America as Environmental Superpower

by Mark Hertsgaard
Volkskrant (Amsterdam), Jun 26, 2004

In a recent interview with The Guardian newspaper, Shell Oil chairman Ron Oxburgh said that global warming has him really very worried for the planet. This remarkable confession, by the head of one of the corporations most responsible for the problem, underlines yet again that climate change is perhaps the greatest threat facing human civilization in the 21^st century. If leaders do not act forcefully and soon, a Science magazine panel warned last week, the world may pass a point of no return and it will be too late to reverse climate change. A Pentagon planning unit has forecast that by 2020 rising temperatures could trigger mega-droughts, mass starvation and even nuclear war as countries like China, India and Pakistan fight over river valleys and other sources of scarce food and water.

But intransigence in Washington has blocked international progress on climate change. Despite the dire warnings emanating from his own Pentagon, George W. Bush has questioned the reality of global warming and rejected any but voluntary measures to combat it. He has shunned not only the Kyoto protocol but any alternative negotiations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Thus the country that is most responsible for causing the climate change problem—and the one most technologically and financially able to address it—refuses to act.

Worse, this refusal condemns the rest of the world's efforts to futility. True, now that President Vladimir Putin has pledged that Russia will endorse Kyoto, the treaty should become operational soon. But without U.S. participation, Kyoto will not accomplish much. The United States is simply too big a part of the problem—it produces approximately one-fourth of global greenhouse gas emissions—not to be part of any genuine solution. Consciously or not, the United States enjoys veto power over global environmental progress, and the Bush administration is exercising that veto.

Since the end of the Cold War, it has been a cliché of global affairs that the United States is the only remaining superpower. Now it is time to expand the definition of superpower to include America's immense influence over humanity's environmental future. During the boom years of 1990s, the world focused mainly on America's status as an economic superpower whose massive internal market kept world demand strong. Over the past two years, the Iraq war has shifted attention to America's role as a military superpower. But current conditions on the ground in Iraq—mounting U.S. casualties and no apparent end to a violent insurgency—suggest that the U.S. is not the military superpower that President Bush thought it was; it is not able to impose its will by force alone. By contrast, America's environmental influence is not only undiminished, it is growing fast, as globalization spreads the appetites of American consumerism throughout the planet.

The foundation of America's status as an environmental superpower is its own enormous environmental footprint. With only four percent of the world's population, the United States accounts for about 25 percent of humanity's pollution and natural resource consumption. As the climate change dilemma illustrates, this 25 percent ratio means that the world cannot solve major environmental problems if the United States fails to cooperate. America may not be able to impose its military will in Iraq, but it routinely imposes its environmental will on every other country in the world.

More worrisome in the long run, however, is a second, much less recognized aspect of America's environmental power: the seductive pull the American lifestyle has on millions and millions of ordinary people the world over, especially the young. During two extended journeys around the world since 1991, I have seen the triumph of American consumerism in virtually every one of the twenty-five countries I visited. Thanks to American capital's global reach, the sophistication of its advertising, and the sheer popular appeal of the vehicles, movies, music, food and fashion it produces, people from Brazil to Bangkok are coming to believe that they too should taste the American consumerist dream.

In China, a population that twenty years ago had little access to electricity, much less modern appliances, now is gleefully embracing televisions, refrigerators, even air conditioning. The dream of virtually every young Chinese, especially the men, is to own a car. Global automakers say China is their fastest growing market. Meanwhile, the bicycles that every Chinese used to ride are increasingly derided, and authorities in Shanghai have gone so far as to ban them from city streets.

What's more, this global transformation is taking place at lightning speed. Traveling in Africa in the early-1990s, I would occasionally see posters of Michael Jackson or Madonna in bus stops or other gathering places in the big cities, but never in the rural areas—the latter were just too remote to penetrate. Now, barely ten years later, American pop stars are being celebrated even in the African bush.

During a June 2001 visit to the Transkei, the impoverished region of South Africa where Nelson Mandela was born, I was walking a dusty path between two villages when I came upon two teenage girls—fifteen year old twins, it turned out. After I asked for directions, they inquired where I was from. Hearing it was the United States, one twin turned to the other and shrieked, as only a teenager can, R. Kelly, R. Kelly! It turned out the village girl had seen the American pop singer on MTV and decided she had to marry him. This, despite the fact that she lived in a village with no electricity, much less television. But twice a year, the twins visited their older brother in a port city two hundred kilometers away where MTV was readily available. After which, they brought their American-fashioned fantasies back home to a village where, at a family reunion I witnessed the day after meeting the twins, grown-ups still made their own (beautiful) music on their own, passing around a bucket of homemade beer in an unlit hut while beating drums, clapping hands, and blending their voices in song.

Leave aside arguments about cultural imperialism for the moment. Like it or not, American products appeal to millions of people around the world. And why shouldn't they be able to have them, just like Americans do? But the environmental implications are ominous. Americans, remember, are responsible for 25 percent of humanity's environmental footprint while accounting for only 4 percent of the population. Experts have thus calculated that if all six billion people on earth lived like Americans do—relying on the same technologies and consuming at the same levels—humanity would need an extra two or three planets to supply the necessary natural resources and absorb all the pollution produced. No such planets have been found.

The globalization of American consumerism as it is currently practiced is, in short, unsustainable. It will mean the death of this planet, at least as a place where humans can live in anything like their current numbers and comfort levels. Turning these trends around is therefore essential, and while it will be difficult, there is no mystery about what needs doing. Humans could accelerate solar energy development, for example, and embrace a range of well-known technologies and business practices that can not only reverse environmental degradation but produce jobs and business growth for economies that desperately need them.

Half of humanity lives on less than $2 a day, but the world's poor won't accept such poverty amidst plenty for long. They are determined to improve their lot—to sample the opulent lifestyles dangled in front of them every day on television, billboards and video screens. One of the great challenges of the 21^st century will be to find a way to accommodate this mass ascent from poverty while protecting the ecosystems that make life on earth possible in the first place. To meet this challenge will be difficult under the best of circumstances. Without the positive participation of the leading environmental superpower, it will be impossible. During his more than three years in office, George W. Bush has given no indication that he recognizes, much less cares about, the global environmental crisis. Which is yet another reason why regime change in Washington is so urgently needed this November.