic
life cannot exist. Hypoxia is typically the result
w w w. w o rl d w at ch.org
of runoff of nitrogen and phosphorus from
farmland into waterways. National measures of
hypoxia are unavailable, but regional information for the Gulf of Mexico and for Long Island
Sound are worrisome. In both regions, 2007 data
show that in “substantial areas,” low dissolved
oxygen content have created an environment that
cannot support most fish and shellfish species.45
Nutrient measurements of the Mississippi,
Columbia, St. Lawrence, and Susquehanna rivers show that the Mississippi, which drains
farmland throughout much of the Midwest,
carries more than 15 times the nitrate load of
the other rivers, and that the nutrient content
in this river more than doubled between the
1950s and 2007.46 On the other hand, nitrate
loads in the Columbia River, after nearly doubling in the 1990s, returned to historical levels
by 2002.47 Nitrate loads were variable in the
other rivers. Other data shows that about onethird of the miles of wadeable streams tested
in the United States had concentrations of
www. worldwat ch. or g
USDA Forest Service
Renewable Resources: Appreciating Nature’s Services
As part of a wetlands restoration project, a student looks for tadpoles in a drying pond of the Idaho Panhandle National Forest.
nitrogen and phosphorus that were substantially higher than reference levels appropriate
for their region.48
Crea t i ng S ust a i na b l e P ro sp eri t y i n t he Uni t ed S t a t es
19
Non-Renewable Resources:
Going, Going, Gone?
T
he United States is rightly regarded as
a nation blessed with an abundance of
economically useful natural resources.
But much of that abundance is nonrenewable: the minerals, fossil fuels, and metals
that are not regenerated by nature on a timescale
relevant to economic advance. Moreover, America’s dependence on these finite natural resources
has grown over the country’s history, a common
phenomenon of industrial economies.
Before the Industrial Revolution, the vast
majority of energy consumed in the United States
was renewable. The primary energy sources that
fueled most economic activity were wood for
heating and cooking, animal power for plowing and transportation, and human power for
planting, building, and washing.1 (See Figure 7.)
But today, the vast majority of energy used in
the United States, and all of the country’s mineral resources, are non-renewable.2 In the face of
relentless consumption, non-renewable resources
are increasingly scarce, posing a serious challenge
to the sustainability of the U.S. economy.
Trends in Non-Renewable Resources
Non-renewable resources consist of minerals
(construction and industrial), metals, and fuels.
For all categories, production and consumption
skyrocketed in the United States over the past
century. In 1900, for example, the U.S. economy
required fewer than 100 million metric tons
of minerals, but this figure ballooned to more
than 3.8 billion metric tons in 2006—a 38-fold
increase over a period in which the U.S. population increased only fourfold.3 The exceptions to
this growth pattern came during periods of economic downturn, especially during the recession
of the early 1980s and the Great Recession that
began in 2007.4 (See Figure 8.) And the relentless increases in materials use occurred despite
increasing efficiency in the U.S. economy.5 (See
Sidebar 2.)
Figure 7. U.S. Energy Consumption by Source, 1775–2009
50
Source: EIA
Quadrillion Btu
40
Petroleum
Hydroelectric
Coal
Wood
Natural Gas
Nuclear
30
20
10
0
1775
20
1800
1825
1850
1875
1900
Crea ting S us ta ina ble Pro s perity i n t he Uni t ed S t a t es
1925
1950
1975
2000
2025
w w w. w o rl dw at ch.org
Non-Renewable Resources: Going, Going, Gone?
Declining Endowment of Non-Renewables
The non-renewable nature of vital economic
resources invariably raises the question of scarcity. How long will America’s mineral and fuel
endowment last? Answers are difficult to posit
with confidence, because great uncertainty surrounds the physical extent of remaining supplies, their economic and political availability,
and future demand for them. But from several
analytical perspectives the United States appears
to be in an increasingly worrisome position with
regard to non-renewable resources.
To begin, although the United States is blessed
with an abundance of non-renewable resources,
the economy’s voracious resource appetite often
outpaces the country’s cornucopian supply. Of
the 92 non-fuel minerals and metals used in the
U.S. economy and tracked by the U.S. Geologiwww. worldwat ch. or g
Figure 8. U.S. Minerals Production and Consumption,
1950–2009
5
Source: SERI
4
Production
Consumption
Billion Tons
Increasingly, the U.S. pattern is becoming the
global experience as more countries achieve high
levels of industrialization. Between 1900 and
2005, extraction of all materials increased globally by a factor of eight worldwide, with nonrenewables showing double-digit multiples of
growth as more and more countries pursued an
industrial path to prosperity.6 Construction minerals grew by a factor of 34, ores and industrial
minerals by a factor of 27, and fossil energy carriers by a factor of 12.
Meanwhile, global extraction rates for copper, zinc, nickel, tin, and platinum have averaged about 3.4 percent annually over the past few
decades, which implies a doubling of extracted
material volumes every 20 years.7 In sum, humanity’s intensive use of materials is in a league of its
own in this Industrial Century. By one estimate,
97.5 percent of all copper produced worldwide in
the last 1,000 years was produced since 1900.8
Despite steadily increasing demand through
most of the 20th century, suppliers were able to
keep pace, and resource prices declined by about
30 percent over the course of the century.9 Even
after the oil crises of the 1970s, resource prices
resumed their downward trend within a decade.10
As noted below, however, prices of non-renewable commodities may now be headed generally
upward in what could be the start of a period of
scarcity for many non-renewable resources.
3
2
1
0
1950
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
2010
Sidebar 2. Efficiency Is Not Enough
Interestingly, growth in U.S. materials consumption over the past
several decades occurred despite the economy’s more efficient
use of minerals, metals, and fuels. Since the 1970s, the U.S.
economy has lowered its energy intensity by 55 percent, meaning
that the energy needed to produce a dollar’s worth of goods and
services in the U.S. fell by more than half.
Efficiency is desirable, of course, yet an ironic economic reality
is that efficiency could itself be a driver of materials use, because
efficiency gains often lower resource prices and stimulate consumption. More efficient jet engines, for example, require less jet
fuel, which can lead to cheaper air travel, more people flying, and
increased use of jet fuel.
This “rebound effect” holds for many economic processes,
from heating and cooling of buildings to lighting, transportation,
and water heating. It suggests that a common American response to environmental challenges—greater efficiency through
technological advance—may need to be augmented by policies
that anticipate and cancel the rebound effect.
Source: See Endnote 5 for this section.
cal Survey (USGS), the United States in 2010 was
a net importer of 67, or some 73 percent.11 (See
Figure 9.)
For 43 of these imported commodities,
imports accounted for 50 percent or more of
apparent consumption*, while 18 were imported
* Apparent consumption = production + imports –
exports ± change in stock amounts.
Crea t i ng S ust a i na b l e P ro sp eri t y i n t he Uni t ed S t a t es
21
Non-Renewable Resources: Going, Going, Gone?
Figure 9. U.S. Import Dependence, Selected Metals and Minerals, 2010
Stone (crushed)
Iron and Steel
Cement
Gypsum
Sulfur
Salt
Copper
Gold
Aluminum
Lithium
Nickel
Silicon (ferrosilicon)
Silver
Tungsten
Tin
Zinc
Cobalt
Potash
Iodine
Platinum
Gemstones
Arsenic
Asbestos
Bauxite and Alumina
Cesium
Fluorspar
Graphite
Manganese
Quartz Crystal
Rare Earths
Rubidium
Strontium
Thallium
Yttrium
Source: USGS
0
10
20
30
40
at a full 100 percent of consumption.12 Put differently, for nearly half (43 out of 92) of the major
minerals and metals used in the U.S. economy
in 2010, most of the quantities consumed came
from overseas. And for about one in five of these
92 resources, the United States was entirely
dependent on imports.
Moreover, the USGS reports that U.S. import
dependence is increasing. The number of
commodities for which the United States was
100-percent import dependent rose from 7 to
18 between 1978 and 2010, while the number of
commodities imported at 50 percent or more
of apparent consumption rose from 25 to 32.13
Meanwhile, the U.S. mineral export position
stayed largely the same: the country was a net
exporter of 18 minerals and metals commodities
22
Crea ting S us ta ina ble Pros perity i n t he Uni t ed S t a t es
50
60
Percent Imported
70
80
90
100
in 1978, and of 19 in 2010.14
Evidence pointing to resource scarcity can also
be found in resource prices, which, in contrast
to the trend of the 20th century, were generally
up over the past decade (even after factoring in
substantial price drops due to greatly dampened
demand of the Great Recession). In the decade
between 2001 and 2011, when the commodity
price index, a broad price measure that includes
food, fuel, and non-fuel prices, increased by 213
percent, the metals price index and the crude oil
price index were both up by nearly 300 percent.15
For particular metals, the price hikes were even
greater.16 (See Table 4.)
Of course, factors other than resource scarcity
can drive up commodity prices. Investor speculation and supply-chain bottlenecks (such as
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Non-Renewable Resources: Going, Going, Gone?
Table 4. Price Increases of Selected
U.S. Minerals, 2001–11
Mineral
Increase in Price
percent
Nickel
Phosphate Rock
Lead
Copper
Gold
Tin
Uranium
Silver
Iron Ore
241
332
419
430
455
476
523
735
1,263
Source: See Endnote 16 for this section.
insufficient oil refining capacity) are commonly
cited sources of commodity price spikes. But the
increase in the price of so many non-renewable
resources over a multi-year period, the fact that
prices did not fall by as much as economies contracted in the Great Recession and have in many
cases recovered to 2008 levels, and the likelihood
that global demand will remain robust for the
foreseeable future, putting upward pressure on
supplies and prices, suggest that a fundamental
imbalance between global demand and supply
may be in place. This should make stewardship of
America’s non-renewable resources a high priority for policymakers.
More than most any other non-renewable
resource, fossil fuels are central to industrial civilization. The energy density and convenience of
oil, coal, and natural gas have made industrial
advances of all kinds possible, from development
of plastics to transoceanic air travel. Because of
its vital importance, the question of remaining
stocks of fossil resources is of great interest to virtually all sectors of society. It is a pressing question today.
Estimates of remaining accessible fossil
resources vary widely, but most seem to center around several decades to two centuries or
so of remaining reserves. Even if the quantity of
remaining fossil fuel resources cannot be known
www. worldwat ch. or g
with any precision, analysts increasingly accept
that the abundance of the 20th century is very
likely coming to an end. The Department of
Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) suggests that fundamental supply
changes lay behind the trend in higher oil and
natural gas prices, noting that “there is a growing consensus among analysts that the current
situation is not a transitory feature of the market.
Instead, there is a fundamental and potentially
worsening gap between our demand for oil and
natural gas and our ability to supply it.”17
The International Energy Agency, traditionally optimistic regarding fuel supplies, stated in
2011 that “The Age of Cheap Oil Is Over.”18 And
the International Monetary Fund has noted that
“increases in...oil prices suggest that the global
oil market has entered a period of increased
scarcity” caused by “continued tension between
rapid growth in oil demand in emerging market
economies and the downshift in oil supply trend
growth.”19
The rising concern emerges from a number
of factors that portend rising prices, perhaps to
uneconomic levels, in the decades ahead. First,
the low-hanging energy fruit has already been
picked, and new discoveries are harder and more
expensive to reach. One of the ways this manifests is through a concept called the energy return
on energy investment (EROI), which measures the
quantity of energy produced from a given input
of energy, or, more concretely, the number of
barrels of oil produced with the expenditure of
one barrel of oil.
Cutler Cleveland of Boston University has calculated that the EROI of oil and gas extraction in
the United States declined from 100:1 (100 barrels of oil extracted with the energy in one barrel) in 1930 to 30:1 in 1970 and 11:1 in 2000.20
In other words, more and more energy is needed
to extract a given quantity of energy resources.
Indeed, NETL notes that remaining resources are
largely either in reservoirs that are expensive and
risky to develop, or in shallow reservoirs whose
productivity is low.21
The debate over remaining physical stocks of
fossil fuels may be academic, given the growing appreciation by policymakers and the public
of the need to limit carbon emissions. Political
Crea t i ng S ust a i na b l e P ro sp eri t y i n t he Uni t ed S t a t es
23
Non-Renewable Resources: Going, Going, Gone?
David Ritter
initiatives from the Kyoto Protocol to various
regional carbon markets are creating momentum
for a shift away from fossil fuels, even if results on
the ground are lagging.
Compressed and baled aluminum cans ready for recycling.
Now, investors may well take note: a 2011
report from the Carbon Tracker Initiative (CTI)
in the United Kingdom sees an asset bubble in
the stocks of fossil fuel companies. The report
calculates that limiting carbon emissions to a
level that will prevent more than a two-degree
Celsius increase in global average temperature
will require that no more than 20 percent of the
listed reserves of the world’s leading coal and oil
and gas companies be burned between now and
2050.22 CTI warns that the huge asset bubble
created by the non-usable 80 percent of reserves
will burst once the reality of their worthlessness
becomes apparent. This wakeup call to investors
may render moot the debate over ultimate physical reserves of coal, oil, and gas.
Geopolitical Context
As America’s ability to supply its own resources
wanes, businesses and policymakers increasingly
look overseas for metals, minerals, and fuels. But
they are not alone: competitors in many other
countries, especially developing ones whose
economies are expanding rapidly, are also scouring the globe for secure sources of supply. China
grabs the headlines; its nearly 10 percent annual
24
Crea ting S us ta ina ble Pros perity i n t he Uni t ed S t a t es
growth rate over some two decades has vaulted its
economy to second place globally, after the United
States. But India, Brazil, Indonesia, and other
large developing countries are growing rapidly as
well. Indeed, in 2010, some 27 countries grew at
7 percent or faster, a rate that would double their
economic output (and appetite for resources, as
economic growth and resource use are still closely
coupled in most economies) in 10 years.23
The consequences of this surge in global
demand could be huge, as nations that are aspiring to prosperity approach the United States in
resource use per person. Despite its tremendous
recent growth, China’s per capita consumption
in 2008 was still less than 10 percent the level of
average American consumption that year. Jared
Diamond, a professor of geology at the University of California, Los Angeles, has calculated that
if all Chinese citizens were to consume as Americans do—and with the simplifying assumption
that neither population nor consumption per
person increased in the rest of the world—then
consumption of oil, metals, and other resources
would roughly double.
Add India to the calculation (while continuing to hold remaining global demand constant),
and world consumption rates would triple. And
if the entire developing world were to match
the per capita consumption rates of Americans,
global consumption would increase elevenfold.
Diamond notes that this is equivalent to raising world population to 72 billion people at 2008
consumption rates.24 Mental exercises aside, a
U.N. analysis projects that by 2050, humanity
could consume three times its current demand
for minerals, ores, fossil fuels, and biomass—140
million metric tons per year unless economic
activity is “decoupled” from natural resource
consumption.25
For a growing set of resources, such increases
in demand could begin to reach the limits of
available supply. Total global stocks of copper
(in the ground), for example, amount to about
1,600 teragrams.26 To provide each of 10 billion
people—the possible population of the world in
the early second half of this century—with the
170 kilograms per person of copper consumed
by the typical North American would require
about 1,700 teragrams.27 Or consider platinum,
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Non-Renewable Resources: Going, Going, Gone?
which is used in fuel cells that might propel the
clean cars of the future. If the world’s half billion or so cars were powered using fuel cells,
and if the platinum in those cars were recycled
at a 50 percent rate, the world’s platinum supply
would be sufficient for some 15 years.28 Many
other metals and minerals are more scarce than
copper and platinum, and could be exhausted
quickly under such relentless demand.
Even when physical supplies of a resource
www. worldwat ch. or g
remain, they may be held by nations unfriendly
to the United States. Already, some 60 percent of
world oil reserves are located in countries where
relatively unstable political conditions could
restrict oil output and exploration.29 Meanwhile,
national protection of resources is already apparent. In 2010, China banned exports of rare-earth
minerals, which are used in LED televisions,
superconductors, nickel-metal hydride batteries,
and other high-value products and processes.30
Crea t i ng S ust a i na b l e P ro sp eri t y i n t he Uni t ed S t a t es
25
Waste and Pollution:
Inefficiency Incarnate
W
aste and pollution signal environmental and economic failure.
They represent inefficient resource
use that in turn means a loss of
economic value and an increase in environmental damage. A truly sustainable economy generates minimal quantities of waste and pollution;
instead, it creates a circular flow of resources that
become an ongoing series of goods over multiple
economic lives.
The United States has made progress in
reducing waste and pollution over the past
four decades, but it remains far from being a
minimal-waste society. Indeed, its waste reduction successes require qualification. To begin,
advance has been uneven. Air and water pollution have seen clear reductions, for example,
while construction waste has hardly diminished. Second, progress in some cases has been
late and limited: only in the last five years has
total municipal waste generation and municipal
waste per person begun to plateau and decline,
so levels remain high.
Third, improved understanding of the health
and environmental impacts of pollution have
sometimes required a tightening of standards,
making apparent progress less impressive than
it might seem. The acceptable exposure to lead,
for example, has fallen over time as research has
revealed its harmful effects. Finally, progress is
often slow and incremental, rather than systemic,
thereby limiting the potential for wholesale
reductions in waste and pollution. Indeed, recycling rates for some materials have worsened in
the past decade. Only with full political commitment to the development of a “circular economy” that reduces, reuses, and recycles the bulk
of materials will radical reductions in waste and
pollution become possible.
Waste as defined here consists of municipal
solid waste (MSW), construction waste, and toxic
waste. Wastes can be landfilled, incinerated, or
recycled and reused. Pollution consists of air and
water pollution, which can be filtered or avoided
altogether through cutting-edge production and
consumption practices.
Michael Glasgow
Trends in Waste and Pollution
Moving municipal solid waste at a Houston, Texas, landfill.
26
Crea ting S us ta ina ble Pro s perity i n t he Uni t ed S t a t es
In the United States, as in most countries, waste
volumes tend to increase with industrialization
and then decline somewhat as citizens pressure political leaders for action to reduce waste
flows. Waste also tends to change in composition as the economy evolves. Following is a brief
review of the waste and pollution trends in the
United States:
Air Pollution. One of the greatest success in
pollution reduction in the United States is found
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Waste and Pollution: Inefficiency Incarnate
www. worldwat ch. or g
Figure 10. U.S. Carbon Dioxide Emissions, Total
and Per Person, 1960–2007
7
1.75
Per Person
Billion Tons
1.25
6
5
Total
1.00
4
0.75
3
0.50
2
1
0.25
0
1960
Source: CDIAC
1970
1980
1990
0
2010
2000
Figure 11. Change in Waste Composition in the
United States, 1900, 1960, and 2000
1500
Source: Product Policy Institute
1200
Inorganics
Food and Yard Waste
Products
900
600
300
0
1900, New York
1960, U.S.
2000, U.S.
quent and intense storms, and increases in both
precipitation and drought all projected in the
U.S. future.8
Municipal Solid Waste. A century ago, municipal waste consisted mostly of coal ash and food
scraps, with a small proportion of simple manufactured products like paper and glass. Today, 75
percent of U.S. waste is throwaway products and
packaging, some containing toxic components.9
(See Figure 11.)
With a consumption-driven economy, the
United States continues to generate large quantities of municipal solid waste (trash and garbage).
Crea t i ng S ust a i na b l e P ro sp eri t y i n t he Uni t ed S t a t es
27
Tons per Person
1.50
Pounds per Person per Year
with air pollution. Between 1970 and 2009, levels
of the six criteria air pollutants (carbon monoxide, lead, nitrogen dioxide, ozone, particulate matter, and sulfur dioxide), in aggregate, fell
by 63 percent.1 Perhaps most impressive, this
achievement was realized even as a host of other
indicators increased over the same period: GDP
increased by 204 percent, population by 50 percent, and energy consumption by 41 percent.
This decoupling of environmental impact from
economic and population growth is the kind of
structural overhaul that will be needed to create
sustainable economies in the future.
This good news, however, must be put into
context: air pollution brings widespread economic and health damage, from decreased crop
yields to higher rates of respiratory ailments.
A multiyear study of yield losses in the 1980s
by the National Crop Loss Assessment Network found a roughly 10 percent loss of yields
for various crops, and modeling of future losses
shows increasing damage. By 2100, according
to one modeling effort, yields could decrease
by as much as 75 percent under a business-asusual scenario, or by a less-dramatic 26 percent
under a scenario that caps pollutant and greenhouse gases.2 Meanwhile, the EPA confirms that
ground-level ozone is especially harmful for
people with asthma and other chronic lung diseases, and particulate matter—small, dust-like
particles—can penetrate the deepest areas of the
lungs and cause health problems from chronic
bronchitis to premature death in people with
respiratory and heart ailments.3
Despite the positive trends for some pollutants, emissions of one air pollutant—carbon
dioxide (CO2)—have continued their generally upward trajectory.4 (See Figure 10.) For
decades, and until very recently, the United
States was the world leader in CO2 emissions,
a distinction that now belongs to China.5 As a
leading emitter, the United States contributes 18
percent of the world’s CO2 emissions from fossil
fuel burning.6 Atmospheric CO2 concentrations
stand at some 393 parts per million, compared
with 280 parts per million prior to the Industrial Revolution.7 They are currently on a track
that scientists say produces climate instability,
with higher average temperatures, more fre-
Waste and Pollution: Inefficiency Incarnate
The EPA reports that MSW grew from 88 million
tons in 1960 to 254 million tons by 2007, a 188
percent increase. The total then declined slightly
to 250 million tons in 2008, the first decline in
MSW generation since data collection began a
half-century ago.10 (See Figure 12.)
On a per person basis, MSW generation
increased from 2.7 pounds per day in 1960 to
4.7 pounds in 2006 and dropped to 4.5 pounds
in 2008.11 This suggests that Americans have
achieved a plateauing of waste output over the
past decade. Importantly, however, that pla-
300
6
250
5
200
Pounds per Person per Day
Million Tons per Year
Figure 12. U.S. Municipal Solid Waste, Total and
Per Person, 1960–2008
4
Per Person
Total
150
3
100
2
50
1
0
1960
Source: EPA
1970
1980
1990
2000
0
2010
Figure 13. U.S. Municipal Solid Waste Management,
by End Disposal, 1960–2008
Million Tons
300
Source: EPA
250
Composted
200
Recycled
150
Combusted
100
Landfilled or Other Disposal
50
0
1960
28
1970
1980
1990
2000
2010
Crea ting S us ta ina ble Pro s perity i n t he Uni t ed S t a t es
teau sits at a very high level, and future efforts
to reduce waste radically will likely require
approaches that value materials highly and provide for their recycling and reuse.
Most of America’s trash and garbage is landfilled, although the landfilled share has declined
as recycling and composting have increased.12
(See Figure 13.) In 1960, some 94 percent of U.S.
MSW was landfilled, and just 6 percent was recycled. 13 By 2008, 24 percent of MSW was recycled,
13 percent was incinerated (producing energy in
the process), and 9 percent was composted, leaving 54 percent going to landfills.14
The good news is that the landfilled portion
of America’s MSW fell from 94 percent to 54
percent over the 48-year period, while recycled
and composted matter grew to comprise onethird of U.S. waste flows by 2008.15 But because
total MSW generation nearly tripled over the
period, the quantity of MSW going to landfills
actually increased substantially, from nearly 83
million tons to 135 million tons.16 Despite better management of MSW, America’s throwaway
economy means that mountains of trash and
garbage continue to be produced, most of it
headed for landfills.
Hazardous Waste. Hazardous waste is waste
that, usually due to its chemical composition,
carries a high risk of causing serious harm to
people or other life unless properly managed. In
the United States, hazardous waste is typically
disposed of in landfills or surface impoundments,
applied to land, or injected into deep wells, after
meeting minimum standards for disposal.17
The EPA began to keep comprehensive data
on hazardous waste generation and disposal in
1999. Between 1999 and 2007, hazardous generation decreased 23 percent, from 36.1 million
tons to 27.8 million tons, a strong advance. Yet
little progress has been made in reuse of hazardous waste.18 Relatively small shares are recovered: historically, the proportion of waste sent to
metal or solvent recovery has ranged from a high
of 8.7 percent in 2001 to a low of 6.8 percent in
2007. Hazardous waste sent for energy recovery increased from 4.4 percent in 1999 to 6.4
percent in 2007, and the share sent to treatment
declined from 13.6 percent to 6.1 percent during
the same period. 19 The bulk of hazardous waste
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is disposed of—either captured in deep-injection
wells (90–92 percent), landfilled (8–10 percent),
or used as land treatment (0.1 percent or less).
Between 1999 and 2007, the share of hazardous
waste that was disposed of increased from 82 percent to 88 percent.20
A rapidly growing source of hazardous waste
is electronics products. In the United States, more
than 3 million tons of electronic waste containing cadmium, mercury, and lead was disposed of
in 2009.21 Only 17.7 percent of this was recycled (although this was up from 13.6 percent in
2008).22 The rest went to landfills or incinerators. According to the EPA, e-waste is the fastest
growing stream of municipal waste in the United
States today.23
www. worldwat ch. or g
Delaware Valley College
Waste and Pollution: Inefficiency Incarnate
Windrows of compost on the campus of Delaware Valley College.
Crea t i ng S ust a i na b l e P ro sp eri t y i n t he Uni t ed S t a t es
29
Creating Sustainable
Prosperity
C
reating a sustainable U.S. economy
requires a thoughtful and strategic set
of national, state, and local policies
that essentially remake the economic
playing field. In contrast to common responses
to environmental remediation over the past half
century—so-called “end of pipe” solutions such
as smokestack filters, or marginal increases in
resource efficiency (as with mileage standards for
automobiles)—a wholesale redesign of economic
processes, guided by sustainability principles, is
now needed to achieve lasting prosperity for the
United States. (For one vision of a sustainable
society, see Sidebar 3.1)
Sustainability principles are rooted in the
Sidebar 3. One Vision of a Sustainable Future
The One Planet Economy Network, a U.K.-based organization,
outlines its vision of a sustainable economy this way:
How would a sustainable Europe look in 2050? We can
envisage a vastly more efficient economy, where energy
and materials are used to maximum effect. Shops will no
longer need to sell disposable goods, and waste mountains
would be a thing of the past. Responding to climate change,
buildings will produce their own energy needs. Innovation
in science and technology…becomes everyday practice in all
branches of industry.
There is an equal and opposite agenda on the consumption side—consumers demand low impact products and
services, and share cars or equipment where possible. They
actively prefer products which are adaptable, long-lived,
and designed for remanufacture. The principle of stewardship ensures that resources are shared according to need,
rather than squandered in conspicuous consumption. Two
hundred years after giving rise to the Industrial Revolution,
the EU pointed the way towards an industrial evolution.
Source: See Endnote 1 for this section.
30
Crea ting S us ta ina ble Pro s perity i n t he Uni t ed S t a t es
logic of a “full world,” economist Herman Daly’s
description of a planet where human numbers
are so great and human activities are so impactful
that they stress natural systems and resource supplies extensively, even at the global level. In this
full world, common sense suggests the following
overarching principles for policymakers:
• Population growth, almost invariably a source
of environmental pressure, cannot continue
indefinitely.
• Renewable resources cannot be consumed faster
than they are regenerated, except during short
periods of temporary need, after which reserves
must be rebuilt.
• Non-renewable resources should be consumed
sparingly and reused or recycled to the greatest
extent possible.
• Waste, a signal of inefficiency, should be reduced
to a minimum or eliminated.
• Nature’s services, such as flood protection and
pollination, are valuable economic assets that
require protection.
• Ongoing development in a wealthy country like
the United States should focus less on everhigher levels of consumption and more on
increased quality of life.
• Economic and social stability are advanced when
a sense of fairness, especially around wealth distribution, is shared broadly across society.
These broad principles suggest an entirely
new way of building and operating an economy
that will require innovative overarching national
policies for the United States. Four in particular
are key:
Get the prices right. Very often, the environmental damage created by economic activity—air
pollution, species extinctions, or carbon emissions-driven sea-level rise, for example—is not
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Creating Sustainable Prosperity
www. worldwat ch. or g
Seek development over growth. The final
overarching policy theme for a sustainable economy is consumption-focused. It is the concept
of sufficiency, a recognition that some societal
advances eventually become personally and societally destructive, as when food abundance generates overweight and obesity, threatening health
and driving up healthcare costs.
The concept of sufficiency is closely tied to
economist Herman Daly’s call for prioritizing
development over growth, the idea that increased
quality of life in a wealthy country like the United
States does not always mean higher incomes,
more consumption, or greater accumulation of
material goods. Instead, it often means ensuring
that people can reclaim space and time in their
lives for nonmaterial assets such as friendship,
family bonding, leisure time, and community
involvement. Policymakers can design national
efforts to ensure that nonmaterial measures of
national wellbeing are valued and promoted
alongside material ones.
Steve Jurvetson
reflected in the price of goods and services sold
in America. A key challenge for policymakers is
to ensure that prices “tell the ecological truth,”
for example through the imposition of a pollution tax that would transfer the cost of pollution
to the polluter. Perhaps no policy would do more,
more quickly, to create a sustainable U.S. economy than internalizing the cost of environmental damage into the cost of goods and services.
Although many vested interests with a stake in
the environmentally damaging status quo would
oppose such an overarching policy, it should in
principle appeal even to conservatives because it
removes a major set of market distortions.
Create a circular economy. Policymakers
would do well to ensure that waste is radically
reduced or even eliminated, by reusing and recycling materials and remanufacturing products to
the maximum extent possible. Germany, Japan,
and China already have put into place pieces of
a circular economy, with great success. In Japan,
for example, resource productivity is on track
to more than double by 2015 over 1990 levels,
the recycling rate is projected to roughly double
over the same period, and total material sent to
landfills will likely decrease to about one-fifth
the 1990 level by 2015.2 This success was realized because the concept of a circular economy
became a national priority, expressed through a
steady progression of waste reduction laws over
the past 20 years.3 Such a deliberate commitment
to rethinking the role of materials in the economy is needed in the United States today.
Dematerialize the economy. A third overarching policy theme is the concept of “decoupling,” which seeks an end to the longstanding relationship between economic growth and
materials and fuel use, so that this use does not
increase in step with economic expansion. Some
decoupling is already under way—energy intensity has fallen by a third, for example, since the
1980s—yet overall materials use has continued to
increase. A key challenge for policymakers will be
to design policies that consistently and comprehensively “dematerialize” economic activity by
emphasizing services over goods (providing car
sharing when possible, for example, rather than
cars), and by promoting long-lasting goods over
planned obsolescence.
Taking an electric car for a test drive in Palo Alto, California.
Policies for Sustainability
The wholesale transformation implied by these
principles and overarching policies cannot happen overnight. Indeed, it will require a sustained,
high-level policy effort of the kind undertaken in
Europe and other regions and countries where
sustainable production and consumption (SCP)
is a high policy priority. But by focusing on highCrea t i ng S ust a i na b l e P ro sp eri t y i n t he Uni t ed S t a t es
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leverage areas like food, transport, and buildings,
and on powerful actors such as governments,
businesses, and consumers, policymakers can
make broad advances, relatively quickly, toward
development of a sustainable economy.
Population
Because population is a major driver of environmental impact, a rational and sensitive population policy is needed to ensure that the American
family does not become larger than the American
homeland or the world’s ecosystems can sustain.
To this end, it is important that U.S. policies be
in place to help avoid unintended pregnancies,
and that immigration levels take into account the
nation’s ecological capacity to absorb additional
residents, in addition to finding practical and
compassionate responses to the people worldwide who desire to live here.
Reproductive health. Part of slowing the
growth of U.S. population involves helping
women who desire to avoid pregnancy to have
adequate access to contraception. Research from
the Guttmacher Institute shows that women who
use contraception consistently and correctly have
far lower rates of unintended pregnancies than
other women.4 (See Table 5.) Guttmacher estimates that such services already prevent almost 2
million unintended pregnancies annually.5
Indeed, ensuring access to contraception is
one of three policy tools identified in a recent
study as cost-effective means of preventing
unwanted pregnancies. The other two are mass-
Table 5. Contraceptive Use and Unintended Pregnancies in
the United States
Share of All Unintended
Pregnancies
percent
Women who use contraception
consistently and correctly
5
Women who use contraception
but do so inconsistently
43
Women who do not use
contraception
52
Source: See Endnote 4 for this section.
32
Crea ting S us ta ina ble Pro s perity i n t he Uni t ed S t a t es
media efforts to encourage men to use condoms,
and a program that discourages sexual activity
among teens while educating them about proper
contraceptive use. In all cases, the study found
that the savings to taxpayers are greater than the
cost to them.6
Immigration. Given that some four-fifths of
U.S. population growth in the next four decades
is projected to consist of immigrants and their
descendants, limiting immigration will need to
be part of any U.S. strategy to slow population
growth.7 Immigration is a sensitive topic that is
sometimes framed as a choice between compassion and the environment: a liberal immigration
policy helps struggling people from low-income
nations, but at the expense of the U.S. environment, while a restrictive immigration policy
would ease environmental pressures but turn a
cold shoulder to people seeking greater opportunity. But the compassion versus environment
choice is a false one.
The United States could complement more
restrictive immigration practices with two policies that would help the country meet the compassion test. First, it could re-institute an agricultural guest worker program that offers temporary
employment to foreign nationals, similar to the
bracero program in place in the country in the
1960s, which allowed Mexican workers to enter
the United States to assist with the agricultural
harvest. Such a program would need to ensure
that it does not lower the wages of existing workers, and that guest workers are treated with dignity—meaning adequate living quarters, educational and healthcare opportunities for workers’
families, and a living wage—so that the program
does not become a vehicle for legal exploitation
of powerless workers. A guest worker program
would offer what many immigrants typically
seek most—employment—while allowing them
to maintain citizenship and official residence in
their home countries.
Next, the United States could design foreign
aid policies to favor job creation overseas, especially in nations that are primary sources of emigration to the United States. The Inter-American
Foundation works in this vein (though not to
dampen immigration pressures), assisting small
entrepreneurs in business development throughw w w. w o rl dw at ch.org
Creating Sustainable Prosperity
out the Americas. Its $29 million budget for fiscal
year 2010 was tiny, however.8 If initiatives like
IAF were ramped up significantly, and if they
were coupled with macroeconomic assistance to
Latin American and other governments to create an economic environment conducive to job
creation, U.S. aid could help create more prosperous economies that offer greater opportunity for
citizens overseas (and eventually, larger markets
for U.S. exports).
Indeed, evidence of the link between economic prosperity overseas and reduced emigration to the United States can be found, perhaps
surprisingly, in Mexico. The Mexican economy
has expanded 45 percent since 2000, while Mexican emigration to the United States has slowed to
near zero and may actually be negative, according to Douglas Massey of the Mexican Migration Project at Princeton University.9 Although
some of this trend can be attributed to factors
other than Mexican prosperity—such as tighter
U.S. border enforcement and a sluggish U.S.
economy—Massey maintains that development
efforts in Mexico, especially greater access to education, have had a clear effect on keeping Mexicans home.
A guest worker program and an employmentfocused aid policy would address U.S. immigration pressures at their source. The United States
could still open its doors to limited numbers of
immigrants based on national need, and remain
open to those seeking political refuge or shelter
from major catastrophes. But because of the physical limits to the number of people the United
States can support, the most just and environmentally sound immigration policy may be one
that pursues sustainable prosperity overseas.
Consumption
The way Americans consume, and the very
purpose of consumption, would need to be
rethought in a sustainable United States. Policies
for sustainable consumption would aim to meet
consumers’ needs using the least quantities of
materials and fuels—a tall order for an economy
built on mass consumption. Imaginative reframing of consumption to enhance quality of life is
key to the effort.
Progressive consumption tax. Governments
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could also induce lower levels of consumption
by introducing a progressive consumption tax in
place of income taxes. Consumption taxes can
be levied at the point of sale, as with the valueadded tax employed in many countries, or from
an annual tax return that would determine taxable consumption by subtracting savings from
income. Such a tax could be made progressive by
providing for a standard deduction to cover basic
living expenses, and by applying a progressive
schedule of taxes to consumption.
Cornell University economist Robert Frank
illustrates that a family with an annual income
of $50,000 could subtract from this a standard
deduction of say, $30,000, then subtract its savings for the year, perhaps $5,000, leaving taxable consumption of $15,000. Consumption
tax rates would be modest at low income levels,
perhaps 10 percent, leaving the family a tax bill
of some $1,500.10
People at higher levels of consumption would
face higher tax rates, but importantly, Frank
argues, the wealthy would be no worse off psychologically because their wealth relative to peers
would remain unchanged. Social psychologists
have shown that relative wealth, rather than absolute wealth, is the indicator people look to when
assessing how well-off they are. Because the relative position of the wealthy vis-à-vis those above
them and below them would not change under a
progressive consumption tax, the wealthy could
absorb a heftier tax psychologically (and financially as well), with little trouble.
Beyond reducing consumption, the consumption tax provides a more stable source of revenue
than an income tax, because consumption levels
are typically more stable than income.11 It might
also be a better fiscal tool in a recession: offering
a consumption tax holiday would offer far more
economic stimulus than a tax rebate, because
people would be more likely to spend to receive
the benefit of a consumption tax reduction.12
And, Frank argues that a consumption tax, while
dampening employment in consumption-oriented sectors, would increase employment in sectors stimulated by savings and investment.13
Targeted fiscal tools to shape consumption.
Governments can use taxes and subsidies to steer
consumers toward environmentally friendly
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33
Creating Sustainable Prosperity
Lynn Betts/NRCS
products, especially those with a large eco- footprint, such as cars. The French government, for
example, subsidizes the purchase of high mileage vehicles, and penalizes low mileage ones. The
policy has been successful: between January and
June of 2008, sales of the cleaner vehicles rose by
15 percent while sales of higher emissions vehicles—those getting 34 miles per gallon or less, fell
by 27 percent.14
Drip-irrigation in one of California’s wineries.
By contrast, some American policy runs
counter to sustainability goals—subsidies to the
fossil fuel industry being a prime example. And
too often, support for clean economic activity is
often short-term and subject to political whiplash, with incentives added and withdrawn as
political control of Congress changes. This has
been the case for renewable energy subsidies
over the past few decades.
Government procurement. The government
can use its procurement power to help create a
market for goods and services that are sustainably produced and that advance sustainable consumption. In OECD countries (the set of wealthy
industrial countries that includes the United
States), public sector procurement amounts to
between 13 and 17 percent of the GDP; in the
United States, the federal government alone
issued contracts valued at some half a trillion
dollars in 2008.15 That is a hefty lever for creating demand for sustainable goods and services by
34
Crea ting S us ta ina ble Pro s perity i n t he Uni t ed S t a t es
realizing economies of scale and reducing product costs.
Already, the International Institute for Sustainable Development reports that in the United
States, Canada, Germany, and Austria, public
sector purchases of energy-efficient information technology equipment, sustainable timber,
and sustainable agricultural products may have
expanded the markets for these products by
more than 25 percent.16 Meanwhile, the United
Nations Environment Programme reports that
public sector purchases of green electricity
could help European governments meet onequarter of their Kyoto commitments, if these
purchases came from newly constructed renewable energy facilities.17
Promote eco-labels and other forms of certification. Governments can support certification
programs as an inexpensive, consumer-level tool
for achieving broader environmental aims. Governments can certify products themselves, as with
the certified organic label that the U.S. Department of Agriculture uses to communicate to consumers that farm products are free of synthetic
pesticides, genetic modification, and fertilizer
made from sewer sludge, for example.
Such an approach can eliminate consumer
confusion associated with a plethora of ecolabels by creating a single, authoritative label.18
Alternatively, it can facilitate third-party certification by supporting capacity building for certifying organizations. Government can also support
the market for eco-labeled products by using its
procurement power to purchase such products.
Finally, governments can work with international
trade organizations to encourage favorable trade
treatment for certified products and to avoid having legitimate environmental standards treated as
trade restrictions.
Advance a lighter consumer footprint. At the
consumer level, governments could help reshape
consuming by promoting “collaborative consumption” to reduce waste and provide what
people are looking for inexpensively and typically
with a low environmental footprint.19 Through
the rising trends of bartering, sharing, and trading (often facilitated by the Internet or other
communications technology), people can get
more of what they want using fewer resources,
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Creating Sustainable Prosperity
often by absorbing the consumption slack found
in the current economic system.
For example, car sharing initiatives put cars
to work for many more hours per day than the
average privately owned car, which spends the
vast majority of its life parked. The result is lower
transport expenditures for participants and lower
levels of materials use and environmental damage for society as a whole. And car sharing now
has become even more collaborative, with “peerto-peer” schemes in which car owners make their
vehicles available to a broader public through a
car sharing company. Owners list their vehicles
online and set their own rental rates. The car
sharing company supplies the cars with a remote
entry system that allows borrowers to access the
car in the owner’s absence, and the company
takes a cut of the charges.20
Collaborative consumption is a new but growing field that spans many economic sectors. An
online search lists dozens of “tool libraries” in
the United States, which allow consumers to
check out power drills, electric saws, and other
tools, obviating the need for private tools that
sit largely idle. “Couch surfing” services match
travelers looking for a place to sleep with householders having an extra couch or bed, reducing
the need for hotel space. Clothing exchanges give
parents the option to trade children’s outgrown
clothing and toys for updated ones. In each case,
consumer needs are met with a lower ecological footprint, and often at a lower cost than when
consumption is focused on new products for
individual consumers.
Collaborative consumption is essentially the
ancient human tradition of sharing, but turbocharged via modern technology. And it’s getting
more powerful with advances in technology. One
company sells a mobile application that takes
peer-to-peer car sharing to a new level because
it connects customers directly with available
vehicles nearby.21 Imagine the freed up parking
space—and the tons of metal, glass, and rubber
that would be spared—if car-sharing becomes as
convenient as walking outside and picking up a
car.22 Collaborative consumption could transform the way Americans meet their consumption
needs and desires, with a healing effect on the
environment. Its current size, estimated at $110
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billion, is likely a sliver of what it will become.23
Federal, state, and local governments would
do well to make room for this new dimension
of consumption. Perhaps the most intriguing dimension of collaborative consumption
is that it lowers a consumer’s environmental
footprint without taxation, burdensome regulations, or resort to moral suasion. Instead, it simply unleashes human creativity around the very
strong desire of people to connect and share.
To the extent that governments can avoid
quashing this spirit, by eliminating regulations
that inhibit sharing, trade in second-hand goods,
and the like, this innovative kind of consumption
can flourish. In the case of peer-to-peer car sharing, for example, regulations that clarify insurance responsibilities have helped to facilitate such
sharing.24 Even better would be efforts to find
public-private partnerships that help collaborative consumption to overcome barriers to success.
Promote leisure over income. Quality of life
might also be enhanced if consumers could work
shorter weeks. Economist Juliet Schor notes that:
“in the U.S., annual hours of work rose more
than 200 from 1973 to 2006. Longer hours raise
the ecological footprint, both because of more
production, and because time-stressed households have higher-impact lifestyles.”25 Fewer
work hours, with correspondingly lower overall
pay, reduces disposable income and curbs consumption. “With more time and less disposable
income, they’ll shift to buying fewer new products, and prefer goods that are longer lasting and
repairable,” Schor adds. “They’ll also participate
more in economies of re-sale and exchange.” In
a world of moderated consumption, shopping
and shiny new objects take on less importance,
but quality of life apparently increases for many
people as debt levels and stress decrease, and as
time with family and friends opens up.26
Use finance to shape consumer choice. Governments can help steer big-ticket capital expenditures—which shape consumption patterns for
decades—in a sustainable direction by offering advantageous credit terms for weatherizing
houses, installing solar panels, purchasing more
durable and efficient goods, and other transactions that promise green dividends. In 2008, the
state of California cleared the way for municiCrea t i ng S ust a i na b l e P ro sp eri t y i n t he Uni t ed S t a t es
35
Creating Sustainable Prosperity
pal governments to help finance solar panels on
residents’ roofs. Often this happens at no initial
cost to homeowners, who pay for their panels out
of the savings realized on their monthly utility
bills.27 The arrangement opens up solar electricity to millions of families who could not afford
the tens of thousands of dollars typically needed
to install the panels.
Similarly, some cities offer “location-efficient
mortgages” that allow home buyers in urban
areas where people are less likely to use cars to
qualify for higher mortgages. According to the
Natural Resources Defense Council, location-efficient mortgages reduce air pollution and preserve
open space by decreasing the pressure for sprawling development.28
Finally, policymakers might use their own
financing power to help citizens rediscover the
advantages of public consumption. Public spaces,
public services, and public events can be less
materials- and energy-intensive than their private
counterparts. Public transit, for example, carries more people per liter of gas, and per ton of
steel and rubber, than private cars do. Municipal
swimming pools serve more people per gallon of
water than private swimming pools do. Moreover, public goods and services often build stronger civic ties by creating shared experiences.
Production, Resources, and Waste
Producers have tremendous influence to create
a sustainable economy. If the only offerings of
U.S. companies were green products produced
in a green way, the economy would be well on its
way to becoming sustainable. Indeed, consumers
arguably should not bear the burden of determining what products are sustainable: ideally,
everything offered in the market should meet a
high bar for sustainability. Toward that end, governments can develop policies that steer manufacturers, distributors, and retailers toward sustainable products and practices.
A good example of such a policy is the Japanese government’s Top Runner program, under
which the most energy-efficient consumer products are designated Top Runner products by the
government.29 That product’s efficiency level sets
the standard that all products must meet within
five years. New Top Runners are named regu36
Crea ting S us ta ina ble Pro s perity i n t he Uni t ed S t a t es
larly, driving an ever-upward process of efficiency
and innovation among producers. The program
has been applied to 21 major energy-using consumer products, for which goals were met and
often exceeded.30 (See Table 6.) Adoption of such
a Top Runner-style program—which is mandatory, not voluntary like the Energy Star rating for
U.S. appliances—across multiple product types
in the United States could help achieve major
increases in efficiency economy-wide within a
short period.
A sustainable United States will need to better steward its renewable and non-renewable
resource base. This involves achieving far greater
resource efficiency than is currently the case, and
embracing what analysts in Europe have asserted
for more than a decade: that at least fivefold
increases in material productivity in industrial
economies are possible—without declines in
quality of life—if policymakers would only make
this goal a priority.31
Recalling that civilizations historically were
largely built with renewable materials and renewable sources of energy, a newfound appreciation
of renewables, and careful management of them,
will be hallmarks of a sustainable U.S. economy.
Greater reliance on solar, wind, geothermal,
tidal, and other forms of renewable energy, and
regenerative management of trees, soils, water,
and other renewable materials, will be standard economic practice in a sustainable United
States. Beyond being sustainable in themselves,
these practices relieve pressure on non-renewable
resources, further advancing the prospects for
creation of a sustainable economy.
Increase efficiency. Perhaps the greatest
potential gains in moving toward a sustainable
resource use are increases in efficiency. On the
energy front, while the energy intensity of the
residential, industrial, transportation, and electric
utility sectors in the United States has declined
since 1985, much more could be done.32 Governments at the local, state, and federal levels can
use policymaking to ensure that building codes,
appliances, and automobiles are more efficient.
In California, where officials have made energy
efficiency a priority, overall energy use per person
has fallen dramatically and stands at a little more
than half the national average.33 (See Table 7.)
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Creating Sustainable Prosperity
Similar gains can be made in efficiency of
water use. A number of policies could be used to
promote water efficiency, including pricing water
to reflect its scarcity (while ensuring affordability for base levels of use), revamping building
codes to allow for the use of graywater (water
from showers, sinks, and washers), promotion
of rainwater harvesting, use of proven watersaving technologies, and promotion of appropriate crops and landscaping in relation to regional
water supplies.
Promote renewable energy. Although the
United States is second (to China) in renewable
power generation, it has much room to improve
its position. Once a leader in renewables policy,
the United States is inconsistent at best at the
federal level in its support for pro-renewables
policies. Indeed, of the world’s 10 most common policies for promoting renewable energy,
only three are used at the national level. And over
the history of renewable energy advance in the
United States, those policies have often been used
inconsistently, leading to fits and starts of renewable energy activity.
U.S. policymakers at the federal, state, and
local level should look at a broad range of prorenewables policies, which, according to the
REN21 Renewables 2011 Global Status Report,
include feed-in tariffs, renewable portfolio standards, capital subsidies or grants, investment tax
credits, sales tax exemptions, green certificate
trading, direct energy production payments or
tax credits, net metering, direct public investment
or financing, and public competitive bidding to
offer a robust push to renewables.34
Governments also can explore creative use of
market instruments for ecosystem protection.
Recognizing the value of ecosystem services and
the value of pollution-reduction efforts, markets
can be used to make environmentally benign or
regenerative activities profitable. Cap-and-trade
initiatives are a prime example: they were identified as an efficient way to reduce acid rain in the
northeast United States in the 1990s, and were
widely successful. The government should seek
other opportunities to use cap-and-trade again,
for example to reduce carbon emissions.
Unfortunately, not only has the federal government failed to embrace a cap-and-trade carwww. worldwat ch. or g
Table 6. Selected Results of Japan’s Top Runner Program
Energy
Actual Efficiency
Efficiency Goal
Improvement
Product
percent
Air conditioners (increase in
coefficient of performance)
66.1
67.8
Refrigerators (decrease in
kilowatt-hours/year)
30.5
55.2
Televisions (decrease in
kilowatt-hours/year)
16.4
25.7
Computers (decrease in
kilowatt-hours/year)
83.0
99.1
Fluorescent lights
(increase in lumens/watt)
16.6
78.0
Vending machines (decrease
in kilowatt-hours/year)
33.9
37.3
Gasoline-powered cars
(increase in kilometers/liter)
22.8
22.8
Source: See Endnote 30 for this section.
Table 7. Per Capita Electricity Consumption
in California versus United States, 2005
Use
California Per Capita Use as
Share of U.S. Per Capita Use
percent
Industrial
Residential
Commercial
Overall
40
52
76
57
Source: See Endnote 33 for this section.
bon program, but the failure of the U.S. Senate in
2010 to pass climate legislation is blamed for the
collapse of the Chicago Climate Exchange, once
the nation’s largest voluntary carbon market.35
Other market-based mechanisms to protect
resources include payment for ecosystem services, conservation banking, and other initiatives.
At the same time, such initiatives are usually not
adequate substitutes for far-sighted environmental regulation.
On the non-renewables side, perhaps a first
principle for policymakers is this: because U.S.
resources belong to the American people, private
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Creating Sustainable Prosperity
Umberto Brayj
interests should have access to them only under
strict conditions, and without the use of public subsidies. By one estimate, the U.S. government spends about $1 billion per year subsidizing
access to mines, oil fields, forests, grazing land,
and fisheries.36 Far from stewarding resources,
such policies promote their use and undermine
the economic prospects of future generations.
Fresh produce goes home in bicycle panniers.
Indeed, non-renewable resources arguably
should be taxed at their source—at the mine
shaft or oil wellhead—to make these resources
more expensive and lessen their use throughout
the resource’s life cycle. Because extractive industries tend to create relatively few jobs but extensive pollution, taxes at this early stage of economic activity harm employment relatively little
but have a high payoff in protecting the environment. And the higher resource prices are a spur
to recycling, which itself has pollution advantages. For example, it takes only about 5 percent
of the energy to create an aluminum can from
recycled materials as it does to create the can
from virgin ones.37 Taxing extractive activities
could be a major stimulus for building a robust,
job-creating recycling industry, and for generally
38
Crea ting S us ta ina ble Pro s perity i n t he Uni t ed S t a t es
boosting the durability of products.
Because waste is uneconomic as well as environmentally damaging, policymakers interested
in sustainable economies should seek to eliminate it as fully as possible. This will happen not
by focusing on the end of the economic process,
where waste appears, but throughout the life of
an economy, in a comprehensive effort to create
a circular economy. A sampling of waste reduction policies gives a sense of the economy-wide
nature of policies that can produce radical reductions of waste and the development of a circular
economy.
Zero-waste goals. A clear commitment to
waste reduction is found in “zero-waste” cities that seek to reduce municipal waste headed
for landfills to near-zero by ensuring that waste
is recycled, reused, or best of all, not generated
in the first place. San Francisco requires that all
property owners separate discards into recyclables, compostables, and trash, and provides blue,
green, and black bins for each materials stream.
The city’s goal is zero waste to landfills by 2020,
and already San Francisco Environment reports
that 77 percent of materials collected are recovered for composting or recycling.38 Seattle, Los
Angeles, and several other cities have also established ambitious zero-waste goals, but a comprehensive commitment on the national level would
go much further in reducing materials flow
and the attendant environmental effects, both
upstream and downstream.
Producer responsibility or “take-back” laws.
Another innovative waste reduction initiative is
producer responsibility laws, which are popular
in Europe and increasingly in Asia. These laws
place the onus for waste reduction on producers, by requiring them to take back their products and packaging at the end of the items’ useful
lives. This creates a huge incentive for companies
to reduce packaging and to make packaging and
products recyclable or re-manufacturable.
In Europe, producers take back and recycle
batteries, packaging, vehicles, and electrical consumer products. In Japan, cars and electronic
products are covered by take-back legislation,
and in Canada, take-back laws for paint, batteries, tires, packaging, and electronics have been
passed in some provinces. The United States is a
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Creating Sustainable Prosperity
laggard in take-back policy, but it is making progress: nearly half of all states currently have laws
or could soon pass laws requiring that electronic
waste be taken back.39
Taxes on pollution and waste. Some jurisdictions have taken to taxing waste and offsetting
those levies by reducing taxes on workers. Taxes
on air and water emissions, garbage collection,
landfill use, and other forms of waste and pollution would stimulate the adoption of cleaner
methods of production and consumption. And if
the resulting revenues were used to reduce taxes
on labor, it would stimulate employers across the
economy to hire.
Eco-taxes come in many forms, including
effluent charges, deposit refund systems, user
charges, sales taxes, and tradable permits, each
appropriate for particular market and environmental circumstances.40 Germany used ecotaxes
in the 1990s and 2003, amounting to more than
10 percent of all taxes, to great effect. Although
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politically difficult, the taxes reduced fuel consumption by 7 percent and carbon emissions by
between 2 and 2.5 percent.41
Effective ecotaxes need care in design and
implementation. To begin, emissions targeted
by ecotaxes should be closely monitored and
measured. The effort to reduce acid rain in the
United States has been successful because emissions monitors are reliable and linked closely to
strict penalties.42 Second, the bulk of sources of a
pollutant must be covered to ensure that emissions are prevented. In Europe, for example, carbon taxes have not covered the industrial sector,
a major source of carbon emissions, making control of carbon much less effective than it could
be.43 Finally, the tax must be high enough to have
an environmental impact. Some governments
keep “pollution taxes” low enough that their environmental impact is negligible. The low tax yields
a steady revenue stream, while allowing the government to claim credit for fighting pollution.44
Crea t i ng S ust a i na b l e P ro sp eri t y i n t he Uni t ed S t a t es
39
Endnotes
The Urgency of Our Times
1. Mark Konold, “Global Wind Power Growth Takes
a Breather in 2010,” Vital Signs Online (Worldwatch
Institute), at http://vitalsigns.worldwatch.org/vs-trend/
global-wind-power-growth-takes-breather-2010.
17. Figure 2 from U.N. Population Division, op. cit. note 1.
18. U.N. Population Division, op. cit. note 16.
Population: Numbers Matter
19. Ibid.
1. Figure 1 from United Nations Population Division,
World Population Prospects: The 2008 Revision, http://esa
.un.org/unpp,viewed 28 February 2011.
20. Ibid. Table 1 from U.N. Population Division, op. cit.
note 16.
2. Ibid.
22. Jared Diamond, “What’s Your Consumption Factor?”
New York Times, 2 January 2008.
3. U.N. Population Division, “File 20: Average Annual
Rate of Population Change, by major area, region, and
country, 1950–2100 (percentage),” in World Population
Prospects: The 2010 Revision, http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/
Excel-Data/population.htm viewed 14 August 2011.
4. Philip Martin and Elizabeth Midgley, “Population
Bulletin Update: Immigration in America 2010,” www
.prb.org/Publications/PopulationBulletins/2010/
immigrationupdate1.aspx, viewed 21 August 2011.
5. U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), The World
Factbook, available at www.cia.gov, viewed March 2011.
6. Jeffrey Passel and D’Vera Cohn, “U.S. Population
Projections, 2005–2050” (Washington, DC: Pew Research
Center, 11 February 2008).
21. Figure 3 from U.N. Population Division, op. cit. note 1.
23. Joint Center for Housing Studies, Kennedy School
of Government, Harvard University, State of the Nation’s
Housing 2010 (Cambridge, MA: 2010).
24. Alex Wilson and Jessica Boehland, “Small Is Beautiful: U.S. House Size, Resource Use, and the Environment,”
Journal of Industrial Ecology, vol. 9, no. 1–2 (2005), pp.
277–87.
25. National Geographic, “Greendex 2010: Consumer
Choice and the Environment—A Worldwide Tracking
Survey” (Washington, DC: June 2010), p. 6.
9. Hope Yen and Charles Babington, “Census Shows
Slowing US Growth, Brings GOP Gains,” Associated Press,
21 December 2010.
26. Brian C. O’Neill et al., “Global Demographic Trends
and Future Carbon Emissions,” Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences, vol. 107, no. 41 (2010), pp. 17521–26.
Sidebar 1 from the following sources: Garry W. McDonald, Vicky E. Forgie, and Catherine MacGregor, “Treading
Lightly: Ecofootprints of New Zealand’s Aging Population,” Ecological Economics, vol. 56 (2006), p. 431. Percentage changes are Worldwatch calculations based on data
in idem. EU study from European Commission Directorate–General Environment, Environment and Aging: Final
Report (Brussels: October 2008).
10. Ibid.
27. Figure 4 from U.N. Population Division, op. cit. note 1.
11. U.N. Population Division, op. cit. note 1.
28. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
29. O’Neill et al., op. cit. note 26.
13. CIA, op. cit. note 5.
30. U.N. Population Division, op. cit. note 1.
14. American Association for the Advancement of Science
(AAAS), AAAS Atlas of Population and the Environment
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).
31. Ibid.
15. European Commission, “Fertility Statistics,” at http://
epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php/
Fertility_statistics, viewed 12 June 2011.
33. European Environment Agency, The European
Environment: State and Outlook 2010 (Copenhagen:
7. U.S. Census Bureau, “U.S. Census Bureau Press Briefing: 21 December 2010,” at http://2010.census.gov/news/
pdf/transcript_12-21-10.pdf.
8. Ibid.
40
16. Worldwatch calculation based on data in U.N. Population Division, “World Fertility Patterns 2009,” wallchart
(New York: 2010).
Crea ting S us ta ina ble Pro s perity i n t he Uni t ed S t a t es
32. Paul Harrison, Fred Pearce, and Peter Raven, “Population and Consumption Trends,” in AAAS, op. cit. note 14.
w w w. w o rl dw at ch.org
Endnotes
November 2010).
34. Data for 1960–78 from U.S. Bureau of the Census,
“Table B: Households by Size, 1960-1978,” and from U.S.
Department of Commerce, “Household and Family Characteristics: March 1978,” issued July 1979, available at
www.census.gov/population/socdemo/hh-fam/p20
-historical/P20-340.pdf. More recent data from Tables
AVG 1 and H1 in reports found at www.census.gov/
population/www/socdemo/hh-fam.html.
35. Ibid.
36. CIA, op. cit. note 5.
37. Mark Swilling and Marina Fischer-Kowalski, “Decoupling and Sustainable Resource Management: Scoping the
Challenges,” UNEP International Panel for Sustainable
Resource Management, Decoupling Working Group, 4
March 2010.
38. Wilson and Boehland, op. cit. note 24.
39. William E. Rees, “Building More Sustainable Cities,”
Scientific American, March 2009.
40. U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information
Administration, “Table A2. U.S. Per Household VehicleMiles Traveled, Vehicle Fuel Consumption and Expenditures,” at www.eia.gov/emeu/rtecs/nhts_survey/2001/
tablefiles/table-a02.pdf, viewed 10 June 2011.
41. Brant Liddle, “Demographic Dynamics and Per Capita Environmental Impact: Using Panel Regressions and
Household Decompositions to Examine Population and
Transport,” Population and Environment, September 2004,
p. 34.
42. Ibid.
43. O’Neill et al., op. cit. note 26; Brian C. O’Neill, email
to author, 10 March 2011.
Basics—Overview,” www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index
.php/GFN/page/footprint_basics_overview, viewed 18
February 2011. Technically, the Ecological Footprint is
“the area of biologically productive land and water needed
to provide ecological resources and services – food, fibre,
and timber, land on which to build, and land to absorb
carbon dioxide (CO2) released by burning fossil fuels.”
The Footprint is compared to the Earth’s biocapacity, “the amount of biologically productive area – cropland, pasture, forest, and fisheries – that is available to
meet humanity’s needs.” Ecological Footprint analysis is
described in WWF, the Zoological Society of London, and
GFN, The Living Planet Report 2008 (Gland, Switzerland:
2008).
8. GFN, Ecological Footprint Atlas, 2010 (Oakland, CA:
2010) p. 18.
9. GFN, “Ecological Footprint and Biocapacity, 2007,”
www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/
ecological_footprint_atlas_2008/, viewed 11 April 2011.
10. Worldwatch calculation based on data in Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. GFN, op. cit. note 8, p. 19.
13. GFN, op. cit. note 9.
14. GFN, “Country Trends,” www.footprintnetwork.org/
en/index.php/GFN/page/trends/unitedstates, viewed 11
June 2011.
15. GFN, op. cit. note 8, p. 19.
16. Worldwatch calculation based on data in GFN, op. cit.
note 9.
17. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), EPA’s
2008 Report on the Environment (Washington, DC:
National Center for Environmental Assessment, 2008).
44. McDonald, Forgie, and MacGregor, op. cit. note 26,
p. 424.
18. Ibid., pp. 6–12.
Renewable Resources:
Appreciating Nature’s Services
20. Ibid., pp. 3–33.
1. See, for example, the pioneering study that valued
global ecosystem services at $33 trillion: Robert Costanza,
“The Value of the World’s Ecosystem Services and Natural
Capital,” Nature, 15 May 1997, p. 253.
22. Ibid.
2. Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy and
Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), “2005 Environmental Sustainability
Index: Benchmarking National Environmental Stewardship, Summary for Policymakers” (New Haven: Yale University, 2005).
25. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid, p. 245.
5. Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy, “Environmental Performance Index 2010,” http://epi.yale.edu.
19. Figure 5 from ibid.
21. Ibid.
23. Worldwatch calculation based on data in EPA, ibid.
24. Ibid., pp. 3–33.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid.
28. Worldwatch calculations based on data in ibid., pp.
4–15.
29. Ibid., pp. 6–17.
30. Figure 6 from Joan F. Kenny et al., “Estimated Use of
Water in the United States in 2005,” United States Geological Survey Circular 1344 (Reston, VA: 2009).
6. Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy, “Environmental Performance Index 2010,” http://epi.yale.edu/
Countries/UnitedStatesOfAmerica.
31. Ibid.
7. Global Footprint Network (GFN), “Footprint
33. U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), States’
www. worldwat ch. or g
32. Ibid.
Crea t i ng S ust a i na b l e P ro sp eri t y i n t he Uni t ed S t a t es
41
Endnotes
Views of How Federal Agencies Could Help Them Meet the
Challenges of Expected Shortages (Washington, DC: July
2003).
34. J.R. Sauer et al., “The North American Breeding
Bird Survey, Results and Analysis 1966–2009. Version
3.23.2011,” U.S. Geological Survey, Patuxent Wildlife
Research Center, www.mbr-pwrc.usgs.gov/bbs/.
35. Audubon, “Common Birds in Decline,” http://web4
.audubon.org/bird/stateofthebirds/cbid, viewed 12 June
2011.
36. EPA, op. cit. note 17, pp. 6–22.
37. Ibid.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid., pp. 6–33.
40. Ibid.
6. Marina Fischer-Kowalski and Mark Swilling, Decoupling Natural Resource Use and Environmental Impacts
from Economic Growth, A Report of the Working Group
on Decoupling to the International Resource Panel (Nairobi: United Nations Environment Programme, 2011), p.
10.
7. R.B. Gordon, M. Bertram, and T.E. Graedel, “Metals Stocks and Sustainability,” Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences, 31 January 2006.
8. Ibid.
9. Fischer-Kowalski and Swilling, op. cit. note 6, pp.
12–14.
10. Ibid.
41. Ibid.
11. Figure 9 from USGS, Mineral Commodity Summaries
2011 (Reston, VA: 2011), p. 6.
42. Ibid.
12. Ibid., p. 7.
43. Ibid., pp. 6–40.
13. Ibid.
44. Audubon, “Birds and Climate Change: On the Move,”
http://birdsandclimate.audubon.org, viewed 12 June 2011.
14. Ibid.
45. EPA, op. cit. note 17.
15. IndexMundi, “Commodity Prices,” www.indexmundi
.com/commodities, viewed 12 June 2011.
46. Ibid., pp. 3–13.
16. Table 4 from ibid.
47. Ibid.
17. National Energy Technology Laboratory, “Oil
and Natural Gas Supply: Future Supply and Remaining Resources,” www.netl.doe.gov/technologies/oil-gas/
FutureSupply/FutureSupply_main.html, viewed 20 June
2011.
48. Ibid.
Non-Renewable Resources:
Going, Going, Gone?
1. Figure 7 from U.S. Department of Energy (DOE),
“United States Energy History,” Annual Energy Review,
www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/eh/eh.html, viewed 15 April
2011.
2. Ibid.
3. U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), “Events Affecting
the U.S. Nonfuel Minerals Industry 1900-2000,” at http://
minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/timeline/
timeline.pdf; 2006 is a Worldwatch calculation based on
data in Thomas D. Kelly and Grecia R. Matos, “Historical Statistics for Mineral and Material Commodities in
the United States,” http://minerals.usgs.gov/ds/2005/140/;
population growth is a Worldwatch calculation based
on data in U.S. Census Bureau, International Data Base,
www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/country.php, and on U.S.
Census Bureau, “Historical National Population Estimates: July 1, 1900 to July 1, 1999,” at www.census.gov/
popest/archives/1990s/popclockest.txt.
4. Figure 8 from Sustainable Europe Research Institute
(SERI), “Download Global Resource Extraction” database, www.materialflows.net/mfa/index2.php, viewed 14
November 2010.
5. Sidebar 2 from DOE, “Economy-Wide Total Energy
Consumption,” http://www1.eere.energy.gov/ba/pba/
intensityindicators/total_energy.html, viewed April 4
2011, and from Ernst von Weizsäcker, Factor Five: Transforming the Global Economy Through 80% Improvements
42
in Resource Productivity (London: Earthscan, 2009), pp.
304–05.
Crea ting S us ta ina ble Pros perity i n t he Uni t ed S t a t es
18. International Energy Agency, World Energy Outlook
2010 (Paris: 2011).
19. International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook (Washington, DC: April 2011), p. 90.
20. Cutler J. Cleveland, “Net Energy from Extraction of
Oil and Gas in the United States,” Energy, April 2005, pp.
769–82.
21. Ibid.
22. James Leaton, Unburnable Carbon: Are the World’s
Financial Markets Carrying a Carbon Bubble? (Surrey,
U.K.: Investor Watch, 2011).
23. Growth from U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, The
World Factbook, available at www.cia.gov; doubling is a
Worldwatch calculation based on doubling time equals 70
divided by the rate of growth, or 70 divided by 7 percent
equals 10 years.
24. Jared Diamond, “What’s Your Consumption Factor?”
New York Times, 2 January 2008.
25. United Nations Environment Programme, “Humanity
Can and Must Do More with Less: UNEP Report,” press
release (Nairobi: 12 May 2011).
26. Gordon, Bertram, and Graedel, op. cit. note 7.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid.
w w w. w o rl dw at ch.org
Endnotes
29. U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), Crude
Oil: Uncertainty about Future Oil Supply Makes It Important to Develop a Strategy for Addressing a Peak and Decline
in Oil Production (Washington, DC: February 2007).
30. International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD), “Tensions Build over Chinese Rare
Earth Quotas,” Bridges, 25 July 2011.
Waste and Pollution: Inefficiency Incarnate
1. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), image
available at www.epa.gov/airtrends/images/comparison70
.jpg viewed 31 July 2011.
2. Benjamin S. Felzer et al., “Impacts of Ozone on Trees
and Crops,” Comptes Rendus Geoscience, October 2007,
pp. 784–98.
3. EPA, “Particulate Matter,” www.epa.gov/oar/particle
pollution/health.html, viewed 31 July 2011.
4. Figure 10 from Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis
Center, “National CO2 Emissions from Fossil-Fuel Burning, Cement Manufacture, and Gas Flaring: 1751–2007,”
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/trends/emissions/usa.dat,
updated 8 June 2010.
5. Ibid.
6. Worldwatch calculation based on data from U.S.
Energy Information Administration cited in “An Atlas
of Pollution: The World in Carbon Dioxide Emissions,”
graphic at http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/
documents/2011/02/10/CarbonWeb.pdf.
7. Current estimate is the June 2011 reading from
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA) monthly release of carbon dioxide concentrations at ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_mm_
mlo.txt; historical is from National Aeronautic and Space
Administration (NASA), “Earth Observatory,” http://
earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Experiments/PlanetEarth
Science/GlobalWarming/GW_Movie5.php, viewed 31
July 2011.
8. United States Global Change Research Center, Global
Climate Change Impacts in the United States (Washington,
DC: 2009).
9. Figure 11 from Product Policy Institute, “Change in
Waste,” www.productpolicy.org/ppi/attachments/Change
_in_Waste_Graphic_PPI.pdf, viewed 31 July 2011.
10. Figure 12 from EPA, “Quantity of Municipal Solid
Waste Generated and Managed,” http://cfpub.epa.gov/
eroe/index.cfm?fuseaction=detail.viewInd&ch=48&lShow
Ind=0&subtop=228&lv=list.listByChapter&r=216598.
11. Ibid.
12. Figure 13 from ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. Worldwatch calculation based on data in ibid.
17. EPA, “Quantity of RCRA Solid Waste Generated and
Managed,” http://cfpub.epa.gov/eroe/index.
www. worldwat ch. or g
cfm?fuseaction=detail.viewInd&ch=48&subtop=228&lv=
list.listByChapter&r=216628.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid.
21. Electronics TakeBack Coalition, “Facts and Figures on
E-Waste and Recycling,” www.electronicstakeback.com,
updated 25 January 2011.
22. Ibid.
23. EPA, Municipal Solid Waste Generation, “Recycling,
and Disposal in the United States: Facts and Figures for
2008” (Washington, DC: November 2009).
Creating Sustainable Prosperity
1. Sidebar 3 from One Planet Economy Network
(OPEN), “The New Industrial Evolution” (Godalming,
Surrey: 2010).
2. Yasuhiko Hotta, “Sound Material Cycle Society from
Japan to Asia,” presented at International Green Technology and Purchasing Conference, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia,
15–16 October 2010, at http://enviroscope.iges.or.jp/
modules/envirolib/upload/2951/attach/hottaigemrev2.pdf.
3. Ibid.
4. Table 5 from Jennifer J. Frost, Jacqueline E. Darroch, and Lisa Remez, “Improving Contraceptive Use in
the United States,” In Brief (Guttmacher Institute), no.
1 (2008), and from Guttmacher Institute, “Improving
Contraceptive Use in the United States,” 28 January 2010,
at www.guttmacher.org/presentations/2009/01/06/ICU_
ARHP-CORE.pdf.
5. Frost, Darroch, and Remez, ibid; Guttmacher Institute, ibid.
6. Isabel Sawhill, Adam Thomas, and Emily Monea, “An
Ounce of Prevention: Policy Prescriptions to Reduce the
Prevalence of Fragile Families,” The Future of Children,
Fall 2010, pp. 133–55.
7. Jeffrey Passel and D’Vera Cohn, “Immigration to Play
Lead Role in Future U.S. Growth,” Pew Research Center,
11 February 2008, at http://pewresearch.org/pubs/729/
united-states-population-projections.
8. Inter-American Foundation, Financial Statements and
Independent Auditor’s Report for the Fiscal Years Ended September 30, 2010 and 2009 (Arlington, VA: 2010).
9. Damien Cave, “Better Lives of Mexicans Cut Allure of
Going North,” New York Times, 6 July 2011.
10. Robert H. Frank, “Why Not Shift the Burden to Big
Spenders?” New York Times, 7 October 2007.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP),
Global Outlook on SCP Policies: Taking Action Together
(Paris: 2011). Estimate of 34 miles per gallon is a Worldwatch calculation based on 6.9 liters per 100 kilometers.
Crea t i ng S ust a i na b l e P ro sp eri t y i n t he Uni t ed S t a t es
43
Endnotes
15. Oshani Perera, Nupur Chowdhury, and Anandajit
Goswami, State of Play in Sustainable Public Procurement
(Winnipeg: International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), November 2007), p. 17; “President Obama
Authorizes Major Changes to Federal Procurement Rules,”
Greenberg Traurig, March 2009.
16. Perera, Chowdhury, and Goswami, op. cit. note 15.
17. Swiss Federal Office for the Environment and UNEP,
Marrakech Task Force on Sustainable Public Procurement
Led by Switzerland: Activity Report, May 2011 (Paris: 2011).
18. Bob Searle, Susan Colby, and Katie Smith-Milway,
“Moving Eco-Certification Mainstream,” (San Francisco:
Bridgespan Group, July 2004).
19. Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers, What’s Mine Is
Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption (New York:
Harper Collins, 2010).
20. Jim Witkin, “Peer to Peer Car Sharing Gains Traction
in Oregon,” New York Times, 9 June 2011.
21. Mike Schramm, “Getaround App Takes Car Sharing
Peer-to-Peer on the iPhone,” TUAW.com, 24 May 2011.
22. Zach Sharpe, “The Sharing Economy: The Next Step
in Economic Evolution,” Triple Pundit.com, 12 May 2011.
23. Botsman and Rogers, op. cit. note 19.
24. Witkin, op. cit. note 20.
25. Juliet Schor, “Solving Unemployment Through New
Uses of Time,” www.julietschor.org, 23 June 2010.
26. Juliet Schor, Plenitude: The New Economics of True
Wealth (New York: Penguin, 2010).
27. Rachel Barron, “California Cities to Offer Solar Loan
Program,” www.greentechmedia.com, 23 July 2008.
28. Natural Resources Defense Council, “Location-Efficient
Mortgages,” www.nrdc.org/cities/smartgrowth/qlem.asp,
viewed 8 July 2011.
29. Osamu Kimura, “Japanese Top Runner Approach
for Energy Efficiency Standards,” SERC Discussion Paper
09035 (Tokyo: Socio-economic Research Center, Central
Research Institute of Electric Power Industry, 2010).
31. Ernst von Weizsäcker, Factor Five: Transforming the
Global Economy Through 80% Improvements in Resource
Productivity (London: Earthscan, 2009).
32. Elizabeth Doris, Jaquelin Cochran, and Martin
Vorum, Energy Efficiency Policy in the United States: Overview of Trends at Different Levels of Government (Golden,
CO: National Renewable Energy Laboratory, December
2009).
33. Table 7 from Arthur H. Rosenfeld, “Energy End-Use
Efficiency: Physics of Sustainable Energy,” PowerPoint
presentation, University of California at Berkeley, March
2008.
34. REN21, Renewables 2011 Global Status Report (Paris:
2011).
35. Diva Rodriguez, “US Carbon Markets Still Alive
Despite Exchange Closure,” www.climateactionprogramme
.org, 22 November 2010.
36. G. Tyler Miller, Living in the Environment (Brooks/
Cole: 2008), p. 439.
37. Can Manufacturers Institute, “Recycling Fun Facts,”
www.cancentral.com/funfacts.cfm, viewed 31 July 2011.
38. San Francisco Environment, “Zero Waste,” www.sf
environment.org/our_programs/overview.html?ssi=3,
viewed 4 July 2011.
39. Beverly Thorpe, “How Producer Responsibility for
Product Take-Back Can Promote Eco-Design,” CleanProduction.org, March 2008.
40. Suzi Kerr, Ecological Tax Reform: A report prepared for
the Ministry of the Environment (Wellington, NZ: Motu
Economic and Public Policy Research, 23 January 2001).
41. Anselm Görres, “Germany’s Ecotax Reform 1999–
2003: Implementation, Impact, Future Development,”
presented at Ecological Tax Reform conference, Tallinn,
Estonia, 11 April 2006.
42. Kerr, op. cit. note 40.
43. Ibid.
44. Ibid.
30. Table 6 from ibid.
44
Crea ting S us ta ina ble Pros perity i n t he Uni t ed S t a t es
w w w. w o rl dw at ch.org
Index
NOTE: Page locators in bold indicate figures or tables.
A
age and consumption, 12
air pollution, 26–27
Audubon “citizen science” analysis, 18
B
biocapacity, defined, 15
biological diversity, 18
bird species, changes in, 18
bracero program, 32
C
cap-and-trade initiatives, 37
carbon emissions, 12, 23–24, 27
carbon storage, net, 16
Carbon Tracker Initiative (CTI), 24
Carson, Rachel, 8
circular economy, 26, 31
“citizen science” analysis, Audubon, 18
Clean Air Act, 8
Clean Water Act, 8
climate, renewable resources and, 18
compost, 29
construction, non-renewable resources and, 20
consumer footprints, 34–35
consumption
age and, 12
electricity, 37
of energy by source, 20
fiscal tools, 33
green, 11–12
mineral production and, 21
progressive consumption tax, 33
SCP, 31
sustainable prosperity and, 33–36
waste, 27
contraceptive usage, 32
D
Daly, Herman, 30
demographic composition versus population, 13
www. worldwat ch. or g
Department of Energy, 23
Diamond, Jared, 24
E
eco-label promotion, 34
eco-taxes, 39
ecological footprint, 14, 15
economy
dematerialization of, 31
full world, 30
social stability and, 30
electricity consumption, 37
electronic waste, 29
emission reduction, 13
energy consumption by source, 20
energy-efficient products, 7–8
energy return on energy investment (EROI), 23–24
environmental health
defined, 14–15
indicators of, 16–19
Environmental Performance Index (EPI), 14–15
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 8, 16–17,
28–29
Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI), 14
environmental systems, 14
F
fertility
global context, 11
projections for, 10
replacement level, 10
Total Fertility Rate, 10
finance shaping consumer choice, 35
forests, environmental health indicators, 16
fossil fuels, 23–24
Frank, Robert, 33
“full world” economy, 30
G
geopolitics, non-renewable resources and, 24–25
global fertility rate, 11
Global Footprint Analysis (GFA), 15
Global Footprint Network (GFN), 15
global hectare, 15
Crea t i ng S ust a i na b l e P ro sp eri t y i n t he Uni t ed S t a t es
45
Index
global stewardship, 14
Government Accountability Office, 17
government procurement, 34
green consumption, 11–12
growth rates, 9–10
H
hazardous waste, 28–29
health
chronic problems with, 27
ecological forms, 16
environmental assessments of, 14
pollution impacts on, 26
population and, 11
reproductive, 32
hypoxia, renewable resources and, 18–19
I
immigration and prosperity, 32
imports, dependence on, 22
industrial non-renewable resources, 20
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),
18
International Energy Agency, 23
International Monetary Fund, 23
One Planet Economy Network, 30
P
Pew Research Center, 9
policies for sustainability, 30–32
pollution and waste. see waste and pollution
“pollution taxes,” 39
population
composition of, 12–13
demographic composition versus, 13
expansion of, 11–12
life expectancy and, 10–11
median age, 13
projections of, 9
sustainable prosperity and, 32–33
U.S. growth, 9–10, 30
pregnancy, unintended, 32
producer responsibility laws, 38–39
production, resources, and waste, 36
progressive consumption tax, 33
R
land and water use, indicators of, 17–18
leisure, promotion of, 35
Leopold, Aldo, 8
life expectancy, 10–11, 11
recycling, 24
renewable resources
assessment of, 14–16
environmental health indicators, 16–19
policy-making and, 30
promotion of, 37–38
technologies for, 7
Renewables 2011 Global Status Report, 37
“replacement level” fertility, 10
Report on the Environment (EPA), 16
reproductive health, 32
Roosevelt, Teddy, 8
M
S
K
Kyoto Protocol, 23
L
Massey, Douglas, 33
minerals
import dependence on, 22
non-renewable resources and, 20–21
price increases for, 23
production and consumption of, 21
Muir, John, 8
municipal solid waste (MSW), 26–28, 28
N
National Crop Loss Network, 27
Natural Resources Defense Council, 36
Nixon, Richard, 8
non-renewable resources
declining endowment of, 21–24
geopolitical context, 24–25
policy-making and, 30
trends in, 20–21
46
O
Crea ting S us ta ina ble Pro s perity i n t he Uni t ed S t a t es
social and economic stability, 30
sustainability
consumer footprint, 34–35
efficiency increases in, 36–37
finances and, 35–36
future of, 30
policies for, 31–32
producer responsibility, 38–39
renewable energy promotion, 37–38
urgency in, 7–9
sustainable production and consumption (SCP), 31
T
“take-back” laws, 38–39
taxes, pollution and waste, 39
Top Runner Program, 37
Total Fertility Rate (TFR), 10
w w w. w o rl dw at ch.org
Index
U
urbanization, demography and, 13
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), 21
W
waste and pollution
air pollution, 26–27
atmospheric types, 16
hazardous waste, 28–29
human types of, 15
municipal solid waste, 26–28
www. worldwat ch. or g
reduction of, 14
as sign of inefficiency, 30
sustainable prosperity and, 36–39
taxes on, 39
trends in, 26–27
waste consumption, 27
water and land use, indicators of, 17, 17–18
wetlands, environmental health indicators, 16–17, 18
Z
zero-waste goals, 38
Crea t i ng S ust a i na b l e P ro sp eri t y i n t he Uni t ed S t a t es
47
Other Worldwatch Reports
Worldwatch Reports provide in-depth, quantitative, and qualitative analysis of the major issues
affecting prospects for a sustainable society. The Reports are written by members of the Worldwatch Institute research staff or outside specialists and are reviewed by experts unaffiliated with
Worldwatch. They are used as concise and authoritative references by governments, nongovernmental organizations, and educational institutions worldwide.
On Climate Change, Energy, and Materials
184: Powering the Low-Carbon Economy: The Once and Future Roles of Renewable Energy and Natural Gas, 2010
183: Population, Climate Change, and Women’s Lives, 2010
182: Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency in China: Current Status and Prospects for 2020, 2010
178: Low-Carbon Energy: A Roadmap, 2008
175: Powering China’s Development: the Role of Renewable Energy, 2007
169: Mainstreaming Renewable Energy in the 21st Century, 2004
160: Reading the Weathervane: Climate Policy From Rio to Johannesburg, 2002
157: Hydrogen Futures: Toward a Sustainable Energy System, 2001
151: Micropower: The Next Electrical Era, 2000
149: Paper Cuts: Recovering the Paper Landscape, 1999
144: Mind Over Matter: Recasting the Role of Materials in Our Lives, 1998
138: Rising Sun, Gathering Winds: Policies To Stabilize the Climate and Strengthen Economies, 1997
On Ecological and Human Health
181: Global Environmental Change: The Threat to Human Health, 2009
174: Oceans in Peril: Protecting Marine Biodiversity, 2007
165: Winged Messengers: The Decline of Birds, 2003
153: Why Poison Ourselves: A Precautionary Approach to Synthetic Chemicals, 2000
148: Nature’s Cornucopia: Our Stakes in Plant Diversity, 1999
145: Safeguarding the Health of Oceans, 1999
142: Rocking the Boat: Conserving Fisheries and Protecting Jobs, 1998
141: Losing Strands in the Web of Life: Vertebrate Declines and the Conservation of Biological Diversity, 1998
140: Taking a Stand: Cultivating a New Relationship With the World’s Forests, 1998
On Economics, Institutions, and Security
185: Green Economy and Green Jobs in China: Current Status and Potentials for 2020, 2011
177: Green Jobs: Working for People and the Environment, 2008
173: Beyond Disasters: Creating Opportunities for Peace, 2007
168: Venture Capitalism for a Tropical Forest: Cocoa in the Mata Atlântica, 2003
167: Sustainable Development for the Second World: Ukraine and the Nations in Transition, 2003
166: Purchasing Power: Harnessing Institutional Procurement for People and the Planet, 2003
164: Invoking the Spirit: Religion and Spirituality in the Quest for a Sustainable World, 2002
162: The Anatomy of Resource Wars, 2002
159: Traveling Light: New Paths for International Tourism, 2001
158: Unnatural Disasters, 2001
On Food, Water, Population, and Urbanization
176: Farming Fish for the Future, 2008
172: Catch of the Day: Choosing Seafood for Healthier Oceans, 2007
171: Happier Meals: Rethinking the Global Meat Industry, 2005
170: Liquid Assets: The Critical Need to Safeguard Freshwater Ecosytems, 2005
163: Home Grown: The Case for Local Food in a Global Market, 2002
161: Correcting Gender Myopia: Gender Equity, Women’s Welfare, and the Environment, 2002
156: City Limits: Putting the Brakes on Sprawl, 2001
154: Deep Trouble: The Hidden Threat of Groundwater Pollution, 2000
150: Underfed and Overfed: The Global Epidemic of Malnutrition, 2000
147: Reinventing Cities for People and the Planet, 1999
To see a complete list of our Reports, visit www.worldwatch.org/bookstore/reports
48
Crea ting S us ta ina ble Pro s perity i n t he Uni t ed S t a t es
w w w. w o rl dw at ch.org
worldwatch report 186
Creating Sustainable Prosperity
in the United States:
The Need for Innovation and Leadership
The United States finds itself at a critical juncture, as environmental degradation and resource depletion threaten the capacity of the economy to generate
wealth for the indefinite future. Despite growing awareness of the need to build
a sustainable economy, U.S. output continues to be characterized by linear
flows of materials, heavy dependence on fossil fuels, disregard for renewable
resources, and resource use that is strongly connected to economic growth.
Entire sets of assumptions, beliefs, and practices will need to be overturned if
the United States is to build a sustainable economy in the decades ahead.
This report shows that creating a sustainable U.S. economy will require a
thoughtful and strategic set of national, state, and local policies that would
remake the economic playing field under a new set of principles. Renewable
resources cannot be consumed faster than they are regenerated. Non-renewable
resources must be reused or recycled to the greatest extent possible. Ongoing
development should focus less on ever-higher levels of consumption and
more on increased quality of life. A sense of fairness, especially around wealth
distribution, is needed to generate social and economic stability across society.
Meanwhile, a deceleration of population growth will make the creation of a
sustainable economy far easier.
These broad principles suggest an entirely new way of building and operating
an economy. Read inside for a discussion of policies that could help lead to
sustainable prosperity in the United States.
www.worldwatch.org