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Worldwatch State of the World 2003 Report
With Gary Gardner
Director of Research, Worldwatch Institute
Friday, Jan. 10, 2003; 2 p.m. ET

The Worldwatch Institute recently released their annual report "State of the World 2003," that documents successful advancements "curbing infectious disease, increasing the income of the poor, and advancing the use of renewable energy." Research teams cover issues such as combatting malaria, renewable fossil and energy fuel, urbanization, reducing pollution and religious grouips addressing environmental issues.

Gary Gardner, director of research and project director at the Worldwatch Institute, talks about the organization's State of the World 2003 annual report.

Gardner's research focuses on a wide range of issues, including agricultural resource degradation, materials use, global malnutrition, and the dynamics of social change. Since joining the Institute in 1994, he has authored four Worldwatch Papers and four chapters in State of the World, and has co-authored "Beyond Malthus: Nineteen Dimensions of the Population Challenge." He has appeared on radio, television, and print interviews with worldwide media outlets including the BBC, CNN, and the Voice of America, in English and Spanish.

The transcript follows below.

Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.

Gary Gardner: I am happy to be with you today to talk about environmental and social State of the World. The Worldwatch Institute is a nonprofit organization devoted to research and writing about issues of sustainability. Our latest annual report, State of the World 2003, was released yesterday. Please visit www.worldwatch.org for more information.

Long Beach, Calif.: What are your opinions regarding the Eugenics Movement of the early 20th century?
Do you feel that population control is a dangerous subject to confront? I have mixed feelings, which is why I'm asking.

Gary Gardner: Population is of vital importance in the effort to build a sustainable world. By many assessments, global population has passed the point that the Earth can sustain, although the wildcard in such assessments is the average lifestyle that is assumed for the global population. Clearly the planet cannot support the entire global population at the level of consumption that we find in the U.S. today. So while population is vitally important, consumption is interwined with it, and is also vitally important.

Vienna, Va.: I'm surprised when I visit the site that I have to buy a copy. Why don't you have a web publication available?

Gary Gardner: Like much of the world, we are still figuring out how to function in an internet economy. Many of our back issues are available online, but the current publications pay the bills, so we have to charge for them. Please contact our marketing department with suggestions for a better way to operate.

Arlington, Va.: How do you field the various research? Are most of the areas that is researched in each region a problem area such as in governments being ignorant about infectious disease, etc?

Gary Gardner: Some of the issues we examine are truly global in scope, such as climate change or the depletion of the ozone layer. Others are region-specific, such as acute water shortages in the Middle East or northern China. And some, such as health issues, have different faces in the developed and developing worlds: infectious diseases such as malaria and diahrreal diseases, are much bigger issues in the developing world, while chronic disease such as heart disease and cancer are more prevalent in industrial countries (although this picture is changing).

Wheaton, Md.: Do you see a connection between the spread of radical Islam and a deterioration of living conditions?

Gary Gardner: No. In Iran, for example, the revolution brought about higher birth rates and a soaring population, which arguably threatened the quality of life in that country by stressing the natural environment and economy. But the religious authorities there recognized this, and have been remarkably successful in reducing the rate of population increase.

Arlington, Va.: China's one-couple/one-child policy is brutal, but has been effective. Would you recommend it anywhere else in the world? Or does its infringement on human rights outweigh the population benefit it allows?

Gary Gardner: There are many humane ways to achieve population stabilization. The literature is clear that when girls are educated as well as boys, when women have access to jobs and health care--in other words, when the status of women is high--population tends to stabilize. Population stabilization does not have to be draconian.

Falls Church, Va.: Any noticeable disease resurgences?

Gary Gardner: 4 of the leading 6 killer infectious diseases have seen declines in deaths in the past decade, but deaths from malaria are up, and deaths from AIDS wipes out all the other gains.

Harrisburg, Pa.: What are the prospects of increased use of renewable energy sources around the world? Is there encouraging news anywhere?

Gary Gardner: YES! Wind and solar energy generating capacity have grown at better than 30 percent annually in the last five years, compared with 1-2% for fossil fuels. They are starting from a far smaller base, of course, but at these rates of growth, the future for renewables is very bright!

Arlington, Va.: What were the most surprising findings of this year's report?

Gary Gardner: Probably the most unusual chapter in the report was our first-ever look at the role of religion in building a sustainable world. While still a small movement, it appears to be growing rapidly, and could be an exciting and powerful constituency in support of the sustainability agenda.

Arlington, Va.: I don't quite understand. Why is it that the US and Russia can have nuclear weapons but other countries can't? Also, doesn't US regularly pull out of agreements/pacts etc. whenever we see fit? What is with our double standard? Do as I say not as I do.

Gary Gardner: The contemporary double standard that I find most annoying is our stand on climate change and reductions in carbon emissions. Here we are, the leader in producing these emissions--which affect the climate of the entire world--and the present administration will have nothing to do with the international effort to curb emissions. That's nerve!

Vienna, Va.: My biggest fear is that the United States, as a culture, is embracing an extreme form of capitalism; and is aggressively pushing other countries into pursuing "profits at any cost".

Back in the 1970s the beautiful Chesapeake Bay became so polluted that fish were developing cancerous sores. The crab and oyster populations were virtually destroyed.

We appear to be loosing our sense of balance because a strange religious zeal to make money.

Gary Gardner: I think that to the degree that our culture commoditizes and commercializes everything, we are in danger of losing our souls. Life is about far more than buying and selling. And nature is far more than a simple collection of tradeable goods. A forest is not just a set of potential two-by-fours, but has an intrinsic value. I fear that we are losing our sense of this.

Virginia: Why give good points to communism countries like China and Russia and a lousy one to free countries like the U.S.?

Gary Gardner: Hard as it is to imagine, Chinese and Russian have some good ideas, too, and not all of our ideas are stellar. And Russian communists, by the way, have fallen on hard times over the past decade.

Maryland: My friend brings a good point that after every World War there have been great technological advancements -- atomic bomb, the fighter jet, etc. Do you think that a better type of fuel would be created after this war with Iraq? She thinks that this new technological advancement would occur because of self-sufficiency and making best use of our own oil resources.

Gary Gardner: I would hate to think that we need wars to help us to do imaginative thinking. What's more, the creative renewable energy technologies already exist. It is government policies--those that subsidize fossil fuels but not renewables, for example, or that don't give solar an dwind power access to the commercial grid--that keep these technologies severely underutilized.

Arlington, Va.: Why was Malthus wrong in the 19th century, but you believe Worldwatch Institute isn't wrong in the 21st?

Gary Gardner: Malthus underestimated the power of technology to allow a large number of humans to live on this planet. But even the greatest techno-optimist would acknowledge that the carrying capacity of the planet is not infinite. The question is at what population and consumption level does the line of environmental breakdown gets crossed. Judging from global environmental trends, we have already crossed it.

Chambersburg, Pa.: I've always wondered what the standard of living would be if all the world's resources were shared equally by every human being alive. (Maybe there's a better way to frame this question.)

Gary Gardner: Depends on how those resources are used. If all the world's iron ore were used to build everyone a car, we'd have a lousy standard of living because of the pollution and land use problems created. If that iron ore were used on public transportation, bicycles, and a smaller fleet of cars for occasional use, we might have a much higher quality of life.

Arlington, Va.: Congratulations on the 20 years of research! Can you tell us more about each chatper of the annual report? I'm interested in the chapter of uniting divided cities and in regards to current news, do you think reunification of North and South Korea would be a good thing ... a situation comparable to East and West Germany.

Gary Gardner: Thanks. The report is now 20 years old, and the Institute is 28...The cities chapter is about involving the poor in the slums of cities around the world in bettering their own lives. Lots of exciting iniatiaves. Check out Curitiba, Brazil--ingenious planning. Poor citizens bring their garbage to the city center and trade it for groceries, which gets composted by the city and sent back to farmers who provided the groceries. The city saves on waste collection, the poor save on the cost of groceries, and farmers use less chemical fertilizer. Win-win-win!

Fairfax, Va.: How do we compare to other countries in regards to providing health care. I hear in other countries, even those under regimes like Saudi Arabia, people get free healthcare.

Gary Gardner: Health care coverage varies greatly around the world. One interesting development in developing countries is the rapid advance of chronic diseases among urban elites, which threatens to divert health care resources from treating infectious diseases that the majority of people suffer from to chronic diseases such as heart disease, that the wealthy minority have.

Washington, D.C.: Do you include conditions in the U.S. in your report? If so, how does the U.S. stack up?

Gary Gardner: The report is global in focus, and topic oriented, so to the degree that the US figures into a particular issue, it gets covered. The US was a global leader on environmental issues in the 1970s, but Europe has passed us on this, as a leader now in renewable energy, organic agriculture, and policies to help make materials (plastic, wood, metal, and others) circulate through the economy, rather than ending up in landfills.

Long Beach, Calif.: You interact with the Voice of the Americas. What's that like? Is it primarily anti-Castro or what?

Gary Gardner: My experience of Voice of America has been positive. It is beamed to many countries in the world, and I never felt that interviewers were trying to put a pro-US spin on the issues that we talked about, nor that I was constrained in any way in what I could say.

Arlington, Va.: Most good causes require some kind of visual depiction of crisis in order to rally action (think mass graves tragically uncovered in Srebrenica, or a sizable Sally Struthers in front of starving African children) What do you think that picture-bite will ultimately be for global warming? Last year's breaking icefloe in Antartica didn't quite capture the imagination. . .

Gary Gardner: I think the picture of a liquid, ice-free North Pole two summers ago had some impact. The "ice man" cadaver from Switzerland and other cadavers that have emerged from retreating glaciers also were important. And the visuals from Hurricane Mitch in 1998--10,000 people DIED in a STORM!--probably had some impact (to the extent that media reports linked the storm to climate change). Probably the cumulative effect of these and other tragedies will help.

Great question!

Washington, D.C.: I'm curious to ask why you consider the recent report successes instead of advancements? I know this is a general question but can you explain where we fall short?

Gary Gardner: Many of the successes on the sustainable development front--15 fold increase in organic area in Europe since 1990, rapid increases in use of solar and wind power, and imaginative ways to reduce materials flows--are small, but growing rapidly and easily replicable. That's what makes it possible to envision a sustainable world, despite bad news on the majority of issues.

Gary Gardner: Thanks so much for all the questions, and thanks to the Post for inviting me. This has been fun. Best wishes for a healthy and sustainable New Year!

washingtonpost.com:

That wraps up today's show. Thanks to everyone who joined the discussion.

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