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Demotechnic Index The Demotechnic Index or D-index is the ratio of technological energy consumption in gigajoules per capita per year, to the energy required for physiological requirements alone. This is based on a daily average caloric requirement of 2300 kcalories or 3.5709 gigajoules per person per year (1 D-unit). Canadians and Americans have very large D-index values which in 2008 are calculated to be 109 and 85 respectively meaning that North Americans use more than 100 times more energy than is needed for subsistence. It also means that consideration of impact on the environment must include the impact from the combined requirements of both population and its technology – Demotechnic Impact. The Demotechnic load of a human population therefore includes the technological energy requirements as a force multiplier in which a population alone is not sufficient in describing the human impact on the environment. By multiplying a population by its respective D-index the population impact is better represented as population equivalent environmental impact. Comparison of these consumption-adjusted populations give a better overall picture of impact that just the “

The strength of this approach is that per capita energy consumption is robustly correlated with both per capita consumption of resources generally and with per capita production of wastes or pollution. As such, it is as good a general measure of per capita impact on the environment as we are likely to find. It allows the environmental impacts of a country (politically defined ecosystem Vallentyne, 1994) to be viewed not as a function of just its population size (P) but as a function of its “human population equivalent” or, more concisely as, “consumption adjusted population” (Mata et al., 2012), as:

C = P (1 + D-index)

Vallentyne’s D-index work inspired other national measures for assessing ecological load and sustainability such as the early Ecological Footprint of Nations (Wackernagel and Onisto, 1997) presented at RIO+5 and development of more detailed national natural capital accounting methodology currently in use by the Global Footprints Network (Wackernagel et al, 1999, 2002).

Origin of the Term Demotechnic

The word Demotechnic is derived from Greek demos (population) and techne (technology). The concept was first developed by the late John R. “Jack” Vallentyne, was one of Canada’s most influential scientists during the latter part of the last century. The first publications on demotechnic growth were a not easily available (Vallentyne, 1972a). It was not until his address to the International Society of Limnology in Copenhagen in August 1977 (Vallentyne, 1978) that the concept gained recognition. Vallentyne built on the “energy slave” concept of Bryson and Ross (1972) and found a way to quantify a demotechnic index (D-index) in a way useful for international analyses and comparisons (Mata et al, 2012). Reliable, annual country-by-country data on resource consumption is easily available from the U.S. Energy Information Administration http://www.eia.gov/ and other sources BP Energy Outlook 2030, 2012 statistical review http://www.bp.com/sectiongenericarticle800.do?categoryId=9037134&contentId=7068677

Bryson, R.A., Ross, J.E., 1972. On the nature of environmental concern. Univ. Wisconsin Institute for Environmental Studies Working Paper 3, 1-24.

Mata, F.J., Onisto, L.J., Vallentyne, J.R., 2012. Consumption: The other side of population for development. Paper prepared for the International Conference on Population and Development, 1994. Earth Council, San Jose, Costa Rica. 17 pp.

Vallentyne, J.R., 1972a. Freshwater supplies and pollution: effects of the demophoric explosion on water and man. In: N. Polunin (Ed.), The Environmental Future, pp. 181-211. Macmillan, London.

Vallentyne, J.R., 1972b. Demophora (letter to the editor). Environment 14(6), 47-48.

Vallentyne, J.R., 1978. Today is yesterday’s tomorrow. Verh. Internat. Verein. Limnol. 20, 1-12.

Vallentyne, J.R., 1994. Not politics, but ecology. In: R. Margalef (Ed.), Limnology Now: A Paradigm of Planetary Problems, pp. 529-576.Elsevier Science B.V., Amsterdam.

Vallentyne, J.R., Tracy, H.L.,1972. New term introduced at First Conference on Environmental Future. Biological Conservation 4, 371-372. (Reprinted in Bull. At. Sci. 29(5), 24, 1973).

Wackernagel, M., Onisto, L., Bello, P., Callejas Linares, A., López Falfán, S.L., Méndez García, J., Suárez Guerrero, A.I., Suárez Guerrero, M.G., 1999. Natural capital accounting with the ecological footprint concept. Ecol. Econ. 29, 375-390.

Wackernagel, M; Schulz, NB; Deumling, D; Linares, AC; Jenkins, M; Kapos, V; Monfreda, C; Loh, J et al. 2002. "Tracking the ecological overshoot of the human economy" (PDF). Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 99 (14): 9266–71. doi:10.1073/pnas.142033699. PMC 123129. . http://www.pnas.org/content/99/14/9266.full.pdf