Washing Machines, Global Warming, Development

Here’s a great 10 min video from the always-inspiring Hans Rosling (probably the best TED speaker ever, which makes it great that he’s been on like 6 times).

If you can’t spare the 10 mins here’s the bottom line: he thinks the greatest invention ever is the waching machine. The proof is when you realise how long it typically takes to do the washing by hand for an entire family. The time saving from washing machines is invaluable to the economic and social emancipation of women and wider society. At the moment only 2/7 of the world have access to the washing machine (ie. Rosling’s “Washing Machine Line”).

This talk brought up a few important points. Firstly, I’m quite critical of the type of environmentalism that is up in arms about China’s economic development and thinks that China’s increase in consumption needs to stop. I saw a list somewhere (can’t remember where) of the 4 appliances that most households in the world want: a car, a fridge, a TV and a washing machine. To me, this type of environmentalism consists of owning the best of all 4 of these while telling poor people that they shouldn’t have them. Or maybe an environmentalist in the west would forego a car but essentially to stop China’s increase in consumption, we must tell hundreds of millions who are just being lifted out of poverty that they can’t have a fridge or a washing machine. If you think about the role these 2 appliances have — and Rosling’s talk goes a long way towards that — the idea starts to look monstrous.

Of course there are better and worse ways to go about this: large-scale laundries that work in bulk are probably more energy-efficient than everyone owning a washer, there are cleaner and less clean forms of energy and so on. But the idea of reducing consumption in this way seems just ludicrous. How realistic is it to get even the most hardcore environmentalists to give up the fridge and the washing machine?

Perhaps reducing the more “frivolous” consumption is more realistic. But to me that just highlights the extent to which the kind of reduction people are talking about will never ever ever happen. So much so, that I think most attempts to improve global warming through this avenue are a waste of time.

The second thing is that the whole mentality of reduction is precisely the wrong way to go about it. From more of Rosling’s talks, we need to increase. We need to increase the number of children who survive until childhood, we need to increase the resources that are available to them (which means increasing consumption!) so that they get a better shot in life. That really does seem to be the only way of reducing the birth rate, slowing population growth and solving some of these very problems.