Truth and Trends in the Numbers

[ocean and wind sounds. music

welcome to world ocean radio…]

I’m Peter Neill, Founder of the World Ocean Observatory.

Words, words, words! We are inundated with words: news, posts, voice-mails, texts, radio, tv ads, political speeches, influencers, and podcasters, arguments, poetic whispers, love letters, even gossip – forms just like what you’re hearing now: words, words, words….

There is something different about numbers: each an integer integrated in quiet relation to others, measured vast and miniscule, filled with substance as substance in equation --plus, minus, equal -- indicative, and proof of something.
How do I measure then for you with numbers something as vast as the vital signs of human enterprise, or the rate of annual consumption of natural resources country by country against the availability of those resources, renewal but finite against the growing population and societal demand?

I am going to describe – paradoxically with words – these numbered measures from two sources: first, an enumeration by the Global Footprint Network of overshoot, the number of days by which the citizens of any nation consume more resources than sustainably available, and, second, a series of depicted numerical graphs visualizing the trends by category, up or down, of human enterprise worldwide.

Stay with me. Words. Here goes.

If all the people in the world lived like the people of a certain country, on what day would the available resources be exhausted? In 2025, Qatar, for example, which has one the richest, most extravagant standard of living of the day would have run out on February 4th without massive imports of goods and services from others. Honduras, among the poorest nations, would have lasted until November 27th. That 9-month discrepancy describes the disparate quality of life faced by nations, rich and poor, and is an indication in total of the concept of “overshoot,” the point in time when collective world demand exceeds world supply. Cambodia would have lasted to November 25; the United States would have gotten only to March 14.

The numbers assert through that every country, on Earth, thus every person on Earth, is living beyond available means in a spiral of irresponsible, unsustainable depletion.

Scientists and economists who measure these things arrange their information by graphs, visualization of numbers, by statistics presented by category. The rise or fall of the graphic dynamic provides a simple, quick visual understanding of trends, up and down, more than the “truth” by country, but rather by global trends, time series of environment-related human activity.

For example, CO2 emissions measured from 1960 through 2020 have gone radically UP; as has world Gross Domestic Product; as has energy demand and production from oil, gas, and coal; armed conflicts; ruminant livestock, per capita meat production; tree cover loss, zoonotic disease outbreaks; plastic production; water use; employment; poverty; and the birth rate everywhere. The only categories where the trend has gone DOWN is a modest flattening of fish harvest, dramatic vertebrate species abundance, and the real wages of the low-income, no income population around the world.

Of course, the most consistent rise has been in the stock markets, inflation, and political consequence of the social imbalance evident in the numbers. The percentage of winners is less than 1% of the total with the ratio of wealth concentration, political power, and survivability concentrated in an ever-increasing few.

The numbers offend morality and our sense of equality, liberty and justice for us all. Words, words, words – can they confront the numbers, can they ever save us? On my office door, there is a sign: Wordsmith at work. If you, as listener, might share, circulate, re-post, and broadcast these words, would we have a chance? Could we confront the statistics and reverse the trends, and foretell a different truth through the transformation and re-direction of the numbers?

We will discuss these issues, and more, in future editions of World Ocean Radio.

World Ocean Radio is distributed by the Public Radio Exchange and the Pacifica Network, for use by college and community radio stations worldwide. Find us wherever you listen to podcasts and at world ocean observatory dot org

[music, wind and ocean sounds…]