Not all of the changes that Paul describes are negative. If you live in a
well-designed city you don't need a car, while if you live in suburbia or
beyond it is an absolute necessity. Apartments are indeed smaller than
suburban homes, and are sadly deficient in places to store lawnmowers and
similar items. Apartments are so small that there is no room for a septic
tank.
By the way, how do the sizes of apartments in Hong Kong compare with the
sizes of rural homes in China? Or US apartments with US homes? I find Paul's
comparisons pretty slanted.
Certainly changing one's lifestyle can involve some pretty major changes,
some positive, some negative. There are a lot of trade-offs, even if you
stay in the same kind of place - for example, Americans seem to like to live
in uniformally residential developments with zoning law enforcement, so if
you want to go to a café you have to drive. Europe and other areas have much
more lax zoning laws, so on one hand your neighbour might be running a
business from her home, while on the other there is a nice café across the
street.
In general it seems that city dwellers have a small footprint than country
residents, at least within the same region, but of course their footprint is
not zero. I could go on, but much of what I would say was in my early post
but not quoted by Paul.
Bill Silvert
----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Cherubini" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, August 03, 2009 8:47 AM
Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] What's wrong with growth, (was: ESA position on
sustainable growth)
William Silvert wrote:
a stable population with a better quality of life does not
necessarily mean more resources are needed.
some places have achieved high levels of economic
growth without comparable resource consumption
by taking advantage of good education and financial innovation,
notably Hong Kong and Singapore.
Bill, could you elaborate more specifically about what you
mean by a "better quality of life"?
In Hong Kong the average size of a home is 450 square feet
(2500 square feet was the average size of a new home in
the USA in 2007 and 984 square feet was the average size
in 1950). So climbing into one's bed from the doorway is a
common occurrence for Hong Kongers.
http://www.tuition.com.hk/hong_kong.htm
And in 1999, there were only 59 cars per 1000 people
in Hong Kong (vs 474 per 1000 in the USA)
http://tinyurl.com/np36aa
Likewise in Singapore 90 percent of the population lives in
high-rise public housing and there are only 101 cars per
1000 people: http://www.sgpolitics.net/?p=1908
Both Hong Kong and Singapore have little arable land and few
natural resources, so they must import most of their food plus
raw materials such as wood and petroleum. So it appears to
me the underlying reasons why the people of Hong Kong and
Singapore are achieving high levels of economic growth
without comparable resource consumption is because they:
a) don't have to consume land to grow food crops
b) don't have to consume forests to obtain their building materials
and paper products
c) don't have to drill for oil or natural gas to obtain
the petroleum the country uses to manufacture the
products they export (e.g. electronics).
d) are willing to live in extremely small homes and forsake the
routine use of automobiles.
What bothers me about the push for a steady state economy
is that it's advocates claim no major lifestyle changes need to
be made. So all it really appears to accomplish is to slightly
slow down the the ongoing unsustainable rate of depletion
of land, air and water resources. Worse, I feel it distracts the
public in the USA, Canada, etc., from have to face the reality
that serious sacrifices (in terms of home size, auto size and
use, family size, etc.,) such as those the people of Hong Kong
and Singapore are already making would be necessary to
even start to come close to achieving a sustainable resource
consumption rate.
Paul Cherubini
El Dorado, Calif.
