Opinion

Business Realism

By DOUGLAS LUMMIS

On Sept. 22 last year, The Japan Times printed a story telling of a report from the United Nations Environment Program. The report, called "Global Environment Outlook 2000," was written by a team of 850 experts and took 2 1/2 years to complete.

The report, the article says, "paints a devastating picture of the Earth's health." It goes on to give a few examples illustrating the nature of the catastrophe we are now in the midst of:

・Eighty percent of the world's forests already cut down or ruined.

・Thirty-nine percent of what's left now threatened by logging and mining projects (what we call "development").

・Twenty-five percent of all mammal species now in danger of extinction.

・Twenty percent of the people in the world without access to safe drinking water, this percentage increasing.

・Forest fires and hurricanes increasing (the latter presumably a result of global warming); around 3 million people killed in such disasters in the past 30 years.

And so on. The reader will find nothing surprising in the list. You have seen lists like it time after time. If you are like most people, you will find it trite, even boring.

There is one thing, however, that may rouse your interest. It did mine. According to the U.N. report, the only way to save future generations (meaning our children and grandchildren) from "a life of suffering" is for the industrialized countries to set "a long-term target of a 90 percent reduction in the consumption of raw materials."

I suggest you read the above sentence twice, because the first time you will probably think (as I did) it means a reduction to 90 percent. No, it means a reduction by 90 percent. 100-90=10.

Now here is the interesting thing. This article appears on Page 6. On Page 7, the business page, is an article reporting, as "good news," that the industrial electricity use in Japan for August 1999 had risen 2.6 percent from August of the previous year.

This figure matters: Industrial electrical demand "is regarded as a key economic indicator because industrial power consumption rises when the economy expands." But the reader is cautioned that "it is too early to take the August increase as a clear sign of economic recovery."

This article is placed so that when you close the newspaper, it and the article on the U.N. report come together like two hands clapping. Or, to change the figure of speech, they come face to face, rubbing noses as it were. But the information in the U.N. report can't get across onto the business page.

We have been warned for years about the global ecological crisis, but the articles on the business page are written as if their authors had never heard of it. Or as if it were irrelevant. "The economy is eating up the earth? Terrible. Still, what is there to do but keep on expanding the economy?" And these people are called the "realists."

Shukan ST: March 24, 2000

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