Opinion – Helio Beltrão: The dematerialization of rich countries is a technological blessing

In discussions about the environment, there is a worrying trend that can hinder the prosperity of developing countries and Brazil.

A common Malthusian belief persists that economic growth necessarily leads to greater consumption of raw materials and energy. As a result, more and more voices are advocating that the world must curb economic growth and consumption in order to lessen the planet’s footprint.

The unquestioned assumption is “consuming more products warms the planet,” as Financial Times columnist Simon Kuper said. If the idea gains traction, Brazil and other countries will be condemned to underdevelopment.

The belief, however, is wrong. Something counterintuitive and promising has been happening since 1970. The United States, the United Kingdom and other rich countries are consuming less and less materials, metals, paper, oil, energy. It’s dematerialization: a smaller human footprint, in multiple dimensions.

Jesse Ausubel, in “The Return of Nature – How Technology Liberates the Environment” (2015), shows that in recent decades, corn production in the United States has grown continuously, while the planted area has grown little. In 2018, the United States produced 2.6 times more corn per hectare than in 1970. The most surprising fact is that the use of fertilizers, water and chemical pesticides decreased in absolute terms, although production has more than tripled. Malthus would be awestruck.

Dematerialization is not limited to corn and other cereals. Steel, copper, firewood, aluminum, paper: American consumption of each of these items has already peaked and has been in decline for nearly twenty years, despite population growth and vigorous economic growth.

Ausubel demonstrates that in the United States, among 100 commodities, 36 have already reached the peak of absolute consumption; another 53 peaked as a share of GDP.

There is an admirable decoupling between the production of consumer goods (GDP) and the use of raw materials in rich countries. An example are aluminum cans for beer and soft drinks (330 ml). When introduced, the aluminum can (an advance versus the heavy tinplate cans) weighed 85 g. A few decades later, in 2011, the weight reached 13 g. In 2012, Ball Corporation announced a reduction to 9.5 g. The energy saved is also brutal. It’s a stupendous dynamic of greater production (and consumption) of final goods with less consumption of raw materials and energy, as “More with Less” author Andrew McAfee says.

The argument that production is being exported does not hold up, according to the author, since the import of resource-intensive end products is a very small part of the American economy.

Innovation walks faster than GDP growth. The world has been getting greener since 2015 for the first time since the industrial revolution; the United States returned to nature, since 1982, an area larger than that of Ceara.

But this still does not happen in developing countries. In addition to the incompetence of our public governance, the technology we can afford is generally less advanced and dirtier because we are poorer. Even in agriculture, in which we are advanced, our lower productivity and poor infrastructure require more land for planting. It is necessary to get rich to dematerialize.

Since 2000, the United States, Germany, France, and other rich emit less and less CO2; and not because of climate conferences.

Dematerialization demonstrates that it is much more costly to reduce CO2 emissions in a developing country. In Brazil, emissions are low, strongly linked to deforestation, and since 2005 we have already reduced a good part of the commitment for 2030. The priority here must be the creation of wealth.