Businessweek, in its sustainability indicator, draws attention to some remarkable numbers. For example, 5 years is the average life expectancy lost to air pollution from coal burning in northern China. For the 500 million Chinese living north of the Huai River, that adds up to 2.5 billion years of life cut short. That’s not all. There’s some good numbers – like a 20% rise in Chinese clean-energy investments – and some bad. 1.32 million square miles, the current Arctic sea ice, the least in 33 years of satellite records. Read More

5 years  off your life!

By Tom Randall for Businessweek (10 July 2013):

Today’s sustainability indicator, 5 years, is the average life expectancy lost to air pollution from coal burning in northern China. For the 500 million Chinese living north of the Huai River, that adds up to 2.5 billion years of life cut short.

And there’s more…

•40%: anticipated growth of worldwide renewables in the next five years.

•8%: total electric generation capacity supplied by renewables by 2018.

•$29 billion: cost of a European proposal to increase automobile efficiency.

•$74 billion: amount that fuel bills would fall under the plan.

•757,969: U.S. marijuana arrests in 2011.

•534,704: all violent-crime arrests combined for the same period.

•6 tons: CO2 generated by 3 round-trip flights from Philadelphia to San Francisco.

•6.6 tons: C02 generated by an entire year of electricity in the average U.S. household.

•4: times you could fill the New Orleans Superdome with gas wasted in U.S. traffic jams.

•40 percent: proxy resolutions last year pertaining to environmental and social concerns.

•11%: global decline in clean energy investment last year amid falling subsidies.

•32%: decline in U.S. clean-energy investments last year amid falling subsidies.

•20%: rise in Chinese clean-energy investments during the same period.

•2.2 cents per kilowatt hour: wind-energy tax credit quietly extended in the fiscal-cliff deal.

•59 percent: decline in wind installations last year amid uncertainty about the extension.

•17: health ranking of the U.S. among 17 wealthy countries in a study of health outcomes.

•$2.7 trillion: U.S. annual spending on healthcare — more than any other nation.

•55.3 degrees Fahrenheit: average temperature for contiguous U.S. in 2012, a record.

•511,000 ounces: estimated 2013 shortfall in palladium amid record carmaker demand.

•48 million: Americans who get sick each year from contaminated foods.

•0.4 percent: food importers checked annually by FDA inspectors.

•43%: women in India who marry before their 18th birthday.

•74%: Americans who acknowledge “global warming is affecting weather” in the U.S.

•210: current measure of the UN’s World Food Price Index.

•210: the price threshold associated with a sharp rise in social unrest and food riots.

•50 percent: transport fuels replaceable by converting 17.5% of farm waste to biofuel.

•1.32 million square miles: current Arctic sea ice, the least in 33 years of satellite records.

•18 percent: decrease from the previous record-low Arctic ice, recorded in 2007.

•330: consecutive months that world temperatures have topped the 20th century average.

•626 million: people in India who still defecate in the open, contributing to superbugs.

•251 million: people who gained improved sanitation in the country from 1990 to 2010.

•67%: return from a portfolio of the Carbon Disclosure Leadership Index since 2006.

•31%: return of the Leadership Index’s Global 500 peers during the same period.

•1,079: jobs created by the average U.S. wind farm.

•75%: world’s surface that had unusually hot summers each year over the last decade.

•33%: world’s surface with hot summers in the baseline years from 1951 to 1980.

•59%: proportion of emissions-reductions efforts that pay for themselves in 3 years.

•$10 billion: annual savings on U.S. electric bills from new lightbulb standards.

•30: large power plants it takes to produce electricity equivalent to the lightbulb savings.

http://www.businessweek.com/