Earth Overshoot Day and Danish living standard

A while ago I read an article about the switch to green energy and consumerism. The author was placing an argument saying that while the push to move away from fosile fules to green energy is admirable and needed but that on it's own is not enought. We should also do something about our consumerism and economy that insists on 3% growth of GDP per year. Growth of GDP of 3% per year entails that we should double the amount of goods and services we produce every 24 years. It is not difficult to see why the insistance of economic growth of 3% per year is missalligned with a green energy push. Let's say that in the end we sucessfuly ween ourselves of the fosile fuels, if we keep the insistance on economic growth of 3% per year we will still be "trashing the planet" because we will be using more resources then the planet can regenerate per year and we will be doubling the amount of resoruces that we need every 24 years and even now we are using more then that.

Earth Overshoot Day is a day in the year when humanities need for resources excedes the resources that Earth can regenerate in a year. In 2019 Earth overshot day was on July 29th. That means that by July 29th humanity used up the resources the Earth can regenerate in a year. Which also means that in order to maintain this level of living standard and consumption for an indefinetly long time we would need the equvalent of a bit less than 2 planets. Now add to that the 3% of growth per year and in 24 years we will double our need for resources, which would be a bit less than 4 planets... etc etc. If you want to read more about an Earth Overshoot Day, here is the link: https://www.overshootday.org/

July 29th was Earth Overshoot Day when averaged out for all countries in the world. There is also a break down of individual countries Overshoot Day. Individual country overshoot day basicaly means if the whole world would be using up the resources in the way the country in question does, then it would use up all of the resources the Earth can regenerate by the day in question.

Danish push for the renewable energy is admirable indeed and they are doing a lot both on the home front and internationaly. Vestas is one of the strongest companies for windmills production in the world. But when it comes down to resources usage Denmark is actually doing quite bad. Denmarks overshoot Day in 2019 was on... you ready...? Denmarks Overshot Day in 2019 was on 29th of March. So, if all countries in the world had the Danish living standard humanity would need a bit more then 3 planets in order to sustain it.

In Denmark, living standard started to improve at an accelerated pace since 1960ties. Until then living conditions where modest and from then as wealth of the country was increasing, so did the apetites for living space and commodities. Today the minimum criteria for the size of an apartment if you want to have two children is 100 square meters or more. As a comparison I grew up in an apartment with my parents of 30 m2, then 56m2 and later I was sharing a room of 9m2 with my ex-wife. And I lived, without any mayor issues. I am willing to bet there is a lot of people in the world who would consider my living standard a luxury as well. When did the apetites grew so much that apartments are so big that if we see the people who live with us twice a day it means that the living space is too small? This is just one example from one aspect of life, it is the same in other aspects as well.






In order to make a significant difference in the over-consumption department, it isn't enough only to buy "ecological" stuff. It is necessary to take a good long look at your lifestile and think how you could turn it down by two-thirds on average. I wonder how many people would be willing to do that in Denmark and other developed countries in the world? But without it, buying ecological products and churning out windmills will make little difference in the end because Earth is only so big with only limited amounts of resources, through which we are going way too fast already.

Danish vs English

Influx of English language into Danish sometimes seems ridiculous. Here is a sample of some "danish" words that are considered as a part of the standard Danish language:

housewarming

weekend

Walk-in-closet

Issue

Clutch

I will not even go into the IT words at all. For a much longer and more detailed list, look here: http://cphpost.dk/news/many-new-danish-words-come-from-english.html

I figured this out on one class at language school. After the class I asked my teacher are these words in danish language and he confirmed it. My next question was, but how do the linguist take it? Are they trying to find substitute or try to fight it in some way. He said that they just conclude that is how it is, that is the modern trend and that is that. I must say that when I heard it I was shocked and then I was shocked by my shock.

The reason is that in Croatia language patriots are trying to resist modern day influx from English language with everything they got and sometimes they go so far that it is just ludicrous. I must say that Danes look like the opposite extreme. They are just looking at it happening without even trying to do anything, but they just shrug their shoulders and say that's how it is.

It seems to me that in the long run danish could completely lose the battle with English and here is why. To start with, today in Denmark 80% of the population speaks English. Most of the people who don't speak English are old people who are about to retire. When older generations slowly fade out of the working market, country will be bilingual for all practical purposes. Secondly, modern day danish children are bilingual, they speak English as good as danish and they start learning English at the start of their education. Third, "official" language in the most of the business sector is English, "official" language in the IT sector is English. When you are looking for a job in Copenhagen, a lot of job postings is in English and a lot of the positions do not even require knowledge of Danish language.

To continue, the topic that I covered in the last post, danish is a hard language to learn both for foreigners and for danish children. And there is a couple of reasons for that. One is a large number of vowels and then an even higher number of vowel sounds in speech, it adds up to 40 vowel sounds in total in spoken language. That makes the pronunciation very mushy and then to complicate things more Danes do not pronounce a large number of letters, mostly consonants and in the process they fuse words, so in speech it sound like they said one word, but they actually said 3 or more. All of these things taken together makes the danish language difficult to master. And it is not only difficult to foreigners but it is difficult to danish children also. Danish children start talking much later then the average child. Average child starts talking between 18 months and 2 years. Average danish child starts talking around 3 years of age because of the trickiness of danish language. To top it up Danish researcher, Dorthe Bleses compared vocabulary acquisition in young children and she realised that at the age of 15 months Danish children have the smallest vocabulary of only around 80 words, Swedish children at the same age know 130 words and Croatian children around 200 words. Danish children do catch up later. The reason for their slow start is because of a lot of vowel sounds in Danish and a lot of letters being swallowed in speech, Danish children need more time to crack the language code but when they do, they will catch up.

If, on one hand, we assume that the modern trends in Denmark will continue indefinitely into the future by which I mean: continuous influx of foreigners (which is necessary for Denmark in order to replace the population because Denmark has too low birth rates with 1.79 birth per woman), growing strength of English language in the business sector, growing influx of English words into danish vocabulary, bilingual trends among danish youth.

On the other hand, if we take into consideration that English language is a bit simpler to learn and a lot more forgiving in pronunciation and that English will be the language that is common to most of the population, both foreigners and locals. Than if we take language as a tool that facilitates communication and if we have two languages in a population that are equally spread out, without outside interventions, language that is simpler will slowly but surely take over. Also, danish language has one unexpected drawback. Legally, Denmark does not have an official language. Danish language isn't defined by law as the official language in Denmark. The only place you are legally obliged to speak danish is in courts and nowhere else. Maybe this is something Danes should consider, protect their language at least as a part of their national heritage because if they don't, in the long run, it will have troubles competing with English.

Jamal learns Danish

For one homework from the language school I read a short text about Jamal. In short, Jamal came to Denmark and he is working hard to integrate himself into danish society which entails learning the language. Unfortunately, learning danish isn't easy for Jamal. He needs to practice his speech but every time he tried talking to a Dane he would have at least one of three problems. Either a Dane wouldn't understand what Jamal is saying, or Jamal wouldn't understand what a Dane is saying or when a Dane would hear Jamal trying his best to speak Danish he would switch to English and would keep talking in English to Jamal because it is just easier that way.

That little story portrays accurately what problems the foreigners who are trying to learn danish face with every day but it also portray elements of the danish language that make it so difficult to learn.

Danes do not understand Jamal

Problem with speaking danish when you are learning is that you need to speak more to natives, but when you try they do not understand you and you can't figure out why because you are doing everything the teacher told you in the language school and that of course causes frustrations. The problem lies in the fact that Danish language has a lot of vowels that sound very similar to one another and an untrained ear can't tell the difference but the difference is huge. For example:

"Jeg vil gerne have en kylling kebab."

"Jeg vil gerne have en killing kebab."

Words "kylling" and "killing" sound very similar but the difference in meaning is huge. In the first sentence you expressed a wish for a chicken kebab and in the second one for a kittens kebab.

This exemplifies one big problem when learning danish. It is very unforgiving to pronunciation mistakes which makes it very difficult to practice because you have very few people to talk to who will understand you.

Jamal does not understand Danes

When you try to speak to Danes they are not helping with their pronunciation as well. When Danes speak normally they are speaking so fast and they swallow so many letters that often it can sound like they said one word but in fact they said three words and it is very difficult to separate them. Additionally the problem is that, that way of speaking is officially called assimilation and it is a part of Danish standard language. So until you are not capable of fusing the words together in speech you are not talking proper danish.

For example:

"What did you say?" is in danish "Hvad siger du?" and it when a native pronounces it, it sounds like this "Vesiru?". So they fuse three words with 11 letter in total to something that sounds like one word of 6 letters. And this is the starkest contrast between Danish and Croatian. If you would pronounce in Croatian the same sentence "Što si rekao?" as "Šsireko?" you would be considered as an illiterate fuck who should learn how to speak. To think that the total opposite is true in Denmark.

Danes do not want to speak Danish to Jamal

When you find yourself in a real life situation and you use danish, if Danes sniff out your non native danish speech they will momentarily switch to English and insist on English. That is not surprising at all. All danish children are bilingual, 80% of the population in Denmark is bilingual. Danish children start learning english in the first grade of school. Since I move to Denmark I found myself only two times in a situation where the other person couldn't speak English. Maybe with this fact Danes acknowledge that English is simpler and there will be no misunderstandings in communication, so why even bother with Danish. I am just thinking out loud.

Sad Jamal has a hard time learning Danish

So no wonder Jamal is having problems in learning Danish. He should practice his speech but whenever he tries, Danes do not understand what is he saying because of the small mistakes he makes in pronunciation, which is totally expected since he is trying to learn the language. But a lot of pronunciation mistakes Jamal makes changes the meaning of his sentences so much that native speakers have hard time understanding him. Jamal is making a lot of pronunciation mistakes and that is the reason why he should practice his danish. He does not understand Danes because from their brains to Jamal ears comes only about 40% of the letters and most of them are vowels which is very difficult to decipher for Jamal. And when they realize all the problems they need to face while talking to Jamal, they will just use English because they know it is simpler and there will be no lost in translation problems. So it all goes in a bad spiral that makes learning Danish hard for Jamal. But Jamal should find some solace in the fact that he is not alone in this problem. Danish children have the same problem. At the age of 15 months danish children have a very small vocabulary because they are having the same problems as Jamal. It is very difficult to separate/extract "Hvad siger du?" from "Vesiru?". But more about that in the next blog post or should I say "Bureoutthaitnxblgpst!" because that's how it sounds sometimes to Jamal.

Indians from the North

When I was moving to Denmark one of my acquaintances called the Danes "Indians from the north". I don't even remember any more what did he mean exactly but I it kinda stuck in my mind. And in part, at least if you focus on environmental issues Danes do appear that they are trying hard to do what is in their powers to protect it.

Windmills

One of the strongest wind mills producing company in the world is Danish, Vestas and they are building new windmills all over Denmark and other countries in the world. On a windy day I would be willing to bet that Denmark is exporting the electricity produced from their windmills. They are paying for their windmill energy push through heavy taxation of car imports and since Denmark doesn't have any car manufacturing industry all of their cars are imported.

When buying a car Danes are paying 200-250% of the price of the car, depending on the car model. Heavy taxation of led to one funny consequence. Danes are buying mini cars a lot since they will have reasonable prices despite the heavy taxation, they are cheap to maintain and very economical to run. They are still mini though and there is a lot of overweight and obese people in Denmark. Now, imagine when 5 people of 100+ kilos start coming out of the mini car.... you wonder how did they fit in there.

They also have very high standards of insulation that newly built houses need to have. Consequence of that was that in the last couple of decades even though productivity went up their electricity consumption stayed the same. That is how much more efficient at energy saving they became. I even heard some Danes complaining about EU standard for isolation. They say that their own standards were so high that forcing the EU standard was almost pointless.

Windmill at the coast of the North Sea

When it comes to heating, Danes are also very efficient. From what I can tell most buildings and houses are connected to district heating power plants. Benefit of this is that a lot less energy is being used for heating when you do it that way, then when every house, apartment needs to take care of their own heating and most of their heating is coming from burning waste. I do not think I need to mention that they are doing it in accordance to the highest standards and that those plants have but load of filters installed so they keep pollution to the minimum.

Danes started with the transition to clean energy in the 70ties not because they were worried about the planet but because of the oil crisis. When oil crisis hit the world in the 70ties Denmark was hit hard. That event made them realize just how depended they are on foreign oil and natural gas. As a consequence of that event they started thinking how to reduce their dependency on foreign gas and oil and the response they figured out was windmills. They are a country almost completely surrounded by sea on a low altitude which means that it is constantly windy and on the other hand their sky is covered in clouds 7 months a year and they have no running water, so wind looked like a way to go but it needed financing.

To finance their green energy push they increased taxes on car imports and Denmark has no car manufacturing industry, so all of their cars are imported. Because of that Danes are paying 200 to 250% of the car price on purchase and all that money is going into wind mills and because of that today Denmark produces 30% of its energy from renewable sources and they target 100% of energy production from renewable sources by 2050.

So from the perspective of energy production they went very far in renewables and also they went very far at reducing their energy consumption in general. But being concerned with the environment, energy production is just one part of the equation and consumption is the second one and on that one they do not fair so good but that is a topic for another time.