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ALEX C. MICHALOS

COMBINING SOCIAL, ECONOMIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL INDICATORS TO MEASURE SUSTAINABLE HUMAN WELL-BEING

ABSTRACT. In this paper an attempt is made to illustrate some ways in which social, economic and environmental indicators can be combined to tell a coherent story about the sustainability of human well-being. Using examples from the fields of health, the fishing industry and energy, it is argued that one’s success at constructing a single comprehensive system of indicators of human well-being will always be limited by one’s particular point of departure from social, economic or environmental indicators. If that is indeed the case, then it would be helpful for researchers to abandon attempts to construct single comprehensive utopian systems in favour of agreed upon lists of important goals, indicators and monitoring procedures that can be used to implement progressive social change.

INTRODUCTION AND HISTORICAL REFLECTIONS

I approached the writing of this paper with all the enthusiasm of a trip to the dentist. The reason was that I knew I could not do what I really wanted to do, but I thought it would be good for me to try to do it one more time. Of the four broad topics Ted Schrecker wanted to have addressed at the conference, the problem of creating an integrated system of social, economic and environmental indicators attracted my attention in the early 1970s. I spent the 1969–70 academic year as a visiting professor at the University of Pittsburgh and had the opportunity of reading draft chapters of Nicholas Rescher’s book on Welfare practically before the ink dried on the pages. The idea of quantifying the quality of life immediately captured my imagination, and from that time until today, virtually all my research has been devoted to some aspect of this basic problem. In the early days of what we called the social indicators or quality of life movement, many of us saw our task primarily as that of designing a system of social indicators along the lines of the National Income and Product Accounts. For all their shortcomings, and they are many, since their development in the late 1930s, the Accounts Social Indicators Research 40: 221–258, 1997.

c 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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have proved to be enormously helpful to people trying to understand national economies. So, many of us thought that if we could construct a system that would give us as much success in the social field as others had had in the field of economics, we would be quite satisfied. Personally, I thought that in 25 years or so, we might actually have such a system. (An excellent review of economists’ efforts to expand the traditional Accounts to include some evaluation of social phenomena, resource depletion and pollution effects may be found in Eisner, 1988.) Alas, today the 25 years are up and not only is there no nice candidate system in sight, the coming of the environmental movement midway through the 25 year period has effectively put the likely completion of our project still farther down the road. At this point in time, it is clear that what is required is a system that accommodates not only economic and social indicators, but indicators of environmental degradation and resource conservation. In short, what is required is a comprehensive system of measuring the wide variety of aspects of human well-being, as well as the means of improving and sustaining it. Unfortunately, such a system (as I imagine it, anyhow) would involve the construction of something like a general theory of a good society (something like a utopia) which would be generally acceptable to most people. Obviously there is no trick in designing one’s own view of utopia. The trick is to design one that would be generally acceptable to most people. That is practically impossible because we cannot get agreement on the elements of utopia or on the proper evaluation of those elements. In philosopher’s jargon, that is to say, we can’t get a generally accepted ontology or an axiology. In plainer English, in practice, we can’t get agreement about the necessary furniture of our good society or of the value of each of the pieces. In theory or in principle, as we say, one might do it to satisfy oneself, but that is not much of an accomplishment. The real trick is to bring the rest of the world along. Anyhow, enough bad news. Briefly, what I am going to do is provide some fairly concrete examples to illustrate some of the social, economic and environmental indicators currently available and some of the headaches one encounters when one attempts to combine or integrate these indicators into a single coherent story about human well-being today and in the future. My remarks will

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be a bit more disconnected than I would prefer, but they will have to do for now. Since I don’t assume that I will be around in 25 years or so to see if my new prediction will be successful, I don’t have to worry about refutation. However, I do hope that some bright young people will have their imaginations captured as mine was and still is, and I hope they will finish the job we started many years ago. In this respect, I suppose my hopes are not very different from those of every potential social engineer since Plato.

A PRECAUTIONARY COMMENT

Suppose we begin with the question: What is it we want to sustain? If our point of departure is primarily economic and political, one might say that there are at least as many things in need of change as in need of sustenance. For example, we have a tax system that increasingly divides Canadians into rich and poor, effectively squeezing out the middle class. Putting a slightly different emphasis on the same point, we could say that our tax system is currently designed to transfer inordinate amounts of wealth from working class people and industrial capitalists to financial capitalists, which undermines industrial growth, increases debt and impoverishes ordinary working people. Clearly, such a tax system should be changed rather than sustained. Suppose we being with our commitment to some kind of an egalitarian society and ask: What do we want to sustain? Among other things, I would say we want to sustain those institutions that contribute toward such a society and dispose of those that undermine it. Again, one can focus on our tax system as an important institution at odds with our aim to construct an egalitarian society. Similarly, one might focus on the feminization of poverty in Canada, the problem of glass ceilings on women’s corporate advancement, on unenforced male parental responsibility to pay child support and any number of other oppressive features of our society. Proceeding from the point of view of constructing an egalitarian society, we might employ something like the index of gender equality designed by Harvey, Blakely and Tepperman (1990) or the UN gender-disparity-adjusted human development index (United Nations, 1994). Whatever specific measures we employ, we must be careful to consider the question of simple sustainability of the status quo versus

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progressive change to some other status that is more worthy of sustenance. Addressing the apparently benign aim of creating a relatively socially integrated or inclusive society, the authors of the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (1994: p. 3) Briefing Paper on Social Integration: Approaches and Issues wrote: If not carefully thought out, a call for greater ‘inclusion’ in the benefits of development can be made without questioning the nature of the current process of development itself. It is intellectually easy and often politically expedient to assume that grave problems of poverty and injustice can be alleviated through ‘including’ people formerly ‘excluded’ from certain activities or benefits. Yet, in many cases, : : : the existing state of affairs may sometimes be not only ecologically unsustainable but also politically repressive. It is useful to remember that strongly authoritarian or totalitarian societies do in fact ‘include’ everyone in elaborate structures of managed participation. In such cases, the problem of improving the quality of life for most people is not one of exclusion or inclusion, but of reform.

ALTERNATIVE BEGINNINGS

Mindful of the preceding precautionary remarks, let us assume the role of concerned environmentalists and ask: What is it we want to sustain? Beginning with natural resources, among other things, we want to sustain (1) a usable stock of physical resources, measured in physical quantities; (2) the asset value of these resources, measured in dollars; (3) the jobs based on these resources, measured by total numbers and types; (4) the income value based on the resources and jobs, measured in dollars; (5) the consumptive value (measured in personal satisfaction, perceived well-being, morbidity and mortality and/or dollars). At a minimum, then, if we proceed from our natural resources, there are at least five kinds of important statistical time series to be constructed relative to each distinctive physical resource. As most of us are aware, our supply of relevant statistics is fairly limited in most areas. Nevertheless, for some of our most important resources, we have some useful numbers. In particular, we have some useful numbers related to energy (especially energy from oil and gas), fisheries,

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timber, and scientific and technological research and development. Below I will briefly review some of our progress to date from this point of departure, and I will provide specific examples of the sorts of things included in the five different categories. If we proceed from our economic resources, we are likely to begin with a subset of the total set of numbers in the Bank of Canada’s quarterly summary of financial and economic statistics. The Bank’s statistics include many but not all of the numbers in the Canadian System of National Accounts, plus labour force statistics. While some at least of the dollar values of physical assets made by people are measured in net and gross capital formation figures (including the value of construction and manufacturing equipment) and the dollar values of financial assets are also readily available, these statistics do not include any measures of human-made physical assets in physical quantities. So, one would be hard-pressed to provide stock figures in physical terms for economic resources (i.e., numbers of machines of various types, buildings, etc.). As a matter of fact, currently there is no official figure on the dollar value of all the natural and humanmade physical assets owned by the Canadian government, or perhaps more accurately by Canadians through their government. Thus, the Study Group of the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants (1989: p. 16) claimed that Government statements of assets and liabilities now often provide a complete summary of liabilities but, on the asset side, include only financial assets. The result is that users are presented with an incomplete picture of financial position and often with no information at all on the future service capacity of a government’s physical assets. Information on the stock of physical assets and on changes over time in stock are also useful to get a picture of the size and growth of government.

If we proceed from our social resources, we are likely to begin with a subset of the total set of numbers in Statistics Canada’s quarterly Canadian Social Trends, or perhaps one of its predecessors like Perspectives Canada III (1980). Thinking of likely candidates for social resources, we might follow the authors of Statistics Canada’s recently published Human Activity and the Environment 1994. The Canadian data in that volume are broadly organized under three headings, population, environment and process, collectively referred to by the volume’s authors as the “PEP framework”. The chapter on population has various groupings, e.g., fertility and mortality figures, migration figures, etc. These sorts of things one might think of as

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social resources. But there is nothing about so-called social pathologies in the population section or any other section of the book. There are no crime rates, victimization rates, rates of lone parent families, alcoholics, drug addicts and homeless people. Presumably the main reason such things are absent from the book is that such things would not be regarded as any kind of resources by anyone. They are not social, economic or environmental resources. Rather, they are pretty simply social problems. If these are the sorts of fish we are after, and I am sure they are, we need a conceptual net quite different from the one provided by the PEP framework. When I reflect on the past 25 years of research on social indicators of the quality of life, one of the most striking things is the disjointedness of research communities. Judging from citations, one finds that, for example, people interested in job or marital satisfaction are often unfamiliar with those working on life satisfaction and happiness. Economists do not seem to read sociologists and psychologists, and vice versa. More to the point of this discussion, environmentalists are largely unfamiliar with the work of sociologists, psychologists and economists, and vice versa. One unfortunate result of this division of labour is that when one tries to integrate results from the diverse disciplines, one finds serious limitations. For example, as we have just seen, if one’s point of departure is some idea of a resource to be exploited, conserved and so on, it is very difficult to find one’s way to the criminal justice system, single parents and so on. If, on the other hand, one’s point of departure is the problem of female headed lone parent families living in poverty, it is very difficult to find one’s way to environmental degradation and resource conservation. The conceptual nets that are very successful at capturing certain species of issues in one area are very unsuccessful in other areas. Consequently, our ideas about integrating information from the diverse areas should probably be conceptualized in relatively unfamiliar, if not entirely novel, ways.

AN EXAMPLE OF INTEGRATION FROM THE HEALTH FIELD

Sometimes several of our indicators in a particular area are relatively easily combined to tell a single story about human well-being. This was the case, for example, with the indicators on death, disease

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and health care that I assembled for my comparative study of the quality of life in Canada and the USA from 1964 to 1974 (Michalos, 1980: pp. 127–270). Exhibit 1 summarizes the 19 social indicators that were used along with the stock and flow scores each country received for the period under study. My scoring system was very primitive. Briefly, I gave a country one point when the stock value of its indicator was superior to that of the other country and one point when its flow value (annual percent change) was superior. For example, the top row of the table shows that Canada got 10 points for having superior (lower, hence, preferred, better, etc.) infant mortality rates (stocks) in the study period and another 5 points because its annual percent changes (flows) were also preferable to those in the United States for the same years. In four cases, the American rates decreased more than the Canadian rates decreased, making 4 (flow) points for the former. Summarizing the chapter, I wrote: With respect to the general area of health, the quality of life in Canada is higher than that in the United States. To avoid any misunderstanding, I should emphasize again that one should not try to get more out of the comparative scores than we have put into them. Just as a majority vote by a show of hands may be taken as a measure of the alternative preferred by most voters but not as a measure of the most preferred alternative (i.e., as a measure of the intensity of the voters’ preferences), our comparative scores must not be interpreted as measures of the actual distance in some sense between Canada and the United States in the field of health. The most remarkable feature of the comparison is its intuitive simplicity and plausibility. If one compares the values of our indicators of death and disease, Canada is better off than the United States. If one compares expenditures for coping mechanisms, including food expenditures, Canada is still better off. It is only in the treatment indicators (numbers 8–12) that the United States is better off. One would hope that the extra treatment Canadians receive is part of the cause (and price) of their superior death and disease rates. If all other things were equal, lower treatment rates would indicate a generally healthier population. When one reflects upon the extraordinarily confused and complicated picture that might have emerged from all these statistics, the results we have obtained are almost unbelievable. Canadians pay less and get more out of their health care system than Americans. (Michalos, 1980: pp. 173–174).

A SECOND EXAMPLE, FROM THE FISHING INDUSTRY

While fishing around for appropriate examples of renewable assets for which we have statistics on stocks measured in physical quantities

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Exhibit 1 Death, disease and health care Canada Stock Flow

Social indicator 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

Infant mortality Percent of smokers Believers in connection between smoking and cancer Suicide Tobacco and alcohol expenditure Selected reportable diseases Blindness Hospital occupancy Mean stay in hospitals Surgical operations Resident patients in public mental hospitals Resident patients in public institutions for mentally retarded Food energy available Supplies of nutrients Food expenditure Physicians Registered nurses Hospital beds Combined personal and government health care expenditure Health subtotal Health total

USA Stock Flow

10 0

5 0

0 1

4 0

0 7

0 2

1 3

0 7

5 10 10 2 0 0

3 7 0 4 0 2

5 0 0 6 9 9

6 2 0 4 0 5

9

4

0

4

8 0 2 10 0 9 9

3 3 3 4 6 0 0

0 8 6 0 9 0 0

3 4 3 5 2 0 0

9 100

1 47

0 57

7 56

147

113

Source: Michalos, 1980: p. 173.

and dollars, as well as dependent jobs and earnings, I came upon a recent report from Environment Canada’s State of the Environment Reporting Program (Environment Canada, 1994) on Pacific herring fish stocks. The information is not as extensive as one would want, but what is available provides a good illustration of the combi-

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nation of environmental and economic indicators to measure the sustainability of human well-being in a limited area. The next few paragraphs essentially summarize the SOE Bulletin. Pacific herring are a small silver-coloured fish that flourish on Canada’s Pacific coast. The importance of these fish to other species may be appreciated by noting that they make up 62% of the diet of Chinook salmon, 58% of the diet of Coho salmon and 53% of the diet of Pacific halibut (Environment Canada, 1994: p. 2). The five stock areas for Pacific herring are managed by Canada and harvested only by Canadian fishing vessels. Until the late 1960s, as much as 250 000 tonnes of these fish were harvested in a single year, much more than could be replaced by the roughly 15 000 tonnes left behind to spawn. The fish were processed primarily for fish meal and oil, which are relatively low value products constituting what is called a reduction fishery. In 1967 the commercial fishery collapsed and the federal government banned commercial herring fishing for four years. By 1972 the fish stock was rebuilt to 100 000 to 200 000 tonnes and a new commercial fishery was developed based on sales of about 35 000 tonnes of Pacific herring roe (eggs). The most remarkable thing about this fish story is this. Since 1983, catches have not been permitted to exceed 20% of each stock’s spawning biomass, as forecasted annually. : : : Since 1982, the value [of the fishery] has generally been well above $40 million although the current ‘roe’ fishery harvests only about one-tenth the herring caught during the ‘reduction’ fishery of the 1960s. (Environment Canada, 1994: p. 4)

Exhibit 2 shows the commercial catch and spawning biomass trends from 1951 to 1993, clearly indicating a commercial fishery that is sustainable in the long run. In 1993, the wholesale market value of herring roe was $180 million and about 6 000 people were employed annually in the fishery. While average earnings for fishery workers were not available, In 1991, on average, herring contributed $214 500 to gross income of a herring boat, while other species, mainly salmon, accounted for $146 500 per boat. (Environment Canada, 1994: p. 4).

Exhibit 3 shows the forty year trends in commercial catch and landed values, clearly indicating that we are now making more money using fewer assets than ever before. To the extent that human

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Source: Environment Canada, 1994: p. 3.

ALEX C. MICHALOS

Exhibit 2

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well-being is directly and indirectly connected to these figures, one must conclude that our condition appears to be both better than it was and sustainable in the long run.

A THIRD EXAMPLE, FROM THE ENERGY FIELD: SOME BENEFITS

Several countries currently have programs for the development of accounting systems that will measure the asset values of renewable and non-renewable resources in order to combine these values with the asset values of physical assets made by humans. Some examples may be found in Steer and Lutz (1993) and Munasinghe (1993). Researchers at Statistics Canada have already produced pilot studies of the asset values of crude oil and natural gas, and timber, i.e., non-renewable and renewable assets (Born, 1993; Statistics Canada, 1994). Born (1993) provided estimates of physical estimates of physical resource stocks of crude oil and natural gas reserves in Alberta measured in physical quantities and dollars for the period from 1961 to 1990. “Known reserves of oil and natural gas reserves that are not commercially exploitable in the foreseeable future are excluded” from her discussion and from Canada’s Balance Sheet Accounts (Born, 1993: p. 79). Estimates of the closing stock of reserves in cubic metres are made by adding opening stock figures to net reserve additions and subtracting reserve depletion figures from that sum. In 1961 the closing stock of crude oil reserves was estimated at 557.6 millions of cubic metres, compared to 510.5 millions in 1990. The 1961 closing stock of natural gas reserves was estimated at 879.9 billions of cubic metres, compared to 1647.4 billions in 1990 (Exhibit 4). Exhibit 4 provides an excellent lesson regarding measures of sustainability. In particular, what one learns from this exhibit is that, depending on prices, exploration activity, discoveries and use, “commercially exploitable” non-renewable resource reserves may increase or decrease over time. Obviously, the emphasis must be put on “commercially exploitable”. As James Laxer once put it, “: : : reserve figures (for oil and gas) and producibility estimates are not calculations of physical quantities, they are economic assessments of what can be produced at any given time” (from Michalos, 1981: p. 10).

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Source: Environment Canada, 1994: p. 4.

Exhibit 3

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Exhibit 4 Alberta crude oil and natural gas reserves: Physical quantities, dollar values, total employment, wages/salary earnings, 1961–1990 Year

(1)

(2)

(3)

1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990

557.6 575.6 605.4 926.1 965.7 1 074.2 1 132.9 1 212.8 1 222.8 1 207.9 1 173.6 1 126.0 1 052.0 1 011.5 950.9 871.3 830.0 794.5 760.2 719.9 696.0 649.4 657.8 640.7 648.5 634.7 613.8 592.9 560.5 510.5

879.9 912.1 928.2 992.0 1 057.6 1072.6 1 119.1 1 223.6 1 273.4 1 279.4 1 276.3 1 269.1 1 396.6 1 486.5 1 450.8 1 501.7 1 568.3 1 665.2 1 718.4 1 747.0 1 795.3 1 853.1 1 826.2 1 798.4 1 768.3 1 720.1 1 651.7 1 627.7 1 649.7 1 647.4

3 189 2 897 3 519 5 381 5 107 5 145 4 921 6 155 6 431 8 510 10 061 11 094 15 262 27 161 31 062 32 960 40 073 45 944 47 406 48 936 53 521 56 715 96 300 96 258 95 353 25 440 37 004 9 856 15 438 19 963

(4)

,1 280 336 2 583 3 258 3 760 3 703 4 509 4 608 3 335 1 701 949 1 218 3 343 13 131 29 283 45 250 58 963 59 090 75 827 108 122 92 319 115 805 111 886 118 566 113 028 54 618 19 030 9 767 6 041 10 368

(5)

(6)

(7)

9 148 9 243 9 261 9 405 9 930 10 493 11 274 12 098 12 629 13 438 14 290 14 938 15 124 18 375 16 363 17 397 18 563 20 176 22 418 24 780 26 110 28 730 30 351 33 718 31 211 34 466 31 472 31 141 29 791 29 681

59.9 63.9 64.1 65.9 72.2 82.1 97.3 111.1 126.7 138.5 159.6 178.3 193.1 234.1 256.9 314.0 358.5 418.4 498.2 613.1 719.9 939.5 1 114.0 1 292.6 1 290.1 1 391.8 1 487.3 1 571.7 1 630.1 1 624.5

249.6 260.8 256.4 257.4 272.5 295.3 336.7 370.3 403.5 422.3 470.8 498.0 495.1 524.9 524.3 590.0 633.4 697.3 754.9 839.9 889.9 1 068.8 1 206.9 1 357.8 1 320.5 1 391.8 1 420.5 1 434.0 1 418.7 1 369.7



(1) = oil mcm, (2) = gas bcm, (3) = oil m$, (4) = gas m$, (5) = total empl., (6) = wages/salaries earnings m$, (7) = earnings m1986$. Sources: Born, 1993: pp. 88–89; Statistics Canada, The crude petroleum and natural gas industry (cat. #26-213), various years from 1962 to 1992.

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Granted that the figures for stocks of physical quantities at any point in time are conditional on commercial exploitability at that time, the figures we have for crude oil clearly indicate an unsustainable trend for this resource. Presumably, some people will say that as reserves decrease, prices, exploration and discoveries will increase along with new reserves. Others will say that even if such a sustainable scenario occurs in the short run, it cannot occur in the long run and forever. If it can, crude oil should be redefined as a renewable resource. Failing that redefinition, we should grant our exploitation of our crude oil resources is unsustainable. Although the figures we have for natural gas seem to indicate a practically unlimited supply, since the more we use the more there seems to be, this is an illusion. In fact, according to other estimates of Statistics Canada (1994: p. 288, Table 5.5.2), by 1992 the reserve life index of (commercially exploitable) crude oil in Alberta was put at 8 years and that of natural gas was put at 15 years. (The reserve life index is defined as the “stock of remaining reserves divided by current production”.) Reflecting on the meaning of these reserve figures for human well-being, I would say that to the extent that they indicate that we are on a path leading to shortages, they show that our situation is deteriorating. Estimates of the monetary value of the reserves were obtained from three different methods of evaluation, namely, present value, net price and replacement cost. As you can imagine, each of the methods is itself a virtually unlimited resource for economic speculation and manipulation, none of which need detain us. For our purposes, brief definitions of the three methods (following Born) will suffice. With the present value method, the estimated value of a resource is just the expected net flow of income from it assuming current prices and costs and some appropriate discount rate for future figures. With the net price method, the estimated value of a resource is measured by finding the current net price per unit extracted and multiplying that times the remaining physical reserves. “The net price method is a special case of the present value method” according to Born (1993: p. 83). With the replacement cost method, the estimated value of a resource is measured by the cost of discovering and developing it.

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Perhaps the easiest way to appreciate the differences between these methods is to look at their figures for 1990. Thus, for 1990 the estimates are as follows, in billions of dollars.

Present value Net price Replace. cost

Oil reserves

Natural gas reserves

$11.9–$14.4 $20.0–$41.2 $43

$4.1–$7.7 $10.4–$65.1 $81

With the exception of the estimated value of oil reserves in the ground based on the present value method, the range of variation of these figures is quite striking. The net price method gives a range of over 100% for oil reserves and over 600% for natural gas reserves. For natural gas reserves, the present value method gives a range of nearly 100%. I do not know why no range figures were given for the replacement cost figures. Regarding these variations, Born (1993: pp. 83–84) wrote: Present value estimates vary considerably depending on the assumptions made and this is their major weakness. Several assumptions relating to the appropriate discount rate, return to man-made capital and depreciation charges need to be chosen in order to produce results. : : : The difference in the estimates from the two methodologies [present value and net price] lies in the difference in the treatment of the man-made capital employed in exploring, developing and extracting the natural resources.

Examining the estimated dollar values of Alberta crude oil and natural gas reserves for the 1961–1990 period (Exhibit 4, columns 3 and 4), one finds that there has been roughly a six-fold increase in the former and a ten-fold increase in the latter. That is certainly good news in itself, but it must also be observed that the peak years were 1983 to 1985 and that there was a severe decrease in the dollar values from 1985 to 1990. To the extent that the presence of wealth is generally more favourable than its absence to human well-being and the most recent trends may be most indicative of things to come, the decreases might cautiously be regarded as additional indicators of our deteriorating condition. Besides giving the detailed Alberta figures for oil and gas in physical quantities and dollars for the 1961 to 1990 period, Exhibit 4 gives the total employment and earnings (wages and salaries) figures. Unfortunately, the figures for the oil and gas industries are

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combined, so one cannot tell which industry is accounting for which jobs or earnings. What is clear is that the total number of jobs for the whole 30 year period peaked in 1986 and has been declining since then. Except for the two year dip in 1975 and 1976, there had been a steady increase in jobs in these industries since 1961, which is a pretty healthy supply of jobs. In fact, the 1990 total employment figure represents a 225% increase over 1961. So, from the point of view of the impact on human well-being since 1961, there has certainly been an improvement. The wages and salaries figures in column (6) of Exhibit 4 are recalculated into 1986 dollars in column (7) using the GDP Implicit Deflator, which is a bit more general than the Consumer Price Index. Using the employment figures from column (5) and the constant dollar earnings from column (7), we can calculate the earnings per worker in the oil and gas industry in Alberta. In 1990 the average worker earned $46 147, compared to $27 284 in 1961. So there was an increase of 69%. Thus, on the whole the industry produced more jobs and higher earnings for its workers, which must be regarded as some improvement in human well-being. If one compares the earnings of these workers with the real per capita incomes of all Canadians in the 1961 to 1990 period, one finds that the average earnings of these workers were about five times the national average at the beginning of the period and only about two times the national average at the end. So, whatever increases in earnings are worth to workers in terms of their well-being, the average worker in the oil and gas industry was always better off than the average Canadian worker, though the gap between these workers narrowed over time.

SOME COSTS IN THE ENERGY FIELD

“In 1990, fossil fuel combustion accounted for approximately 94 percent of total carbon dioxide emissions from the Canadian economy” (Statistics Canada, 1994: p. 168). Carbon dioxide is one of several so-called greenhouse gases which act as a kind of mirror reflecting relatively long wave solar radiation back to earth. The result is an enhancement of a naturally occurring greenhouse effect, increasing the average global temperature of the earth. While our

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best figures for resource stocks of oil and gas, and for employment and earnings related to these resources came from Alberta, our best figures regarding pollution resulting from burning these resources comes from Canada as a whole. Exhibit 5 shows carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion for 1958 to 1992, in total megatonnes, tonnes per capita and kilograms per 1986 dollars. In particular, the exhibit shows that total emissions and emissions per capita have increased 151% and 51% respectively, in that period, while emissions per dollar have decreased 31%. The authors of the Statistics Canada (1994: p. 168) report attributed the per dollar decrease to “increased efficiency of fossil fuel use, restructuring of the economy away from activities that consume relatively large amounts of fossil fuels, and the increased use of energy commodities that produce less CO2 per unit of delivered energy”. Clearly, all of this is good news. The fact that total emissions increased is partly good news because it indicates increased industrial activity, jobs, private earnings and public tax revenues, and partly bad news because it indicates that the earth’s total output of greenhouse gases has been increased, which will in turn increase its average temperature. The fact that emissions per capita also increased is, I suppose, simply bad news. Summarizing the indications of the three indicators, it is fair to say that they show that we are still moving along a self-destructive and therefore non-sustainable path of energy usage, but we are moving more efficiently. On the whole, I would say this means that human well-being is deteriorating. Environment Canada’s (1991) excellent compendium of statistics on The State of Canada’s Environment lists several undesirable consequences of increased global warming, including a variety of factors making it impossible to be certain what is going to happen. For example, we are told that “Some regions are likely to see agricultural yields reduced; although others may see increases, it cannot be predicted in advance who will gain and who will lose” (p. 22–5). Virtually everything we expect to happen in the future depends on what we put into our predictive models. On this score, the authors tell us that One of the major disagreements among models : : : concerns the net effect of cloud feedbacks. The problem arises because clouds not only reflect incoming solar radiation (thus making the earth cooler) but also trap outgoing infrared radiation

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Exhibit 5 Carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion, 1958–1992 CO2 emissions Megatonnes

CO2 emissions per capita Tonnes per capita

CO2 emissions per $ of real GDP Kilograms per 1986 $

174 187 189 194 206 220 235 254 265 281 302 314 334 342 363 376 379 381 396 390 394 412 414 402 387 380 393 385 376 404 432 452 432 422 436

10.17 10.68 10.54 10.61 11.07 11.59 12.14 12.92 13.23 13.78 14.55 14.93 15.67 15.51 16.28 16.66 16.56 16.40 16.82 16.38 16.39 16.96 16.82 15.79 14.91 14.31 14.70 15.20 14.80 15.21 16.14 16.55 15.54 14.99 15.33

1.13 1.17 1.15 1.15 1.14 1.15 1.15 1.17 1.15 1.18 1.20 1.19 1.23 1.19 1.20 1.15 1.11 1.09 1.06 1.01 0.98 0.98 0.97 0.89 0.88 0.83 0.81 0.81 0.77 0.77 0.79 0.80 0.76 0.76 0.78

Year 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992

Notes: The 1990 CO2 emissions figure reported above matches the 431.5 megatonnes of CO2 from fossil fuel combustion reported by Environment Canada (Jaques, A. P., Canada’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Estimates for 1990. Environment Canada, Ottawa, 1992). Carbon dioxide emissions from non-combustion uses of fossil fuels (as chemical feedstocks for example) are not included in the above estimates. Source: Statistics Canada, 1994: p. 168.

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(thus making it warmer). : : : The predicted warming [from different models thus] varies from 1.9  C to 5.2  C. The wide spread in the results is largely due to differences in the calculation of net cloud feedbacks. (pp. 22–12, 22–13)

Most of the consequences of global warming that are discussed in this volume are based on the assumption that there will be a heating effect similar to what one would expect from a doubling of carbon dioxide emissions by about the year 2025. But we are ominously told that even if a doubling were beneficial there would still be a need to avoid much larger increases whose consequences would inevitably be detrimental. : : : If greenhouse gas emissions continue at present rates, not only will we surpass a carbon dioxide doubling equivalent but we will also increase the rapidity of climatic change. : : : the potential for greenhouse gas increase is so large that at some point the use of fossil fuels will have to be restricted on climatic grounds alone. [Thus, for Canada there must be] : : : a fundamental shift from a supply-side emphasis in energy policy to an end-use emphasis. For Canada, this implies shifting from a resource-oriented, export economy to a more information-based, high-tech economy. (pp. 22–24, 22–25) :::

Exhibit 6 (from Statistics Canada, 1994: p. 163) summarizes Canadian domestic consumption of primary energy commodities in the period from 1958 to 1992. Since it gives us figures for coal, crude oil, natural gas and electricity, as well as total figures, we could continue our story about oil and gas by calculating per capita consumption of these resources. However, instead of pursuing that line, I want to expand our discussion to talk about energy commodities collectively in order to be able to include more available information. First, then, it may be noted that in 1958 natural gas consumption accounted for only 13% of total energy consumption, while crude oil and coal consumption accounted for 52% and 22%, respectively. In 1992, coal consumption made up about 13% of total energy consumption, crude oil accounted for 36%, natural gas accounted for 36% and electricity accounted for the remaining 15%. Because natural gas is environmentally more friendly than coal and oil (Michalos, 1981), this distribution represents an improvement for human well-being. Exhibit 7 combines overall energy consumption figures with some population and economic figures to provide a relatively less attractive view of our situation in the 1958 to 1992 period. While our population increased 66% and our real Gross Domestic Product (i.e., GDP in constant 1986 dollars) increased 266%, per capita

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Exhibit 6 Domestic consumption of primary energy commodities, 1958–1992 Year

Coal

Crude oil

Natural gas1 Petajoules

Electricity

Total

1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992

637 625 559 548 557 598 621 648 635 629 683 660 708 673 635 654 665 658 709 773 789 876 928 946 1 002 1 048 1 167 1 122 1 040 1 118 1 200 1 198 1 077 1 104 1 137

1 490 1 644 1 715 1 803 1 903 2 050 2 092 2 168 2 328 2 372 2 544 2 654 2 860 3 119 3 425 3 771 3 931 3 806 3 770 4 004 4 011 4 297 4 196 3 990 3 332 3 183 3 170 3 077 3 038 3 155 3 339 3 402 3 463 3 249 3 175

366 433 497 579 662 721 809 895 982 1 045 1 160 1 294 1 418 1 518 1 711 1 818 1 851 1 873 1 912 1 699 1 712 1 803 1 871 1 814 1 791 1 847 2 016 2 532 2 481 2 574 2 810 3 026 2 893 2 938 3 124

359 334 362 364 370 371 405 421 464 479 490 533 559 579 641 695 762 744 792 820 878 888 934 962 936 983 1 058 1 145 1 231 1 235 1 278 1 276 1 304 1 322 1 312

2 852 3 037 3 134 3 294 3 491 3 740 3 926 4 131 4 408 4 524 4 878 5 141 5 545 5 890 6 411 6 937 7 209 7 081 7 183 7 296 7 389 7 864 7 929 7 713 7 062 7 061 7 412 7 876 7 789 8 082 8 627 8 902 8 738 8 612 8 748

Note: 1 Includes natural gas liquids. Source: Statistics Canada, 1994: p. 163.

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energy consumption also increased 84%. This is what one would have supposed was happening given our CO2 emission increases (i.e., in Exhibit 5). Given all these differences, one also would have expected to see decreases in our energy consumption per dollar of real GDP, and there was a decrease of 16%. How should we summarize the information in Exhibit 7 from the point of view of human well-being? Since we were clearly making more money using less energy in 1992 than we were in 1958, our situation improved. On the other hand, each of us was using nearly twice as much energy at the end of the period as at the beginning which, because of its concomitant emission effects and the limits of our resources, indicates that our situation deteriorated. So, on balance, I think we are worse off. As is fairly well known, Canada has traditionally been a net exporter of primary energy commodities (crude oil, natural gas, coal and electricity), as Exhibit 8 illustrates for the 1958 to 1992 period. On this score, the authors of Human Activity and the Environment 1994 wrote: As net exporters of energy Canadians are accepting a degraded environment for the benefit of energy consumers elsewhere. Of course, the economic benefits and costs of external trade in energy and other commodities must be considered alongside the environmental consequences. (Statistics Canada, 1994: p. 162).

What is perhaps less well known is that of all the ways to make money, exports are the most expensive in terms of energy used per dollar of product. According to Hamilton (1993: p. 4), The energy intensiveness of a good or service is the total energy required in production directly (in the producing sector) and indirectly (by the producers of the inputs to the producing sector) per unit of output. For example, the energy intensity of an automobile consists of the energy consumed on the production line plus the energy required to make the steel, rubber, plastic and other component materials making up the car, divided by the dollar value of the car – this gives a measure in joules of energy per dollar of product.

Exhibit 9 summarizes the energy intensity of final expenditures in the period from 1981 to 1986. As Hamilton (p. 5) explains it, This table presents : : : the energy required to produce one dollar’s worth of the whole spectrum of goods and services consumed by households. : : : These figures reveal a consistent ranking of energy intensiveness by category of expenditure, with exports leading, followed closely by imports, then investment in fixed capital, consumer expenditure, and far behind, government current expenditure (which is

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Exhibit 7 Selected energy indicators, 1958–1992 Consumption of energy Year commodities1

Population

Real GDP

Energy consumption per capita

Petajoules

Thousands

Billion 1986$

Gigajoules per capita

Megajoules per 1986 $

2852 3037 3134 3294 3491 3740 3926 4131 4408 4524 4878 5141 5545 5890 6411 6937 7209 7081 7183 7296 7389 7864 7929 7713 7062 7061 7412 7876 7789 8082 8627 8902 8738 8612 8748

17120 17522 17909 18271 18614 18964 19325 19678 20048 20412 20729 21028 21324 22026 22284 22560 22875 23209 23518 23796 24036 24277 24593 24900 25202 25456 25702 25942 26204 26550 26895 27379 27791 28118 28436

153 159 164 169 181 191 203 217 232 238 251 265 271 287 303 327 341 350 372 385 403 418 425 440 426 439 467 489 506 526 549 566 566 556 560

167 173 175 180 188 197 203 210 220 222 235 244 260 267 288 308 315 305 305 307 307 324 322 310 280 277 288 304 297 304 321 325 314 306 308

18.59 19.05 19.09 19.46 19.26 19.62 19.31 19.06 19.04 18.99 19.43 19.44 20.43 20.52 21.13 21.23 21.13 20.22 19.33 18.94 18.35 18.80 18.68 17.52 16.58 16.07 15.86 16.09 15.40 15.36 15.71 15.74 15.44 15.49 15.62

2

1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992

Energy consumption per $ of real GDP

Notes: 1 Includes consumption of energy commodities for non-energy purposes; as petrochemical feedstocks, for example. 2 The joule is the basic unit of measurement for energy. A 50 litre tank of gasoline contains approximately 1.7 billion joules. Source: Statistics Canada, 1994: p. 161.

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Exhibit 8 Primary energy commodities, 1958–1992

Source: Statistics Canada, 1994: p. 162.

largely wages and salaries and so does not entail significant energy use). : : : The values reported in [the imports row] do not represent the actual energy intensities of our imports but rather, the energy intensities of these goods as if they were produced in Canada.

If I understand Hamilton’s analysis correctly, it would appear that from the point of view of energy conservation, those who recommend export-led economic development for Canada and the world economy as a whole are recommending the most expensive line of development possible. Indeed, since most of the energy expended for such development in the foreseeable future is going to come from burning fossil fuels, such development is also the most environmentally hostile sort of development possible. Granted that there was a

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Exhibit 9 Energy intensity of final expenditure, 1981–1986 Category

1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 Megajoules per constant 1981 dollar

Consumer expenditure Investment in fixed capital Government current expenditure Exports Imports

10.1 12.7 3.9 21.5 17.9

9.8 11.5 3.8 19.4 16.8

10.0 11.7 3.9 20.0 18.7

9.3 10.9 3.7 18.1 16.0

10.0 11.5 4.0 18.3 16.9

9.8 10.9 3.9 17.7 16.2

Source: Hamilton, 1993: p. 5.

17% decrease in the energy intensity of our exports from 1981 to 1986, we were still pursuing the most costly manner of economic development possible. From the point of view of energy conservation, the goods and services produced by governments for household consumption were least costly of all. Presumably this does not mean that our strategy should be to let governments do everything, since the crucial variable is obviously not who is providing the goods and services but which ones are provided. Of course, as a democratic socialist, I suspect there are many things currently provided by private markets that might be more economically produced by governments, but this is not the place to make that case. Besides, one could easily find evidence supporting the opposite case. Since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Canada United States Trade Agreement (CUSTA) were both pursued, partly at least, in the interests of having export-led economic development, those who criticized the deals as being anti-conservationist and environmentally hostile were correct. There is no need to enter into an exhaustive analysis of all the problems of these two trade deals, or the more extensive latest round of the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade. (Such an analysis may be found in Michalos, 1995). However, to the extent that the former deals represent the economic development strategy of our current and previous federal governments, they merit some attention. In particular, because evidence has been provided here showing that export-led economic development involving fossil fuels is likely to be destructive of human well-being in the long run, we can hardly avoid spending some time on the deals.

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Although the NAFTA has no provisions that explicitly allow subsidies for environmental cleansing, conservation or renewable energy, it does have explicit provisions allowing subsidies for increased exploration and exploitation of fossil fuels, crude oil and natural gas (Article 608.2). These provisions are exactly the opposite of what they would have been if the authors of the NAFTA were sensitive to considerations of the energy intensity or greenhouse consequences of industrial development. Besides being antithetical to the public interest in sustainable development, when these provisions are combined with the prohibitions against special export taxes to cover the costs of “increased exploration and exploitation” (Articles 603 and 604), it is clear that not only natural resources are being exploited. According to Munasinghe (1993: p. 17), “The basic rule for efficient pricing of a scarce resource (or service) such as water (or transport) is that price should equal the cost of providing a marginal (additional) unit of output”. Since this cannot happen, the following criticism of the NAFTA was and still is well warranted. Selling conventional oil and gas reserves at prices far below their replacement costs subsidizes U.S. consumers. These lower-cost, more accessible and more environmentally benign conventional reserves will have to be replaced by more costly offshore and frontier resources. (Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, 1992: p. 19)

The proportionality clauses carried forward from the CUSTA (Articles 409 and 904) encourage the continuous flow of natural resources without restrictions, which is again completely antithetical to considerations of conservation and environmental degradation. NAFTA Article 316 says that, with certain specified exceptions, Parties may adopt or maintain a restriction : : : with respect to the export of a good : : : only if : : : the restriction does not reduce the proportion of the total export shipments of the specific good made available to that other Party relative to the total supply of that good of the Party maintaining the restriction as compared to the proportion prevailing in the most recent 36-month period. : : :

Article 605 has similar provisions specifically related to energy and basic petrochemicals. Even before the implementation of the CUSTA and the NAFTA, the Mulroney government had seriously undermined Canadian

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conservationism in the energy field. According to Dillon (1988: p. 49), Canada : : : had restrictions on the export of natural gas since 1907. Between 1959 and 1986, natural gas producers could not export to the U.S. unless they had a 25-year supply of gas available for sale in Canada. This ‘surplus test’ was first reduced to 15 years and then eliminated altogether by the Mulroney government. Thanks to this unqualified faith in transnational private enterprise, : : : Canadian governments will have lost the power to assure adequate domestic energy supplies before exports are sanctioned.

The NAFTA creates a Catch 22 situation for conservationists. Conservation must be paid for by governments or industries. If Canadian governments pay, then U.S. industries claim we are giving unfair subsidies; e.g., the government of British Columbia backed away from its reforestation subsidies in the face of U.S. complaints that they were unfair (Sinclair, 1993). If we ask our industries to pay, then they claim we are giving them an unfair handicap unless the Americans also make their industries pay. The likely result is that relatively fewer conservationist measures will be introduced, requiring relatively fewer payments and practically guaranteeing an impoverished future for those who come after us. Perhaps these remarks are sufficient for present purposes. The global trade envisioned by the NAFTA and other international trade treaties is based on a supply of cheap fossil fuel that is probably not sustainable. Given the current traffic in international trade with its characteristic problems securing supplies, problems with periodic massive oil spills and problems resulting from burning hydrocarbons, it is hard to believe that the current trend toward globalization will be sustainable or improve human well-being in the long run. Many people have been arguing for some time, with good reasons, that the development model of transnational corporations and the World Bank/IMF is simply counter-productive from the point of view of the long term sustainable development desired and required by most Third World countries; e.g., see the African Alternative Framework in Ecumenical Coalition for Economic Justice (1990: pp. 73–82). It is also counter-productive for the rest of us (Michalos, 1995). However, my point here is that quite apart from the overall social and economic counter-productivity of the globalization-oftrade model of development, the latter is unsustainable from an environmental-conservationist point of view.

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ENERGY AND TRANSPORTATION: MORE COSTS

One can hardly avoid talking about transportation in the context of energy usage, since “In 1992, transportation accounted for 30 percent of all energy use in Canada” (Statistics Canada, 1994: p. 94). What is worse, “Of pollutants emitted to air, transportation activity accounts for : : : 66 percent of carbon monoxide, 58 percent of nitrogen oxides, and 42 percent of volatile organic compounds” (Statistics Canada, 1994: p. 94). Fossil fuels burned by the transport industry and motor vehicles of the household sector emitted about 18% of Canada’s CO2 output in 1985, and probably a bit more by 1992 (Statistics Canada, 1994: p. 133). Since living typically requires moving from one place to another, the most one can hope for is that we will move as efficiently as possible. As Exhibit 10 shows, so far as passenger movement is concerned, suburban trains are maximally efficient energy users, registering 200 passenger miles per gallon. Such trains are about six times as efficient as the average automobile. Exhibit 11 illustrates the facts that, on the basis of kilograms per passenger kilometre, the toxicity of pollution emitted by roadway transport is nearly 10 times that of railway transport, and on the basis of kilograms per freight tonne, the difference is closer to 15 times. Clearly, then, from the points of view of conserving energy and reducing toxic air pollution, human well-being would be better served by shifting from roads to rails. Unfortunately, there is a clear trend in precisely the opposite direction. Exhibit 12 illustrates the Canadian trends in passenger movement from 1930 to 1990 in millions of passenger-kilometres for automobiles, planes, trains and buses. Automobiles moved more passengers than trains throughout the period, and it looks as if the trends will continue. Exhibit 13 shows that for the countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), private cars have also been preferred to buses and trains in the 1970 to 1987 period. Even though the trend lines turn up for trains and buses at the right side of the chart, the trend line for private cars turns up more sharply. As one might have expected, there is also clear evidence that around the world in the period from 1970 to 1990, on average fewer people are occupying each car on the road (United Nations, 1993).

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Exhibit 10 Transportation propulsion energy efficiency by carrier type

Large jet plane (Boeing 747) Small jet plane (Boeing 704) Automobile (sedan) Cross-country traina Commuter trainb Large bus (40 foot) Small bus (35 foot) Suburban train (two-deck)c a

22 21 32 80 100 125 126 200

Freight Transport type One-half of a Boeing 707 (160 tons, 30 000 hp) One-fourth of a Boeing 747 (360 tons, 60 000 hp) Sixty 250-hp, 40-ton trucks Fast 3000-ton, 40-car freight train Three 5000-ton, 100-car freight trains Inland barge tow, 60 000 gross ton Large pipeline, 100 miles, two pumps 100 000-ton supertanker, 15 knots

One 150-ton locomotive and four 70-seat coaches plus diner lounge and baggage coach. Ten 65-ton cars and two 150-ton 200-hp diesel locomotives. c A ten-car gallery-car commuter train, 160 seats per car. Source: Michalos, 1981: p. 222. b

Cargo ton miles per gallon 8.3 11.4 50.0 97.0 250.0 220.0 500.0 930.0

ALEX C. MICHALOS

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Passenger Transport type Passenger miles per gallon

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Exhibit 11 Toxicity of pollution (CO equivalents in kg per passenger kilometre or per freight tonne, weighted according to toxicity)

Source: Petersen and von Weizsacke, 1993: p. 8.

Granted that there has been practically a world-wide trend toward increased use of private cars, according to Forsey (1995: p. 7), Canada is one of the few industrialized countries that is now dismantling its railway passenger services instead of reviving and expanding them. Since the early 1980s, rail line abandonments and passenger service cutbacks have reduced both passenger and freight rail services to the point where Canada may eventually become a trainless nation. : : : This anti-train policy is being pursued by our federal government despite all the evidence that rail is the cleanest, safest and most user-friendly means of transportation available – and it can legitimately claim to be the most economical, as well. Studies have shown that, for every dollar the government spends on VIA, the economy gets $3.50 to $4.73 back.

From the point of view of environmental pollution and resource conservation, then, the transportation statistics we have just reviewed tell a totally negative story. But of course in southern Ontario and a few miles west in Michigan, many people would insist, correctly, that we have not yet examined the whole story. In Canada, “In 1992, the provision of transportation services contributed 3.5 percent of GDP. [and the] : : : industry employed 421 thousand persons, accounting for about 4 percent of all employment” (Statistics Canada, 1994: p. 95). Without doubt most of the money and employment came from the auto industry. What we lost on, we also won on.

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Exhibit 12 Passenger movement, 1930–1990

Source: Statistics Canada, 1994: p. 97.

After reviewing all these energy and transportation-related statistics concerning physical quantities, asset values, jobs and earnings, it would be helpful to be able to say something about perceived human well-being or at least some human behaviour. Unfortunately, it is not as easy as one might think to meet this demand. In Michalos (1993: p. 22) I wrote: There seems to be a serious lack of studies of satisfaction with transportation. Repeated computer searches of a variety of data bases turned up very few directly relevant studies. There are many engineering studies involving traffic densities and flow models for a variety of modes of transport, but few attempts to measure the satisfaction produced by the various modes.

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Exhibit 13 Passenger traffic trends for OECD countries, 1970–1987

Source: United Nations, 1993: p. 4.

For the 18 000 undergraduate university students I surveyed in 39 countries in 1984–85, of the dozen domains of their lives that were explored, transportation yielded the lowest levels of reported satisfaction (Michalos, 1993a: p. 89). Levels of reported satisfaction with their personal finances were next in line. On a 7-point terribleto-delightful scale, the average score was 4.1, indicating a mixture of feelings of dissatisfaction and satisfaction about the convenience and expense of available public and private transportation (Michalos,

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1993). The average score for satisfaction with personal finances was 4.2. While the literature on perceived well-being or satisfaction related to energy use and transportation is remarkably thin, there is a fairly extensive and directly related behavioral literature. The fact that the average temperature of the globe is going to increase significantly in the next century as a result of our use of fossil fuels makes it worthwhile to review the research on the association between temperature and aggression. Some excellent reviews were written by Anderson (1989), Rotton and Frey (1985) and Rotton (1993). According to Anderson (1989: p. 74). “The basic temperatureaggression hypothesis is that the propensity for aggression increases at uncomfortably hot temperatures and that this propensity often overrides more rational considerations.” After reviewing 80 research studies dealing with the hypothesis, Anderson concluded that: Clearly, hot temperatures produce increases in aggressive motives and tendencies. Hotter regions of the world yield more aggression; this is especially apparent when analyses are done within countries. Hotter years, quarters of years, seasons, months, and days all yield relatively more aggressive behaviours such as murders, rapes, assaults, riots, and wife beatings, among others. Finally, those concomitant temperature-aggression studies done in the field also yielded clear evidence that uncomfortably hot temperatures produce increases in aggressive motives and behaviours. : : : the field studies yielded consistent results across an amazing range of levels of analysis (e.g., geographic regions, time periods), locales (e.g., Europe [France, Italy, Spain and England], United States), historical time periods (e.g., 1800s, 1980s), and dependent variables (e.g., homicide, horn honking). (p. 93)

While some researchers have attributed the observed positive correlation between temperature and aggression to increased social interaction during relatively warm versus cold periods, that hypothesis was severely undermined by “Rotton and Frey’s (1985) finding of increased family disturbances in the hot summer months : : : because the frequency and intensity of within-family contacts is presumably lowest in summer and highest in winter” (Anderson, 1989: p. 85). Similarly, Michael and Zumpe (1986) argued that if the increased social interaction hypothesis were true, then wife battering would decrease during the summer because, compared to husband and wife contacts during the winter, the summer months provide more opportunities for spouses to get away from each other. Examining “the frequency of crisis calls to 23 different women’s shelter organizations in five locations [in the United States] during 1981–

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Exhibit 14 Seasonal violence

Source: Anderson, 1089: p. 82.

1984”, these authors found that “the monthly distribution of wife battering strongly supported the temperature-aggression hypothesis” (Anderson, 1989: p. 86). Exhibit 14, from Anderson, clearly illustrates the association between temperature and various kinds of aggressive behaviour. The alternative hypothesis that Anderson and others use to account for the observed associations is simply that unpleasant affective states (essentially, bad moods) motivate people to behave aggressively. This is certainly consistent with a wide variety of findings from mood studies; e.g., when one is in an unpleasant mood, it is easier to recall unpleasant memories, one’s opinions and evaluations tend to be negative, judgments about future events and even one’s own attractiveness tend to be negative, interpretations of ambiguous social events tend to be negative and negative features of one’s environment tend to be dwelled upon (Michalos, 1993: pp. 11–12). Assuming the accuracy of the affective state motivator hypothesis, it is reasonable to suppose that increases in the average temperature of the earth will lead to increases in aggressive behaviour, which pretty clearly implies decreases in the quality of life or the general well-being of more people.

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CONCLUSION

Finally, then, what is it reasonable to conclude from all these examples of partially integrated statistical indicators? In Michalos (1970) I proposed a decision rule called “Cost-Benefit Dominance (CBD)” to be used in assessing the acceptability of scientific hypotheses (including alleged laws and theories) on the basis of a variety of evidence and other considerations. The rule was offered as a fall-back solution to what I perceived to be an intractable problem of quantifying and aggregating all of the different kinds of things that might be regarded as relevant to deciding which hypotheses are superior to others when all things are considered. A short while later I reached the conclusion that Herbert Simon and others had reached much earlier, namely, that all things are practically never considered anyhow (Michalos, 1971, 1978). Still later (Michalos, 1992) I found something close to a bright side of this story, but that is not particularly relevant here. Lots of, if not all things considered, I think the aggregation problem before us now must finally be addressed with some sort of a CBD procedure. That is to say, when we think about combining the values of all our different indicators of human well-being or, perhaps more generally, of the overall quality of our lives, we should think in terms of a profile of benefits and costs rather than in terms of some sort of an analytic or axiomatic system in which everything is logically derivable from something else in the system. For examples, we know that the fewer homeless people the better, the fewer abused women and children the better, the more educated people the better, the more we conserve energy and the less we burn fossil fuel the better, the lower our annual national deficits and debt the better, and so on. We have and could easily document widespread agreement about many things that are good and many things that are bad about Canada, things that are positive and others that are negative, things that are generally benefits and others that are generally costs for most people. Since the examples given above from the fields of health, fishing and energy were selected in a fairly arbitrary way, it would not be very helpful to simply count up the benefits and costs, and announce the result. However, I also do not think it would be very helpful to spend a lot of resources trying to find sophisticated aggregation measures and functions to create

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a logically tidy system. Rather, I would recommend that we begin immediately to construct a list of clear indicators of well-being and a monitoring system or annual state of the nation social-economicenvironmental report. Given all the possible uses and abuses of such reports (Michalos, 1980: pp. 11–17) and the existence of a theoretical problem that I call the Paradox of Social Planning (See Appendix), I still think the sooner we start producing them, the better off we will be. What is more, and this is my last point, I think it is important for people actively engaged in the process of constructing such a list and system to recognize that the task is fundamentally political and only secondarily technical. While the technical skills of literacy and numeracy will be necessary assets, success or failure will finally depend on our diplomacy.

APPENDIX

The Paradox of Social Planning Political scientists have been aware of the so-called Paradox of Voting for several years, and a considerable amount of ink has been shed examining its implications and possible solutions. However, so far as I am aware, nobody has exploited its formal features to reveal what I call the Paradox of Social Planning. Briefly, here is how it arises. Suppose we have: 1. At least three distinct possible societies, A, B and C. 2. At least three equally important indicators of human well-being; e.g., life expectancy rates, maternal mortality rates and population per doctor. 3. For any two societies, A is more desirable than B if A’s performance on a majority of indicators is superior to B’s performance. 4. Societies are weakly orderable in terms of their relative desirability. This means that the desirability of societies is comparable in the sense that, 4a. For any pair, either A is more desirable than B, or B is more desirable than A, or A and B are equally desirable. 4b. For any three societies, if A is more desirable than B and B is more desirable than C then A is more desirable than C.

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Given these apparently plausible conditions, it is easy to show how we might find ourselves embroiled in self-contradiction. For example, according to the United Nations’ Human Development Report 1994 (p. 104), regarding life expectancy, the situation in Japan is more desirable than that in Switzerland and the situation in Switzerland is more desirable than that in Sweden. For maternal mortality, the Swiss situation is more desirable than that of the Swedes and the latter is more desirable than that of the Japanese. For population per doctor rates, the situation in Sweden is more desirable than that in Japan and the latter is more desirable than that in Switzerland. Briefly, then, we have: Life expectancy

Maternal mortality

Population/doctor

Japan Switzerland Sweden

Switzerland Sweden Japan

Sweden Japan Switzerland

So, according to condition 3, we know that the situation in Japan is more desirable than that in Switzerland (because of life expectancy and population per doctor) and the situation in Switzerland is more desirable than that in Sweden (because of life expectancy and maternal mortality). So, according to condition 4b, it follows that Japan is a more desirable society than Sweden. However, according to condition 3, we know that Sweden is a more desirable society than Japan (because of maternal mortality and population per doctor). So, all things considered, Japan is more desirable than Sweden and Sweden is more desirable than Japan, which is logically absurd. Of course it is not remarkable to discover that under certain conditions a social planner may be guilty of self-contradiction. After all, under certain conditions that happens to everyone. Nevertheless, it may be disturbing to discover that such a small number of apparently reasonable assumptions can create such an apparently significant obstacle to the measurement of net progress toward a good quality of life.

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NOTE 

The original version of this paper was presented at the Colloquium on Assessing Human Well-Being: A Critical Element of Assessing Progress Toward Sustainable Development, sponsored by the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy at the Westminster Institute for Ethics and Human Values, London, Ontario, March 23–25, 1995.

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Faculty of Management and Administration University of Northern British Columbia Prince George, BC V2M 4Z9, Canada

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