The race towards wealth (Part 2)

In our previous column, we read about the good news - that the number of poor people is declining everywhere.  Or more specifically, that there was a significant decrease in the percentage of the poorest of the poor, while that of the moderately poor decreased a little.  This trend is worldwide, though the statistics may have differed from place to place.  And this is in spite of the two global economic downtrends in the last two decades.  Good news indeed if only we can sustain it.  And more importantly, if the world benefits as a whole.

How can the world not benefit if poverty is decreased?  Ordinarily it should, but we need to take a second look at financial figures as they relate to economic ones, or more specifically, environmental ones.  You see, we often look at poverty only in terms of having the money or now, to address basic needs.  We assume that needs can be cured by money, that if you have it then you can buy anything you want.  That may be true, too, but will it really do the world any good if it becomes uninhabitable in the process.

We always compare sustainability to a group of people riding on the same ship.  Regardless of what you do, it affects the entire ship.  You can abrogate unto oneself a specific place in the ship and make it the way you like it - clean comfortable, expensive, with all the trimmings that you like, but you need to get from other parts of the ship all the things necessary to do that.  The sum total of the resources in the ship will remain the same the whole trip, and what one does in one part of the ship will affect the other.  Others call it a zero-sum game.

Free enterprise contributed a lot to how the world now behaves, which is to earn more in order to enjoy a better life.  All business enterprises and big corporations strive to rake in profits while at the same time making things (and services) cheaper for everybody to choose and buy.  We can no longer get an accurate count on exactly how many smartphones and tablets that are available in the market today - the brands are too numerous and the models for each brand are to the multiples of 10's or 20's, to say the least.  And they're crunching up new models now that people simply discard their old ones after a few months!

In a news article I've posted in Facebook, we see a pattern of developed countries "outsourcing" their carbon emissions to third world countries.  They don't literally do that of course, but the mere fact that your gadget is made in China or any country other than what you call the "developed" or "advanced" ones in the west tells you a story that indeed outsourcing is the "in" thing in this century.  And why not?  Cheaper raw materials and cheaper labor in developing countries will give you cheaper smartphones.  And everyone is happy, whether you're from the rich country or the poorer ones.

The developed countries place their factories in China, India, Vietnam, the Philippines, etc., because production costs are low, most especially power costs.  In order to do that, and to feed its very high GDP growth rates, these countries are now building power plants mostly fired by coal, bunker, or diesel, right up to the next two decades.  That's why the emission levels in China is the highest and expected to continue beyond the 21st century, expectedly inducing a 4 degree Celsius increase in world temperature which will be disastrous for us.

Outsourcing produces cheaper goods which everybody likes.  But there is an environmental cost to every item produced.  Unfortunately, we don't count that cost.  The GDP that each country produces each year represents the wealth produced in that country, but without any regard to the environmental degradation it brings in producing that GDP.  Somebody suggested years back that we should be computing an "environmentally-adjusted" GDP, to incorporate the negative impacts to the environment, but that never took off.

The world is heating up, slowly but surely, and the IPCC Report says there is 95% certainty it is caused by human activity.  Everywhere, production facilities are mushrooming, but faster in developing countries where labor and power are cheap, cranked up by fossil-fuelled plants.  We all know there is an end to this race towards wealth.  I can only hope mankind stops itself in time