WASHINGTON, 28 May — “We’re eating more meat, drinking more coffee, popping more pills, driving further and getting fatter. Around the world we are consuming more than ever before: but more than one billion people still don’t have safe water; natural disasters are taking a worsening toll; and we have yet to vanquish some of the world’s biggest killers — diarrhea, malaria and AIDS.”

Such is the dubious news released today in a new publication by the Worldwatch Institute: Vital Signs 2001: The Trends That Are Shaping Our Future.”

Co-produced with the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), the report highlights the urgent need for nations to make healthy changes for both its people and its environment.

“We’re finding more and more evidence that the developed world’s consumption-filled lifestyle choices are often as unhealthy for ourselves as the planet we inhabit,” Michael Renner, researcher and Vital Signs project director, told journalists at Worldwatch’s Washington-based headquarters today.

“While much of the world remains too poor to afford such choices, the emerging middle classes in developing nations are following the same damaging patterns pioneered in the developed world: meat and coffee consumption is on the rise, as is obesity, and over half of the world smokers are now in developing nations.”

The report underscores that economies focused only on meeting insatiable consumer demand can hurt human, environmental and economic health.

The development of lucrative drugs to treat disease in the First World, keeps money away from critical research on vaccines and medications aimed at diseases like malaria that afflict far larger, but poorer, portions of the world population.

The report also notes that industrial farming practices have created one of the most “gruesome crossovers of disease from animals to humans, Bovine or ‘Mad Cow’ disease.”

The world’s appetite for meat has also been soaring, the report states. The number of four-footed livestock on earth at any given moment has increased 60 percent since 1961, and the number of chickens, ducks and other fowl, has quadrupled, from 4.2 billion to 15.7 billion.

In addition, feedlot production — the fastest growing method for raising livestock — has emerged as a major threat to soil, air and water quality. In the US, livestock produces 130 times more manure than humans do. Though concentrated in North America and Europe, feedlots are also expanding to urban centers in Brazil, China, India, the Philippines and elsewhere in the developing world.

The report also covers the effect of the demand for more meat, which has caused a proliferation of antibiotics on farm animals. This is increasingly implicated in reducing the effectiveness of these drugs in humans.

The chain-effect continues: Drug resistance is rising across a wide range of bacteria, viruses, parasites and fungi that are responsible for diseases from malaria to AIDS. The report adds that a least half of all antibiotics used in human medicine are prescribed unnecessarily, creating greater opportunities for the survival and spread of resistant bacteria.

To meet world demand, the grain harvest has nearly tripled since 1950, said Christopher Flavin, President of the Worldwatch Institute. “But the abundance of food has come at a price: falling freshwater aquifers and severe water pollution from massive use of fertilizers and pesticides.

To make matters even grimmer, Flavin added: “Despite the increase in production over a billion people are still undernourished, while another billion are actually overnourished, which has created a global epidemic of obesity that is now spreading to the developing world.”

In the US, 61 percent of the adult population is overweight (up from 55 percent in 1994), and 27 percent is obese (up from 15 percent in 1980). WHO, the World Health Organization, has labeled the trend “today’s principal neglected public health problem.”

WHO also predicts that obesity will help make chronic diseases (such a stroke, heart disease, cancer, and diabetes) the major disease burden in developing counties over the next quarter-century, surpassing infectious diseases.

The report also questions the motives of the pharmaceuticals, which it says is one of the most profitable and fastest-growing industries in the world, increasing fro $132 billion in 1983 to $337 billion today.

“But big pharmaceutical companies have tended to neglect the health of large portions of humanity. All of the world’s top selling drugs are designed to treat First World conditions, including heart disease, high blood pressure, indigestion and obesity,” notes the report.

A carbon dioxide emission, the leading greenhouse gas, is also examined. “These gases have risen by nearly 300 percent since 1950, boosting its concentration in the atmosphere to its highest level in at least 420,000 years.

The results are morbidly fascinating: “New scientific studies project dramatic changes in the climate in the current century leading to increased storm intensity, agricultural losses, and economic disruptions due to accelerated global warming from the additional greenhouse gases.”

Feeling the need for some fresh air after these facts! That may be harder and harder to find, as Worldwatch says the world has lost more than half of its wetlands and one quarter of its coral reefs, both of which continue to be destroyed. As a result, species that depend on these natural habitats are also in decline. “Of the approximately 9,900 bird species that have been identified, 12 percent,” or over 1,000 bird species, “are threatened with extinction.”

While technological innovation soars, 90 percent of commercial energy use worldwide continues to come from fossil fuels. Alternative energy sources, such as wind, still only account for one percent of the world total, reports Vital Signs 2001.

“Living in the 21st century, we like to think of ourselves as sophisticated, post-modern, technology-savvy world citizens,” said Vital Signs Project Director, Michael Renner. “But the truth is that our cyber economy is still fueled by the same old energy sources. And as long as consumers do not demand change, manufacturers will continue to churn out environmentally destructive products.”

Oh yes, and about the current debate in Washington regarding drilling in Alaska’s Artic National Wildlife Refuge — Worldwatch estimates it would “yield only 10.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil, equivalent to 11¼2 years of US oil consumption. One interesting point about oil consumption: the US uses 26 percent of the world’s oil supply, while it constitutes 5 percent of the world population.

“Gasoline, aluminum and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastics — which are manufactured through highly polluting processes — represent the resource binge we’re on,” said Renner. “Consumer demand for common items such as automobiles, aluminum cans and children’s toys spurs these industries.

But while alternatives are available for almost every PVC use, and aluminum recycling requires only five percent as much energy as primary production, little pressure is being placed on manufacturers to change production methods.”

Admittedly, it’s easy to get quite depressed over today’s new analysis. But Renner says one should not give up hope. “The findings from Vital Signs 2001 show that when consumers demand it, environmentally friendly and socially responsible methods of production can be achieved. The power of consumer choice cannot be underestimated, for good or for bad it can sicken or save our planet.”