Bet 20
In 2022 the US economy will still be held to be the world leader in global environmental degradation.
Bet 20
Duration 20 years (02002-02022)
Predictor
Peter A. Spark
Challenger
Alexander King
Stakes $2,000
will go to The World Wildlife Fund (WWF-US) if Spark wins,
or Medicins sans Frontiere if King wins.
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Right now the US is held up as THE global pariah in terms of negative global environmental impact, as highlighted by the facts such as the US having 4% of the worlds population yet producing 25% of the greenhouse gas pollution, or the George W Bush administration’s utter rejection of the Kyoto protocol.
This is despite world-wide multilateral agreement by the majority of the governments of the world, the majority of the scientific community, and the majority of (non-polluting) industries and business communities, that we need to face up to these issues NOW.
I’m betting that the American people will respond by creating a technology led, business focussed, market based response to the serious issues relating to environmental pollution reduction.
This new wave of economic and socio-technical innovation will create more wealth and more jobs than at any previous time in US economic history.
I'm betting that the communities of US science, US business, US government and the people of the United States, will in their wisdom, use their considerable ''balls, brains, and bucks'' to make sure this happens.
I’m betting that this will create the next long boom, a Long Green Boom.
The United States is seen everwhere as the world leader in environmental destruction. Its pollution takes many forms, mainly derived from the high proportion of world resources (including energy) that it consumes. However, its destructive reputation is seen mainly in the emission of enormous quantities of carbon dioxide from the combustion of fossil fuels by its huge and successful economic activity and regarded as pollution through the greenhouse effect.
The situation can only be changed by replacing energy production from oil, coal, and gas by the use of non-polluting technologies.
Already such production by the use of solar, wind, tidal, geothermal and other sources provides a small contribution to the nations energy supply and optimistic estimates suggest that up to 20% of national demand might be achieved by their use by 2020. This means that most of our energy supply would then have to come from a completely new technology. Unfortunately no such technology appears to be immediately available. A large programme of nuclear (fission) reactors would ameliorate the situation, but many would consider this as causing a still more dangerous pollution. Nuclear fusion is often mentioned as the final abundant and safe energy. I have every confidence that American science, technology and business are capable of leading the world in the development and installation of such a new non-polluting energy system, but do not believe that this can happen before 2022.
The lead time from scientific discovery through technological development to a substantial level of economic production is very long. I do not believe that fusion is as yet anywhere near to becoming a technology. It has unique development difficulties - it is not easy to convert the energy of the temperature of the sun to that of superheated steam. It will be argued that by devoting extraordinarily large resources to such a project, the lead-time can be substantially reduced. That may well be so, but experience with recent mammoth schemes such as the Manhattan project or ''man on the moon'' shows the difficulty of beating the time constraints.
In addition to the technical difficulties, there will be many obstacles of political, vested-interest and psychological nature to be overcome. The atmosphere with its carbon dioxide is the common possession of all mankind, therefore action by the US is of concern to all nations. The seemingly contemptuous rejection of the Kyoto protocol by the Bush government has already led through laboured attempts at compromise, to a general delay at facing up to the real issues... Such delays are likely to drag on indefinitely with a defensive US facing a large number of coutries including its allies, until Washington takes strong unilateral action.
Such action is unlikely to be decisive until the government understands that it is essential to safeguard national energy supply. Its urgency will also have to be accepted by the communities of science and business and endorsed by informed public opinion. I cannot believe that the warning bell will be rung until well into the 20 years of this long bet. For this and other reasons I bet that the US will still be top of the world environmental damage league in 2022.
In 2022 the US economy will still be held to be the world leader in global environmental degradation.
How do you measure whether the U. S. economy is still "held to be the world leader in global environmental degradation"? Followers of the environmentalist religion will do this no matter what the facts. Consider how little respect Julian Simon got from them even after the famous Ehrlich / Simon bet.
It's interesting that no environmentalists have responded to Peter Spark's bet yet, however vague the terms. How would you like to see the bet outcome measured?
The Simon/Ehrlich bet, of course, is one of the major inspirations behind Long Bets.
Hello Alan,
Can't you see? You take the usage of energy in the States in a period of time, divide it by the number of people in your country and you know how much energy you use. Knowing this index number, you compare it to the index off all the other countrys. I think they use liters of oil as their standard,
Are you aware that almost every non American from the western world learns at school that Amerika is the biggest spender of all sorts of energy, ( up to six times as much as some european countrys)
Succes, nice that discussing this subject belongs to the possibilities,
Frank
The connection between energy use and environmental degradation isn't obvious to me. I can see the problems with oil, fission and coal use, but I can imagine an economy with very high energy use that relies on solar, hydro, wind or clean forms of fusion power.
by not signing the kyoto agreement usa have condamne to death much more people around the world than many september 11, i have not eard many complains about that in your country. The USA are a selfish imperialist and under educated country the world can not excepect much from them.
the significant point would be whether / when the US government will admit that the US is the leading country in production of pollution etc.
So, maybe this would be solved by the presense* of a document / webpage on a .gov domain that can be paraphrased as admitting such.
* In an official capacity, as opposed to something from external sources, or and 'opinion piece' etc.
I think whoever posted this statement must live with their head permanently stuck in a paper bag.
Anyone who has ever been to India or China can see that those countries are much worse in terms of environmental degradation that not the result of the USA.
The real criteria for environmental degradation is not the amount of energy used, but how many carbon atoms are released for each unit of energy used.
In the USA, the trend has been from charcoal to coal to oil to natural gas and finally to hydrogen. Each step of our industrial evolution has resulted in fewer release of carbon for each unit of energy used.
India and China currently burns very unclean fuel such as charcoal and coal which releases vast quantities of CO, CO2, and hydrogen sulfides. Looking at the current trends, these countries will continue to do so for the forseeable short and medium term. Moreover, with the per capita GDP of those two countries rising, they will be burning MORE dirty fuel. Finally, let's not forget that they have 3 to 4x the USA's population.....
Short version. US produces 22 times the electricty for less than 1/3rd the people. Increased carbon atmospheric output / kWh is going to have to be _massive_ to make up that difference.
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/in.html
"GDP: purchasing power parity - $2.2 trillion (2000 est.)"
Population: 1,029,991,145 (July 2001 est.)
Electricity - production: 454.561 billion kWh (1999)
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/us.html
"GDP: purchasing power parity - $9.963 trillion (2000 est.)"
Population: 278,058,881 (July 2001 est.)
Electricity - production: 3.678 trillion kWh (1999)
[Shrunk version]
Am I imagining things, or was the word 'Still' not in the bet description a month or so back?
Well,
Here are some eye opening numbers for you...
1. China needs to burn 7x the amount of energy for the same unit of output as the USA.
2. The fuel China burns (primarily bismutite coal) contains large amounts of sulfur.
3. The carbon to energy generation ratio of coal to natural gas is 4 to 1. Coal is C-C-C-C which burns to 4 x CO2. Natural gas is CH4 which burns to 1 CO2 and 2 H2O...way cleaner.
So if we divide your 22x number by 4 we get ~5. Then China has 4x the population of the USA and we are in a dead heat. Next, consider that China's energy consumption statistics is highly inaccurate since most of the coal burning goes on in their countryside where 80% of their population live and we can argue that China is already the worst producer of pollution TODAY. A cursory glance at the air there supports my point. I know for a fact that the air in Houston (the dirtiest of the US cities) look cleaner than most of the cities in China by far.
Your whole argument is based on the statistics of the CIA World Factbook. I don't doubt the US numbers are correct but how do you measure the true usage of a more opaque nation like India or China? Most of China's numbers reflect their government statistics which is notoriously unreliable or derived from their energy import numbers.
Considering that China is full of illegal (and dangerous) coal mines which do not report to the government and you are facing some pretty grim odds.
Well first off my figures were taken for India not China so it would be a good idea to look at the _Chinese_ figures to reply to your post.
So thats USA having 8.5 times as much electricity produced for 1/5 the people. In other words 39 times as much electricity produced per person.
Now, admitedly that doesn't include details of efficiency of production or amount of carbon introduced into the atmosphere, so
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/china/part1.html
"China accounts for about 13% of world carbon emissions, ranking second behind the United States. Per capita emissions, however, are significantly lower than in the United States (0.7 metric tons/person compared with 5.42 metric tons/person in the United States). China's rapidly growing carbon emissions are expected to account for 19% of the world total by 2015."
So on a per capita basis by 2015 you might expect about 1 metric ton per person in China, compared with 5.42 metric tons per person in the US now. The way I look at it, that's a long way from 'dead heat'.
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ch.html
GDP: purchasing power parity - $4.5 trillion (2000 est.)
Electricity - production: 1.173 trillion kWh (1999)
Population: 1,273,111,290 (July 2001 est.)
There seems to be some miscommunication in our posts.
It seems like you are equating the introduction of carbon with the word pollution.
My point is that quatity of energy use does not necessarily track one to one with pollution.
I have worked in Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories on the development of scrubbers for coal fired power plants. With that experience, I can tell you that China produces a whole lot more pollution even if they introduce less carbon.
How can that be? Well, for one thing, the power plants in China has NO scrubbing facilities. On the project I worked on, the scrubbers collect the sulfur pollutants that are the byproducts of burning coal and convert them into sulfuric acid which can be resold for industrial use. The cost of such scrubbers increases the cost of producing 1 kilowatt of electricity at a coal plat to $800 per kilowatt of capacity. China, however, builds stripped down coal plants with no scrubbing facilities whatsoever. This reduces the capital cost to $450 per kilowatt of capacity.
The tradeoff, of course, is that all the sulfur derived from burning coal is puffed into the atmosphere. To compound the problem, China has plentiful quantities of busmutite coal which has a higher sulfur content. The USA uses the cleaner burning coal known as antarcite...and this is inconjuction with the use of scrubbers. If you ever hold a lump of bismutite coal in one hand and antarcite coal in the other, you will easily see that bismutite is a dirty yellow black colored coal while antarcite is a shiny, rich black colored coal.
So even if the USA uses 8.5x more electricity than China, China's powerplants easily gives off 50x more sulfur pollutants than the USA.
The result of burning sulfury coal? Why a phenomenon known as acid rain.
For the purposes of this bet 'pollution' hasn't been defined yet. As soon as the bet terms have been agreed we will have a firmer basis to argue on.
In the mean time I will note that China is party to 'Air Pollution-Sulphur 85, Air Pollution-Sulphur 94'[1] I've seen some references[2] to decreasing SO2 air pollution in China, (15.8% down from 1997 to 2000) although earlier (< ~1997) documents are much more discouraging. Finally I'll note that although nasty SO2 pollution is a lot shorter term than increased CO2 levels.
I know that President Bush is keen to point the finger away from CO2 levels in his efforts to side step the Kyoto agreement.
[1] http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ca.html
[2] http://infoserv2.ita.doc.gov/ticwebsite/apweb.nsf/455a6c3392287209852568cd00569fa4/d860265ea25c47f785256a7100665d21!OpenDocument
Since we are vague about what constitutes pollution, let me stick my neck out and put forth a criteria for pollution:
1. Product of incomplete combustion - CO aka carbon monoxide
2. Ground level ozone O3
3. Sulfur dioxide SO2
4. Particulate matter in the air (such as combustion product of dirty diesel)
5. Heavy metals such as lead, mercury, and arsenic in the water and air
6. E. Coli in the water
7. Nitrogen Oxide NO3
As for carbon dioxide, I disagree that it should be counted 100% as pollution. Plants need carbon dioxide to grow...without it, we would all be dead. Therefore, we should define carbon dioxide pollution as carbon dioxide in excess of what the plant matter in a particular country needs, agreed?
Well, for your information, China leads the USA in all the component criteria for pollution with the exception of carbon. So how can you say that the USA is more polluted, NOW????
That's what it says at the top of the forum. It's not how polluted country X is, it is how much that country contributes to the _global_ problem.
Now, again, those making the bet have yet to agree terms so definitions are up for grabs. One significant one is going to be whether 'per capita' or 'country total' is used as the criteria for determining how 'bad' a country is. I have been consistently using 'per capita'.
Your definition of 'air pollution' provides no indication of relative weighting and is thus useless for determining which country is the 'worst'.
Sure 'plants use carbon dioxide' but all that means is that there is a potential path for some excess CO2 to eventually be trapped in peat bogs and long term standing forests. That doesn't mean that carbon dioxide levels aren't rising now, it doesn't mean that carbon dioxide can't have harmful effects and it certainly doesn't make fossil fuel power plants part of the natural ecosystem.
Ah, I can't wait to see the Julian Simon advocates empty the pockets of the doom and gloomers again!! This will be fun to watch!!!
"Ah, I can't wait to see the Julian Simon advocates empty the pockets of the doom and gloomers again!!"
Except that this isn't a "how bad will things be" bet it's a "who will be the worst offender" bet.
1 ) How do we measure this? Good question, firtly there is more to 'environmental degredation' (ED) than energy or carbon. We need to remember ozone, salination, biodiversity, CO2, toxins (from industrial processes such as dioxins or whatever) ... anything else?
So what is worst? Sure an economy may be founded on producing things using solar energy, but if its making plastic ring pulls which choke dolphins, or still releasing lead (Pb) into the water table without sanction... not much of an improvement.
2 ) Can the environment be degraded? Sounds silly to some people, but we (humans) are a natural occurance. Its a philosophical question weather our actions, even guided by some semblence of intelligence and rationality, can really degrade the environment... isnt the concept of 'degredation' a value judgement. For example, lets imagine we wreck the planet and the atmosphere is poisoined to us and to 90% of living organisms, for the remainig 10% its not degredation but an improvement, like early organisms poisoned themselves producing nasty toxic oxygen.
3) Will america still exist? i notice that there is a bet on here that we will have global government. even if its a McGovernment (ie an american one) will that count or is it just the current boundaries of the US we are talking about... what about client states?
4) Where is the proof that they are currently the worst offenders? Looking at the questions raised by the posts to this topic, this is far from accepted and basically comes down to the first question asked ... how do you measure environmental degradation...?
5) While US may be the worst polluters, either in total and/or per capita, or per $GNP (interesting metric..) dont they also contribute a lot of good to the world? Sure I dont like McDonalds, but I do like NASA and some of their foreign aid policies do actually help people, and with a little more breadth of vision, the US could be remembered as a great force for good in a coupla centuries (thinking in election periods will be condemend in history) , so maybe the cost is worth it. Perhaps in our eternal search for something to do , as we have embraced technology to get us into situation which only more technology will save us from, we have made mistakes, but we have also discovered wonderful things and improved our quality of life and thought and being immensely (value judgemenr , but seruiously without US DARPA we couldnt be having this conversation, and without fire we would still be grunting and throwing sticks at each other)... so maybe the US's technological advances are worth the price, and if you divide this ED value by the TI (technological imporovemenr) value, the US might not look so bad after all since they have certainly improved my personal (and all of us mostly) environment... selfish i know, but what animal isnt?
Does it matter? Environmental degradation matters
- if you want future generations to be able to live in the manner to which we have become accustomed.
- if you want future generations to have a similar level of 'natural world' available to them.
As to whether it matters if the US is the _worst_ or not in 2022, that doesn't matter as much as how much the US (and the rest of the world) changes for the better in the next 20 years. If America _and_ the rest of the world all 'improve' the same amount then America might still have the same relative position ... but the whole issue would be less serious than it is now.
"1) So what is worst?"
So what is worst, isn't really the question. "What should the relative weightings be?" is 'a' question, but one that probably isn't quite as vital as it first appears - if only because (IMO) there is often a strong correllation between lack of environmental responsibility in one area and lack of environmental responsibility in all the other areas.
Loss of biodiversity is probably the closest to _the_ measure, if only because it is a symptom of every other form of environmental degradation. However it should be noted that Country A may be directly, or indirectly, responsible for loss of bio-diversity in Country B,C,D etc. So it's no good just examining "how well is America keeping it's species alive?" unless you also examine "what effect has America on extinction rates of species elsewhere?"
"2 ) Can the environment be degraded? [...] isnt the concept of 'degredation' a value judgement?"
Maybe, but it's a pretty obvious value judgement. Objective comparisons can be made in terms of extinction rates and 'humanity' appears to be particularly 'busy' at the same time as extinction rates surpass all previous catastropies. Sure, the present ecology may be 'holding back' the next brave new development - but
a) That doesn't make the damage to the current system any less true.
b) don't forget the 'present ecology' includes human beings and most people would prefer they hang around a little longer.
To speak metaphorically, hitting the reset switch might get your computer running better afterwards but that's just too bad for whatever documents were being worked on at the time.
The argument "Humanity is part of the natural world
Therefore humanity cannot cause 'environmental degradation'"
can be disposed of by
a) Examining the extreme case.
Suppose that humanity renders the Earth into a radioactive dust ball incapable of supporting life. It's hard to argue that it _hasn't_ been 'environmentally degraded'.
b) Considering 'non-human' degradation.
Nothing could be more 'natural' than asteroid impact on Earth, but - even if it worked out well for mammals in the end - it sure caused 'environmental degradation' at the time.
"5) While US may be the worst polluters, either in total and/or per capita, or per $GNP (interesting metric..) dont they also contribute a lot of good to the world? "
Doesn't matter a fig as far as the bet goes, the question isn't "Will America still provide the worst value / degradation in 2022?"
Besides one persons 'force for good' is another persons 'cultural imperialism'. One persons 'technological advancement' is anothers 'perversion of nature'.
Personally, adding up the + / -s over the last few decades I'd guess the US has done more good than harm. But "US is and will remain a force for good" isn't in the same class of 'truth' as "It is not possible to travel faster than light".
In 2022 the US economy will still be held to be the world leader in global environment protection investments.
In 2022 the US economy will still be held to be the world leader in global technology investments.
My list can go on and on...and I am not even american...
As a old friend would say...
"The biggest lion in pack will always lead them, but he will
take the biggest shits, get into the nastiest fights.
He will always be the one to find the zebras."
Very simple...but very explanetory...
Should not defining pollution put appropriate weights on different types of pollution? There seems to be emphasis on carbon dioxide. All carbon dioxide will do that is significant is move the biotic zones north and flood low areas. But there will be plenty of room for people from Florida on our Canadian and Siberian farms. There is also emphasis placed on poisons like carbon monoxide which will disappear almost instantly or sulfuric acid which will scrub out of the atmosphere rapidly and be almost undetectable in the ocean. It seems to me that the emphasis should be on irreversible damage like species extinction. Those betting against the USA may be skunked by Brazil or Indonesia. Damage to the soil is reversible, but is so expensive as to be probably impossible in an overpopulated world, so if this is given high priority, even Madagascar may outstrip the USA. Also how about depletion of priceless resources? Using carbon for a trivial purpose like heat is stupid, but at least the carbon is still on the earth. When uranium is used, it is gone forever. If a vital use comes up ten thousand years down the road, our progeny will curse us. If the use is the only practical way to deflect a twenty kilometer meteor, they will curse us with their dying breath. If there are any wild species still left then they would curse us also, if they could. If this is the only criterian, maybe you should bet on France.
As for those harmless little ecoli bacteria, foget it. They don't stand a chance against an army of predatory fungi, etc.
Sorry for my english. All the definitions of environmental pollution in this discussion are based on the notion of material. However, the relation between energy and entropy may be studied also using notion of information. This is much more useful when dealing with complex things, as the environmental polution is. It's possible to compute simple euclidian distance between the state of untouched nature and polluted situation. This can be done for particular problems, as well, as sum for more general cases.
It is, the green house is more similiar to untouched original forest compare to the shiny white house, thus the white house is doing more pollution. You might find this marginal or amusing, but, if looking through satelite pictures of big cities the feeling, that it is something wrong with colors in there is unavoidable.
They are other important reasons to think the ecology in "bytes", not in "tons". Our civilization is now driven by information; customer behavior, governments policies, topics of focus of young scientists, ...everything important for future of our own environment is driven by progress in information technology, and let's say information politics.
Now, how is this related to the discussed bet? The understanding of ecology in future will shift to the information side of problem. Hopefuly the problem will be better understood and the sources of pollution and degradation better identified. At the some time the character of information is networked. If, let's say, united states will in some time openly maintain inactive environmental policy, this might in some later time became inspiration for people of, let's say, china, and the major source of world pollution. Which country would you count responsible for this, and in which time, regarding this bet?
Furthermore, amount of energy consumed matters. The relationship between energy, entropy and information is explicit. How much energy you consume, this much you touch your environment. Unfortunately, it is no escape from this.
Furthermore, as pointed in previous post, it's important to define what degradation is. I did use the "untouched nature" to define relativity, however if population will find the metropolis to be optimal environment, the nature become the polution. In such a case, the goal of ecology is to extinct this nature. You may act to support your ideal of environment, but what should be policy of country (government)? It's entirely possible that something out of common sense is the environmental ideal in the context of modern society. In this case, different merits of degradation will be applied by different parties.
Now obligatory activism: If you own car, if you buy things in unnecesary packages, if you don't care about energy and environment, not only you produce unnecesary pollution, you become inspiration for most of people in the now poor world. You are node, the important part of network. It is duty to use brain to think about environment.
Sorry for strong or misused words, eventually, this is my poor english :-)
The United States is not the world leader in environmental degradation nor have we been for some time. However, that is not the subject of the bet. The subject is will the US "be held to be the world leader in global environmental degradation." We will likely be "held to be the world leader..." as long as we remain an economic powerhouse as a means of extracting ever-increasing dollars from us to pacify the whiners.
Actually, environmental legislation has dethroned the US as the world leader in environmental degradation for some time - with one important caveat!
When we export manufacturing jobs overseas, part of that is undoubtedly that businesses worldwide have made the calculation that it's economically and legally infeasible to pollute in the First World - the developed nations of North America above the Rio Grande and Europe. So instead, the manufacturing and the pollution is exported to the developing world and the products imported back to the developed world.
Then again, it's clear that even at a modest per capita level of consumption, the economies of India and China will each within the time frame of the prediction be capable of both consuming the necessary goods and creating the pollution to take the environmental degradation prize completely away from the US and Western Europe.
It would be interesting if someone in Congress would impose "environmental tariffs" to penalize pollution any where - the idea being to make it less profitable to send manufacturing overseas where pollution laws either don't exist or are very laxly enforced.
The language of the bet empowers everyone with a grudge against the United States of America.
It would be a better bet if it included objective criteria by which the ecological stewardship of all nations could be judged.
For the record, I think that on a global scale, our high-energy lifestyle as a nation still pollutes as little or less than many other countries' do. If anything, our ecological management could be studied as a good example.
That being said, I hope that developments in energy efficiency will give not only the USA but the world ways to live the American lifestyle on one-eighth the power, so that the inevitable rush toward global consumerism (and unless the world suffers one or more world wars this century, EVERYONE will want the lifestyle they see on satellite TV) is ecologically sustainable.
It's not that we're doing better, I still see (or can't see around) too doggone many SUVs and big nasty cloud belching diesels for example. What will happen is that other developing countries with far larger populations will continue on their current growth curves using even less efficient technology than we, and since they have more capita, they will be seen as worse in toto. It's expensive to burn coal cleanly, but, for example China has mostly coal. They will eventually put in regulations on clean power production, but not until pollution causes trouble there, and not until they feel they are doing as well as the rest of the world economically, per capita.
Few more years, right?
-Steven Burda
www.linkedin.com/in/burda
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