Nope – CO2 emissions, coal use, non-energy mineral and metal consumption spike, rise in material throughputs – trends go for de-dev given emerging economies

Despite declining energy and carbon intensities, carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels have increased by 80 per cent since 1970. Emissions today arc almost 40 per cent higher than they were in 1990 — the Kyoto base year — and since the year 2000 they have been growing at over 3 per cent per year (sec Figure 5-3). Figure 5-3 docs illustrate some relative decoupling: the world GDP has risen faster than carbon dioxide emissions over the last 18 years. But there is no absolute decoupling here. And a surge in world consumption of coal has increased the rate of growth in carbon dioxide emissions since the year 2000. What's true for fossil resources and carbon emissions is true for material throughputs more generally. Figure 5.4 illustrates direct material consumption for the same five OECD countries shown in Figure 5.1. Despite very clear evidence of relative decoupling in the earlier figure, there is far less evidence here of an absolute decline in material consumption. The best that can be observed — in only a couple of countries — is something of a stabilization in resource requirements, particularly since the late 1980s. But even this finding is not entirely to be trusted. The problem is that its difficult to pick up all the resources embedded in traded goods. The measure shown here — direct material consumption — docs its best to identify traded flows of specific resources. But it misses out on the resources (and emissions) used to manufacture finished and semi-finished products abroad. This question is important precisely because of the structure of modern developed economics, which have typically tended to move progressively away from domestic manufacturing. Unless the demand for consumer goods also declines, more and more finished and semi-finished goods need to be imported from abroad. And since concepts like direct material consumption omit such accounts, Figure 5.4 underestimates the resource requirements of developed economics. Correcting this failing calls for more sophisticated resource and economic models than arc currently available. In the case of carbon dioxide, however, several recent studies for the UK have confirmed that national accounts systematically fail to account for the 'carbon trade balance*. In other words, there arc more (hidden) carbon emissions associated with UK consumption patterns than appear from the numbers we report to the United Nations (UN) under the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC). In fact, this difference is enough to undermine the progress made towards the UK*s Kyoto targets. An apparent reduction in emissions of 6 per cent between 1990 and 2004, as reported under UN FCCC guidelines is turned into an 11 per cent increase in emissions, once emissions embedded in trade arc taken into account." Without more detailed work, it's difficult to know whether this pattern is true more generally for material resources. But given the trend away from manufacturing in advanced economics, it's clearly wise to view Figure 5-4 with some caution. There is an outside chance that some stabilization of resource consumption has occurred. But Figure 5.4 doesn't provide a lot of confidence in absolute decoupling, even within the richer nations. Ultimately, in any case, what count most in terms of global limits arc worldwide statistics. Both climate change and resource scarcity arc essentially global issues. So the final arbiter on the feasibility of absolute decoupling — and the possibilities for escaping the dilemma of growth — arc worldwide trends. Figure 5-3 confirmed a rising global trend in fossil fuels and carbon emissions. Figure 5.5 shows the global trend in the extraction of another vital set of finite resources — metal ores. What's striking from Figure 5.5 is not just the absence of absolute decoupling. There is little evidence of relative decoupling cither. Some improved resource efficiency is evident in the earlier years, but this appears to have been eroded more recently. Particularly notable is the increased consumption of structural metals. Extraction of iron ore, bauxite, copper and nickel is now rising faster than world GDP. Reasons for this are not particularly hard to find. China's hunger for iron ore is well-documented." As the emerging economics build up their infrastructures, the rising demand for structural materials is one of the factors that put an upward pressure on commodity prices during 2007 and the first half of 2008 (sec Chapter 2, Figure 2.2). The impact on certain non-metallic minerals is just as striking. Worldwide cement production has more than doubled since 1990, surpassing growth in world GDP by some 70 percentage points. Global resource intensities (the ratios of resource use to GDP), far from declining, have increased significandy across a range of non-fuel minerals. Resource efficiency is going in the wrong direction. Even relative decoupling just isn't happening