Читать книгу World Politics since 1989 - Jonathan Holslag - Страница 24

Citizens were consistently concerned about pollution. In 1990, long before Greta Thunberg started the school strike against climate change, hundreds of thousands of protesters gathered on the Mall in Washington, DC to celebrate Earth Day. Movie star Tom Cruise addressed them: “We see many walls come tumbling down this year. With the walls down, we can all see what we have in common: our planet.”⁴

That same year, a Swiss physicist proposed to mitigate global warming by putting a mirror in space to deflect the sun’s heat. “How to solve the CO2 problem without tears,” scientists challenged themselves.⁵ In 1993, Bill Clinton was one of the first presidential candidates in the United States to embrace climate change and the environment as key themes in his campaign. But the CO₂ problem was not solved. Since 1990, CO₂ emissions grew by about 70 percent and the CO₂ efficiency of the world economy hardly increased (figure 1.12).

Or consider transportation. Globalization was often said to be a more efficient way of production. But one factor that was seldom considered in measuring its success concerned transportation. Transportation is a key emitter of polluting gases, but it also causes traffic jams and requires a lot of space for roads, warehouses, and so forth. Between 1990 and 2019, figure 1.13 shows, the global economy became significantly less efficient in terms of transportation. There were thus more ships, container stacks, trucks, vans, and warehouses for smaller gains in production.

Figure 1.12 Fueling economic growth: Global US$ of GDP per kg of CO₂ emitted and kg of fossil fuel consumed (kg/constant 2010 US$)

Source: WDI.

Figure 1.13 Global US$ of GDP per kg of transport (kg/constant 2010 US$)

Source: WDI.

A final indicator that hints at the limited impact of innovation and technology is the disposal of waste. We do not have consistent data for the total global waste pile. We do know that the disposed waste in European countries decreased, that it remained stable in the United States, and that it increased spectacularly in many developing countries. We do have data, however, for global plastic waste, summarized in figure 1.14. While recycling of plastic waste was almost negligible in the early 1990s, the global share of reused plastic waste climbed to slightly below a quarter in 2020. Yet, the total disposed plastic waste, burned or put into landfill, almost trebled. Overall, the world economy became less, not more, economical in using plastics. The global production per kilogram of plastic waste decreased in the 1990s and remained flat in the following two decades.

Figure 1.14 GDP per kg plastic waste (kg/constant 2010 US$)

Source: WDI and UN Baseline Report on Plastic Waste.