Earth Day occurred some time last month. I missed the exact date, but the lockstep coordination from television news, magazines, the kids’ channels my granddaughter watches — and everything in between — it was impossible to escape the message. I happen to like the idea of teaching kids to pick up litter and to recycle, mostly because it makes our communities nicer places to live and teaches kids good habits. Through Instapundit I came upon another message for Earth Day not officially sanctioned by the priestly class of environmentalists in charge of official Earth Day festivities. At Scrivener.net they compiled some research showing that even though Gross Domestic Product per person is up 125% since 1965, worldwide mineral consumption is down 40%. They cite the famous axiom, “The more advanced an economy grows, and the richer its population becomes, the less in physical resources it consumes." I know this is counterintuitive to a lot of folks, but consider these facts:
The amount of trash produced by the population of New York City peaked at over 2,000 pounds per person in the 1940s, and has since fallen to around 900 pounds — more than 50% less than in 1940.
As for the economy in general, Alan Greenspan once testified, “The rate of increase of the gross domestic product in the United States, adjusted for price change — our measure of gains in the real value of output — has averaged around three percent per year. Only a small fraction of that represents growth in the tonnage of physical materials — oil, coal, ores, wood, raw chemicals, for example. The remainder represents new insights into how to rearrange those physical materials to better serve human needs… The share of the nation’s output that is conceptual appears to have accelerated…“By far the largest contributor to growth of our price adjusted GDP, or value added, has been ideas — insights that leveraged physical reality.” This helps explain why each individual’s consumption of physical assets has declined over history as the economy has grown.
After selecting 32 minerals with the highest consumption by Americans, per capita consumption fell by 41% between 1965 and 2005 — even as per capita income more than doubled. Thus, less had to be dug out of the ground to satisfy U.S. consumers in 2005 than 1965 — even with GDP more than tripling and U.S. population increasing more than 50%.
In short, as people get richer, they consume less of the world’s resources and become better stewards of the environment. That is my Earth Day message to you.