Vital Signs 2002: Overview

Worldwatch Live Online Discussion

Michael Renner and Molly O'Meara Sheehan : Worldwatch Senior Researchers

June 28, 2002 - 12:00pm EDT

Today with have Senior Researchers Michael Renner and Molly Sheehan here to answer your your questions about the whole range of social, economic, and environmental trends in this year’s edition, from the growing power of well-informed consumers to the unquenchable demand for carbonated soft drinks.

Tom Prugh, Worldwatch: Welcome, everyone, to this Worldwatch Live session on our just-released publication, Vital Signs 2002. Veteran Worldwatch researchers Michael Renner and Molly Sheehan are on tap today to discuss the trends described in VS2002 and answer your questions. I'll kick things off with a couple of questions of my own. For Michael: Data in VS2002 show that the number of active violent conflicts fell in 2001, while peacekeeping expenditures rose. Mere coincidence? Or is there actually a direct connection? For Molly: In VS2002 you wrote a section called "Passenger Rail at a Crossroads." Amtrak has once again come to the government pleading for money, and Congress gave it enough in short-term loans to keep the railroad going through September. Is passenger rail at a crossroads in the United States, or is it being shunted on to a siding to rust away?

Michael Renner and Molly O'Meara Sheehan : MR: There is obviously a relationship between conflicts and (sucessful)peacekeeping, but on the whole the observation that conflicts are down, peacekeeping operations up is a bit of a coincidence. The primary
reason is that the United Nations can only get involved in a number of cases, given its limited resources and the aversions of leading powers on the Security Council to get drawn into certain conflicts (though there are also a number of non-UN peacekeeping efforts). But that said,
the UN has had some notable successes, for example in Mozambique, Cambodia, Central America, and --with lots of difficulty-- Sierra Leone)helping to end conflicts. In some other cases (such as Somalia, Angola, and Bosnia) the result was more of a failure. Finally, the UN is also
trying in a number of ways other than peacekeeping (human rights, development policy, good offices, etc.) to bring conflicts to an end (examples include Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, etc.)



MOS: Yes, in this latest crisis, the United States is at an important juncture in passenger rail, where it could decide to finally put its money where its mouth is. In theory, by backing Amtrak for 3 decades, the U.S. government has recognized the value of a national passenger rail system: planes make more sense for long distances, and cars, transit, and bicycles for shorter trips, but over medium distances of 50 to 1,000 kilometers, trains with enough passengers can be cheaper, more comfortable, and less
polluting, given the high costs of flying large jets short distances and the high per capita fuel use and space required for automobiles. In practice, however, the U.S. government has set requirements for Amtrak to provide a national service, plying routes that are not profitable, without providing the level of support needed for Amtrak to develop the quality of service needed on profitable routes to boost overall revenues sufficiently. For example, constrained by its budget, Amtrak commissioned trains for a high-speed link between Washington, DC and Boston that would fit existing tracks, rather than build new tracks to allow faster trains. This service, the Acela, debuted behind schedule in 2001, with trains slower than those of Japan in the 1970s.

Boston, MA: I'm confused about consumers are going to save the environment. I thought that consumers were the problem, that what we really need to do, in the rich world, is cut back. How does this work?

Michael Renner and Molly O'Meara Sheehan : MR: Consumers in rich countries, by their purchasing habits, have certainly contribted to the enviromental problems we are now faced with (population growth is another factor). Rich consumers therefore have a responsibility and opportunity to put humanity on a different course. We are seeing that environmentall friendly alternatives are being chosen in a number of areas (as Vital Signs documents, but it is also clear that many of these alternatives are still in their infancy and need to be scaled up considerably. And we need to see more benign choices in a far more areas than is currently the case.

Buffalo, NY: wHY ARE some consumers smart, and others are stupid? yOU SAY people are buying certified wood, etc. But they've been buying SUVs like crazy, and it's hard to imagine anything worse for the environment. Why don't people get the whole picture?

Michael Renner and Molly O'Meara Sheehan : You're right about the damage caused by the growing number of light trucks on the roads, particularly in the United States, which has contributed to erosion of overall passenger vehicle fuel economy since the 1980s, erasing previous gains. However, I'm wouldn't frame this issue as a question of intelligence necessarily. I'd argue that most people in the United States don't have the range of transportation options available that would allow them to choose not to drive a private car. Further, there's an unfortunate domino effect with SUVs, with more people buying larger vehicles so they'll feel safer on a road that's already dominated by larger vehicles.

Washington, DC: Do you guys say anything about what we should do about the Bush administration anti-enviro trend, and all of its bad enviro decisions?

Michael Renner and Molly O'Meara Sheehan : MR: Vital Signs is primarily about data and trends, and not directly about policy-making. We are addressing broader policy issus in some of our other publications, though. You may be interested in reading an article our colleague Danielle Nierenberg wrote in the July/August 2001 issue of World Watch magazine, titled: "Dim Vision." It chronicles the indeed poor environmental decisions of the current administration in its first months. Unfortunately, the decsion-making has not become any more friendly to the environment since.

Vancouver, BC: What's the most interesting trend in this year's book--or the most alarming?

Michael Renner and Molly O'Meara Sheehan : This year, when we received all the submissions to Vital Signs from various authors, we were struck by the number of pieces that suggested that consumers are beginning to play an important role in slowing environmental decline, by "voting with their wallets" for various products and services that are less damaging to the environment.



MOS: As ther'a lull in new questions popping up on my screen, ' add something a bit in my answer to this question of interesting trends. While we ended up highlighting this yea'Vital Signs trends in ecolabeling and appliance efficiency and compact fluorescent lightbulbs, which all point to a growing role for consumers, there are some other trends we cover in the book that show sectors in which there needs to be better, environmentally friendlier choices for consumers. One of these areas is information technology.



Two of the steepest growth curves in the Vital Signs book are those of the Internet and mobile phones: the number of Internet host computers nearly doubled between 1999 and 2001, and the ranks of mobile phone subscribers nearly doubled every 20 months in the 1990s. The rapid proliferation of these technologies alone makes them significant. They are transforming the way we live and work, and creating both challenges and opportunities to efforts to build an environmentally healthier world. While in use, these communications tools can be tremendously beneficial to both people and to the environment. Doctors in sub-Saharan Africa are using the Internet to seek medical advice for example, while school teachers in India and Morocco are receiving online training, and women in remote parts of Bangladesh are using cell phones to start small businesses. Computers are also helping people better monitor and model environmental change, from forest fires to ozone loss to climate change.



But ther'an often overlooked downside to the "birth" and "death" of these instruments - and tha'the large quantities of toxic materials required for their manufacture, which can harm human and environmental health not only during the production process but also when the devices are discarded. Part of the disposal problem is that these technologies have such a short lifetime, as people discard them to get the latest models, or so that their computers can run the software that their colleagues are using. The other part of the problem is that these technologies are not designed to be recycled. Electronics take-back laws, now taking shape in Europe could help us avoid repeating some of the ecological mistakes of the old economy today with the new economy.

Orlando, FL: How big a role do you think advertising plays in getting kids to drink so many soft drinks? Should there be restrictions on soft drink ads like on tobacco?

Michael Renner and Molly O'Meara Sheehan : Yes, aggressive marketing of soft drinks, along with advertising of cigarettes and junk food is a public health concern. Coca Cola, for instance, is among the world's top 10 advertisers. (We covered world advertising spending in Vital Signs 1999.) Also, in the United States, soft drink and junk food vending machines are in many schools. See our "what you can do" page related to Vital Signs 2002 on our website for links to organizations working to remove those vending machines from schools.

: Pls tell one of ways to change patterns of consumptions?

Michael Renner and Molly O'Meara Sheehan : MR: While we have eco-labeling programs and efficiency standards for some products, many others do not currently have such efforts in place. Governments, local and national, can help this along, which in turn gets better information to consumers, so they can figure out what the impact of their purchasing decisions is. One of the most important changes concerns transportation. The trend toward growing reliance on automobiles and the purchase oflarger and less efficient vehicles represents one of the biggest environmental challenges: it affects what happens with regard to air pollution, quality of life in cities, traffic jams and deaths, habitat destruction, and climate change.

Seattle, WA: How do you guys decide what's a Vital Sign? I see that you have one bunch that's the same every year, but then there are some new ones.

Michael Renner and Molly O'Meara Sheehan : Each year, we do try to keep track of some key indicators of planetary health, such as global population, world economy, and global carbon emissions. You'll find those, for instance, in nearly every edition. But yearly data is simply not available for some important indicators (urban population is one of those, for example). Also, we try to keep the book relevant to people's everyday lives and interesting to read, which is why we have the soft drink indicator this year, and why we've looked at various other indicators over the years, from the disappearance of languages to the role of women in politics.

Dallas, TX: i LOOKED OVER THE WEBSITE, b ut I don't see anything about terrorism being a vital sign for last year. Wasn't that a big social/political change? Couldn't terrorists blow up chemical plants, or nuclear?

Michael Renner and Molly O'Meara Sheehan : MR: Good question. When we planned the 2002 edition of Vital Signs, the events of September 11 were of course on our minds as much as on anybody else's. We discussed whether it would be possible to include a Vital Sign that tracks terrorist acts. We found, however, that existing efforts tend to be biased in terms of who defines what as terrorism (as opposed to "legitimate" violence, if there is such a thing). We decided that it would be more misleading than enlightening to present deeply biased data. Also, we strongly believe that it would be a mistake not to try to understand the roots of terrorist (and other violent) acts -- not in the sense of excusing such atrocities, but because extreme violence does not 'come out of the blue'. We will stand a much better chance at reducing/edning terrorism if we can get at the manifold reasons why such violence is carried out. In this broad sense, many of the existing Vital Signs pieces do give us a sense as to how well or how badly we're doing in the quest for a more sustainable, equitable, and hopefully more peaceful world.

Editors Note: Worldwatch has more information on the trends that effect terrorism here.

Moses Lake, WA: In your chapter on Semiconductors you talk about the exposure to toxic chemicals during the manufacture of electronics, is there any research on how much toxic residue people are exposed to by using the finished product?

Michael Renner and Molly O'Meara Sheehan : MR: This is not something that we have tracked to date. You may want to contact the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition <www.svtc.org>. Although they cover primarily exposure of workers in the industry, they should be able to provide some information / useful contacts in this regard as well.

Silver Spring, MD: How do you get people to pay attention to these trends?--esp. people in government, or corporations?

Michael Renner and Molly O'Meara Sheehan : That's a great question. We hope that by educating people -- individual citizens, voters, consumers, students -- about troubling global trends, those people will generate pressure from the bottom up to leaders of government and industry for better policies and practices. We do know that readers, such as yourself perhaps, have used the Vital Signs book in some interesting ways. In the acknowledgements to this year's book, we thanked some of the following readers we know about who have creatively used the findings in Vital Signs to attract the attention of leaders in government and industry. For example:
A lecturer at Florida State University is mining Vital Signs for an "Environmental Minute" TV show. On the other side of the world, the Director of the Global Environment Program at Vietnam National University has sent copies of the Vietnamese edition to senior government officials. An editor of a weekly publication in Latin America says she uses Vital Signs as a primary resource, "alongside my Webster's dictionary, AP style book, and New York Times Almanac." And to keep colleagues informed of crucial global trends, a Scottish parliamentarian asked the Parliament's library to order Vital Signs.
So, the short answer is that we depend heavily on you, the readers and doers.

New York, NY: Wheere does population fit into your thinking? Are there too manyh people alreadey? OR SHOUJLD WE not be worrying about population because other things are more pressing?

Michael Renner and Molly O'Meara Sheehan : MR: We carry a piece about population trends in every edition of Vital Signs. Basically, environmental impact is the result of two different factors: one, consumption choices, two, the size and growth of population. The rich Western countries are clearly responsible for a large share of the world's environmental challenges, since they account for the bulk of consumption of fossil fuels, lumberabd paper, metals and other materials, etc. But in the poorer countries, growing population does create its own problems, though perhaps in more "local" ways. Farmes that have access to limited arable land, for instance, will face growing problems as each generation subdivides the land into smaller parcels and possibly exhausts soil productivity and available water resources. So, yes, we are concerned about both the impact of the rich and the implications of population growth.

Fall River, MA: Is anything good happening to the world's fish? The government keeps tightening up the fishing rules here--is that happening everywhere?

Michael Renner and Molly O'Meara Sheehan : This year in Vital Signs we looked at the booming business of aquaculture, which is the fastest-growing segment of food production in the world. As fisheries have become depleted worldwide, people have been looking to aquaculture. And it now provides 31 percent of the world's food fish. This is not necessarily good news, however, as there are some pollution concerns related to intensive fish farming. Also, farm-raised fish are increasingly being fed wild fish.

Sacramento, CA: People in Europe have been voting for thewse right-wing antgi-immigration parties. I don't have your book, so I' wondering if immigration was a trend last year?

Michael Renner and Molly O'Meara Sheehan : MR: Immigration was not covered in last year's edition, but we had a piece in the 2001 edition on migrants and refugees (and have covered refugee trends in many previous editions). Rising population movements are a key consequence of the globalization process going on. Although growing numbers of people feel that the only way they can make a decent living is by emigrating, migration does not have to be negative phenomenon. But some politicians in Europe (and elsewhere!) have become very adept at exploiting the negative aspects to their own benefit. This will be a challenge of growing proportions in years to come.

washington, dc: What are the real prospects for the Kyoto Protocol, or some other serious global warming agreement, now that the Bush administration has openly admitted it's a problem?

Michael Renner and Molly O'Meara Sheehan : MOS: Although the Bush administration has said it's a problem, there's not been a forthcoming plan to aggressively tackle it. However, there's a chance that the rest of the world will simply leave the U.S. behind. (For the protocol to enter into force, 55 countries representing 55 percent of the 1990 emissions of industrial and former Eastern bloc nations have to ratify it.)

birmingham, alabama: If every Chinese and Indian wants a car in his garage, what can we possibly do here to offset that growth in fossil fuel consumption and its contribution to climate change?

Michael Renner and Molly O'Meara Sheehan : MR: There are opportunities for moving away from the internal combustion engine and develop so-called hybrid-vehicles that, while still relying on the internal combustion engine, can also run on electricity. In the longer run, it is possible to switch to fuel cells (and these could be powered by hydrogen, rather than fossil fuels). This would also make sense in China, India, etc., because cities in these countries are already choking on massive air pollution, which kills and sickens huge numbers of people.

But we should not forget that massive reliance on automobiles creates problems other than air pollution and climate change, and therefore, it would be wise to change our land use policies and the way we plan and develop cities, so that people have a real choice of transportation modes (i.e., so they can use public transit, bike, and walk). Again, this makes sense in all countries.

In Europe, a growing number of programs have sprung up for "car-sharing" which makes an automobile available to people, but they don't have to own one themselves. This can help reduce the number of cars on the roads at any given moment.

Tom Prugh, Worldwatch: It's about time for us to sign off, but I want to thank Molly and Michael, as well as everyone who wrote in with questions, for taking part in this forum. There were a number of good questions we simply didn't have time to address. If your question was one of them, you can check our large library of publications (see our website), or submit your question to worldwatch@worldwatch.org. We will try to steer it to the right person. Thanks again.

Michael Renner and Molly O'Meara Sheehan : Thanks, Tom, and thanks to everyone for some stimulating questions. We encourage you to come back to our Web site soon and check out a list of specific things individuals can do to lessen their impact on the environment. We will soon post this at: http://www.worldwatch.org/pubs/vs/2002/whatyoucan.html