Material Footprint

1. The chart in the Progress Against Life  captures the anthropogenic effects since pre-industrial times in terms of greenhouse gases.
2. Another primary indicator of our ecological catastrophe is Resource Use. But we only have data on Resource Use (or Material Footprint) since 1900 (prepared by Krausman, et al. quoted above).
3. “While material footprint is not a direct indicator of ecological impact, it is a well-established and widely-used proxy in the policy literature and enjoys robust empirical grounding for this purpose” (reference). Thus it is a more reliable indicator of overall ecological damage than CO2.
   

• Whereas CO2 emissions are every bit a by-product of the industrial era led trajectory that manifests itself today as our addiction to GDP growth, recently green technologies have allowed GDP growth to ‘relatively decouple’ from CO2 emissions (but not ‘absolutely decouple’ [quote reference]). This has given growth enthusiasts enough wiggle room to create fuzziness about the toxic trajectory of growth.
• Material Footprint provides no such leeway: “While we know that it is possible to decouple income from CO2 emissions, extant empirical evidence indicates that it is infeasible for high-income nations to decouple income from material footprint at a rate sufficient to meaningfully reduce ecological impact” (reference).
• Esp., as the above chart shows, from 1990 onward, GDP and Material Footprint have grown pretty much in lockstep.

Taking this GDP/Material Growth link forward, we can tie in the thrust of the Progress-Against-People_suNq- document, which shows that the Global North has captured the vast majority of new income growth since the 1960’s. As one of the figures in the document shows (the corresponding interactive visual is here), the average North vs. South income gap went from $8,969 to $34,798 from 1960 to 2017 [Possibly update the chart and results to reflect latest data; the gap should become even larger]. This naturally points to who then is responsible for Material Footprint growth and hence ecological damage.

For CO2 or “Responsibility for Climate Breakdown”, we have from Jason Hickel’s 2020 paper, Quantifying national responsibility for climate breakdown: an equality-based attribution approach for carbon dioxide emissions in excess of the planetary boundary.

1. 
2. “As of 2015, the USA was responsible for 40% of excess global CO2 emissions. The European Union (EU-28) was responsible for 29%. The G8 nations (the USA, EU-28, Russia, Japan, and Canada) were together responsible for 85%. Countries classified by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change as Annex I nations (ie, most industrialised countries) were responsible for 90% of excess emissions. The Global North was responsible for 92%. By contrast, most countries in the Global South were within their boundary fair shares, including India and China (although China will overshoot soon).” (Findings section from the paper)
3. “For this analysis, national fair shares of a safe global carbon budget consistent with the planetary boundary of 350 ppm were derived. These fair shares were then subtracted from countries’ actual historical emissions (territorial emissions from 1850 to 1969, and consumption-based emissions from 1970 to 2015) to determine the extent to which each country has overshot or undershot its fair share. Through this approach, each country’s share of responsibility for global emissions in excess of the planetary boundary was calculated.” (Methods section from the paper)

A similar breakdown is done for Material Footprint in Jason’s (and mine) upcoming paper. [Will publish the chart and results as soon as that is published] This will make the argument for the Global North’s culpability in ecological damage even tighter.

In addition to the North’s overwhelming role in the rapid rise of both historical growth and resource use (and hence ecological crisis), it is also immensely extractive. Which shows the colonial dimension of climate change. Quoting from the recent paper by Hickel and Dorninger et al.,  Imperialist appropriation in the world economy: Drain from the global South through unequal exchange, 1990–2015

1. “Our results show that in 2015 the North net appropriated from the South 12 billion tons of embodied raw material equivalents, 822 million hectares of embodied land, 21 exajoules of embodied energy, and 188 million person-years of embodied labour, worth $10.8 trillion in Northern prices – enough to end extreme poverty 70 times over”
2. “21 exajoules of energy would be enough to cover the annual energy requirements of building out necessary infrastructure to ensure that all 6.5 billion people in the global South have access to decent housing, public transport, healthcare, education, sanitation, communication, etc.”

And this trend of non-stop resource extraction shows no sign of abating as this chart projecting material extraction till 2050 shows (Circularity Gap Report)

In addition to the North’s overwhelming role in the rapid rise of both historical growth and resource use (and hence ecological crisis), it is also immensely extractive. Which shows the colonial dimension of climate change. Quoting from the recent paper by Hickel and Dorninger et al.,  Imperialist appropriation in the world economy: Drain from the global South through unequal exchange, 1990–2015

1. “Our results show that in 2015 the North net appropriated from the South 12 billion tons of embodied raw material equivalents, 822 million hectares of embodied land, 21 exajoules of embodied energy, and 188 million person-years of embodied labour, worth $10.8 trillion in Northern prices – enough to end extreme poverty 70 times over”
2. “21 exajoules of energy would be enough to cover the annual energy requirements of building out necessary infrastructure to ensure that all 6.5 billion people in the global South have access to decent housing, public transport, healthcare, education, sanitation, communication, etc.”

And this trend of non-stop resource extraction shows no sign of abating as this chart projecting material extraction till 2050 shows (Circularity Gap Report)

Planetary boundary doughnut charts for North vs. South using this November 2021 article

“In the Doughnut plot above, dark green circles show the social foundation and ecological ceiling. Blue wedges show social performance relative to a threshold associated with meeting basic needs. Green wedges show resource use relative to a biophysical boundary associated with sustainability. Red wedges show shortfalls below the social threshold or overshoot beyond the biophysical boundary, while grey wedges show indicators with missing data.” (Taken from the website accompanying the Nov 2021 article)