If We Bring The Good Life To All Will We Destroy The Planet?
Daniel O'Neill
Daniel O'Neill â an economist at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom â and several collaborators came up with 11 indicators that a country has met the needs of its citizens. They range from boosting life expectancy above age 65 to ensuring that at least 95 percent of its adult population has graduated from high school  has access to sanitation and earns more than the extreme poverty line of $1.90 a day.
From that  "we can calculate a carbon budget for the rest of the century " notes  O'Neill . And then dividing that by the number of people on the planet  "we can say  'OK  this is the carbon budget per person.' "
Unfortunately  "we really didn't find that " says  O'Neill .
"It's a worrying finding " says  O'Neill . But  he  cautions against concluding that there is simply no way for everyone to enjoy a decent life without destroying the planet. After all  these findings are based on how we are doing things now   he  says.
And  he  adds that this study actually points to one way to do that. Specifically   O'Neill  and  his  fellow researchers ran statistical tests to determine for each environmental measure how much damage it takes to produce a corresponding improvement on each of the social well-being indicators.
"And what we find is that it follows a curve of diminishing returns â as you use more resources you get less social bang for your buck " says  O'Neill . "So there's a turning point after which additional resource use contributes very little to social performance." Wealthy industrialized nations such as the United States  the United Kingdom and Canada have reached that point  says  O'Neill . "As we increase our resource use  we get almost no increase in human well-being from that."
And this means for these countries the strategy of growing the economy â basically trying to create new wealth â to boost the well-being of their underprivileged citizens is ineffective. A much better approach  argues  O'Neill   would be to focus on redistributing their existing wealth more equitably.
And if high-income countries were to adopt such an approach  says  O'Neill   they could reduce their use of resources. And that   he  says  would "free up the ecological space" for poor nations  where using resources still does make a big impact in improving people's lives.
[TGT]  â an economist at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom â and several collaborators came up with 11 indicators that a country has met the needs of its citizens. They range from boosting life expectancy above age 65 to ensuring that at least 95 percent of its adult population has graduated from high school  has access to sanitation and earns more than the extreme poverty line of $1.90 a day.
From that  "we can calculate a carbon budget for the rest of the century " notes   [TGT]  . And then dividing that by the number of people on the planet  "we can say  'OK  this is the carbon budget per person.' "
Unfortunately  "we really didn't find that " says  O'Neill .
"It's a worrying finding " says   [TGT]  . But   [TGT]   cautions against concluding that there is simply no way for everyone to enjoy a decent life without destroying the planet. After all  these findings are based on how we are doing things now    [TGT]   says.
And   [TGT]   adds that this study actually points to one way to do that. Specifically   O'Neill  and  his  fellow researchers ran statistical tests to determine for each environmental measure how much damage it takes to produce a corresponding improvement on each of the social well-being indicators.
"And what we find is that it follows a curve of diminishing returns â as you use more resources you get less social bang for your buck " says   [TGT]  . "So there's a turning point after which additional resource use contributes very little to social performance." Wealthy industrialized nations such as the United States  the United Kingdom and Canada have reached that point  says   [TGT]  . "As we increase our resource use  we get almost no increase in human well-being from that."
And this means for these countries the strategy of growing the economy â basically trying to create new wealth â to boost the well-being of their underprivileged citizens is ineffective. A much better approach  argues  O'Neill   would be to focus on redistributing their existing wealth more equitably.
And if high-income countries were to adopt such an approach  says  O'Neill   they could reduce their use of resources. And that   he  says  would "free up the ecological space" for poor nations  where using resources still does make a big impact in improving people's lives.