"32"

Pulitzer prize-winning author Jared Diamond was interviewed Monday evening on National Radio's "Nights with Bryan Crump".

"If your listeners remember anything from this interview at all, I hope it is the number 32."

Diamond is working on an index of resource use per capita by country. His index is derived from the total amount of a particular resource consumed by a country, divided by the population of the country concerned. He makes the argument that population isn't the problem we need to worry about. The real problem is waste of the resources we do consume.

For example, a person in the United States or New Zealand will, on average, use 32 times more fossil fuels than a person from China. Doing the math, China may have 350 times more people than New Zealand, but they use only a bit more than 10 times the fossil fuels we use.

Diamond brought the issue of population into sharp focus. The Earth may be able to support as many as 9 billion people if resources are managed carefully. We would each have to reduce our consumption of all resources significantly over current levels to achieve that. But if all 9 billion people were to live the lifestyles currently lived by Americans or Kiwis, it would be equivalent to having a global population of 72 billion people. Diamond says that level of resource use is unanimously deemed to be not only unsustainable, but completely impossible.

Food for thought. It represents more of the simple math demonstrating now is a good time to make rational choices for a healthy, prosperous future. The alternative is nasty, desperate choices between rocks and hard places. That is where the greedy and stupid too often go, but we don't have to go there.

Diamond is optimistic that people can and will make the right choices if they understand what is at stake.

I agree. But I'm also well aware that the vested interests in the status quo will do all they can to inhibit and confuse people and prevent such an understanding. We are already seeing this happening on the climate change.

The best article I could find on the net covering his thinking is found here It's focused on the US, but most of the points made in the interview I heard are covered.