Simple Indicator To Identify the Environmental Soundness of Growth of Consumption and Technology: "Eco-velocity of Consumption"

详细信息    查看全文

• 作者：Keisuke Nansai ; Shigemi Kagawa ; Sangwon Suh ; Rokuta Inaba ; Yuichi Moriguchi
• 刊名：Environmental Science & Technology
• 出版年：2007
• 出版时间：February 15, 2007
• 年：2007
• 卷：41
• 期：4
• 页码：1465 - 1472
• 全文大小：200K
• 年卷期：v.41,no.4(February 15, 2007)
• ISSN：1520-5851

文摘

Today's material welfare has been achieved at theexpense of consumption of finite resources and generationof environmental burdens. Over the past few decadesthe volume of global consumption has grown dramatically,while at the same time technological advances haveenabled products with greater efficiencies. These twodirections of change, consumption growth and technologicaladvance, are the foci of the present paper. Usingquantitative measures for these two factors, we define anew indicator, "eco-velocity of consumption", analogous tovelocity in physics. The indicator not only identifies theenvironmental soundness of consumption growth andtechnological advance but also indicates whether and towhat extent our society is shifting toward sustainableconsumption. This study demonstrates the practicability ofthe indicator through a case study in which we calculatethe eco-velocities of Japanese household consumption in 2years: 1995 and 2000. The rate of technological advanceduring the periods concerned is quantified in terms of theembodied carbon dioxide emission per yen of product.The results show that the current growth rate of Japanesehousehold consumption is greater than the rate oftechnological advance to mitigate carbon dioxide emissions.The eco-velocities at the level of individual commoditygroups are also examined, and the sources of changes in eco-velocity for each commodity are identified using structuraldecomposition analysis.