For generations, people have lightened their environmental impact
by multiplying their consumption less than their income. A
combination of consumers tempering their consumption of goods and
producers making the goods with less harm to the environment has
long moderated human impact. Does recent experience justify hope
for sustaining this beneficial dematerialization, especially the
decarbonization of national and global carbon emission?
The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) has
just published an answer, “Dematerialization: Variety, Caution
and Persistence” by Rockefeller’s Jesse Ausubel and
Paul Waggoner of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station.
The PNAS report addresses whether the impact of consumers and
producers is growing heavier or lighter and finds a variety of
hopeful examples from energy and carbon emission through wood
consumption on to farming and land use. The report unfortunately
also finds discrepancies and fluctuations in data that require
caution in drawing generalizations and that need remedying to
avoid missteps.
Nevertheless, encouraging evidence, especially for
dematerialization by consumers, prevails. While the paper
reports troubling directions for Brazil and especially Indonesia,
India by several reports changed from a worsening to an improving
environmental performance. Chinese dematerialization slowed a
bit, but did not cease by any report, and the rise of its
intensity of impact either slowed or reversed. Surprisingly,
apparently unaffected by changes of government, the U.S.A.
dematerialized steadily near 2%/yr throughout the period 1980-2004.
