Read on Twitter
A few days ago @MaxCRoser posted the following tweet, dismissing the aggregate material footprint (MF) as being a "horrible" indicator, which shouldn't be used to report env. impacts. Here is a thread on why I think he is wrong & the MF important. 1/9 https://twitter.com/MaxCRoser/status/1356697165960261634
To make his case, he refers to this paper ( …https://journalofeconomicstructures.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40008-016-0048-5#Abs1) & points to a ~ equal increase in coal & decrease in clay & sand use in the EU. Thus, he says, MF is a bad indicator for env. impact, bc as an aggregate it ignores these changes & assigns equal weight to them.2/9
Clearly, solely using MF as indicator for complex env. impacts has serious limitations, along these lines. But instead of a differentiated treatment, Roser fully discards MF. This is dangerous, given its demonstrated usefulness in indicating aggregate environmental pressures. 3/9
When we look at the data, we can see that MF is in fact a good proxy for aggregate env. pressures, simply bc all material extraction has *some* impact: MF is highly correlated with other env. indicators such as CO2 emissions & ecological footprint ( https://nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0225-2) 4/9
As Krausmann et al. state ( https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-environ-102016-060726), material use (here domestic) as a quite simple indicator also correlates well with more complex ones such as environmentally-weighted material use, which accounts for different impacts of the material categories. 5/9
Steinmann et al. ( https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.7b00698) too state: "resource footprints accounted for >90% of the variation in the damage footprints. [...] Our results indicate that relatively simple resource footprints are highly representative of damage to human health and biodiversity."6/9
Finally, Voet et al. ( https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1162/1088198043630432) find "if we compare environmental impact with [Domestic Material Consumption], we can conclude that the contribution to the environmental pressure & the contribution to the DMC is not so different for these [resource] categories".7/9
Thus, MF captures important connections between extractive activity & env. pressures quite well on an aggregate level, in a fairly simple way. So, instead of fully rejecting MF, it should simply be complemented by other indicators & differences between materials considered. 8/9
Roser provides no alternative to MF. But strangely & incoherently, he doesn't also reject the key role of GDP growth (another "terrible" aggregate indicator) within the SDGs ( https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11625-020-00813-x), despite its clear association with env. impacts ( https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab842a/meta)./end
Further resources on this debate can be found here: https://twitter.com/AsjadNaqvi/status/1356717920068505607
