Leaving Las Vegas

What's the ecological footprint of the gambling industry?

Posted by Tom Athanasiou (Guest Contributor) at 11:23 AM on 26 Nov 2007

Read more about: Nevada | ecological footprint | climate

I won't explain how it came to pass that -- only two days after a trip to NYC to present Greenhouse Development Rights at a meeting of the UN's Committee for Development Policy -- I went to Las Vegas.

I will say that that my wife, an Aussie, wanted to see the place, that we have a 11-year-old boy, and that the Hilton contains an installation honoring the United Federation of Planets. (The flag of which has a notable similarity to the one displayed in the UN's own, rather more dilapidated, halls.)

Some quick thoughts:

First, I know I'm a living, breathing cliche, but it was hard being in Las Vegas without wondering about its ecological footprint. I'd look it up, but ecological footprint databases are still pretty primitive, rather like last-generation climate models. The resolution comes down to countries, regions if you're lucky, but rarely to cities, and even more rarely to economic sectors.

Anyway, what I'd really like to know isn't Las Vegas' footprint, but rather the "gaming" industry's. And I'd like to see it expressed not in tons of carbon or hectares of arable land but rather as a percentage of the Gross World Product. This desire, no doubt, is the residual influence of the UN meeting, at which the "cost" of climate stabilization, and debates about how best to understand and estimate and present it, figured rather large.

Actually, the real question -- the old question that people are still ducking, even John Edwards, elegantly, in response to Dave's question last week -- is "Who pays?" Keep it in mind when reading the coverage of the next climate jamboree, which starts in Bali in only one short week, because this time around it's not only going to be the elephant in the room, it's going to be wandering the halls.

Anyway, back to Vegas. What is it, ultimately? The cheap answer is "a machine for separating people from their money," but there's more to it than that. In particular, there's the small matter of fantasy, of release, of "fun" -- and judging by the crowds, the need for same is not abating. Were I more of a misanthrope, I'd talk of banality and degradation, but actually, they're not really the point, at least not here. Besides, we had a good time.

What I'm trying to get to here -- and I see that I'm not doing a very good job -- is what's sometimes called "structural adjustment," as in (to recall the UN discussion now busily evaporating from my forebrain) "the need to prepare the American people for the coming structural adjustment of the North." And if anything is certain, it's that such an adjustment isn't going to be easy.

P.S. If anyone knows where to find data on the total size of the world gambling industry, and the "entertainment" industry in general, and in fact various economic sectors of all kinds, globally, please advise.

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Some ideas

Oh, you don't mean gambling on Wall Street or the US elections, eh? Anyway, most large casino companies are now traded on the stock market and their annual reports should be freely available. If you know square footage of casino floor space and number of hotel units you can profile things fairly well.

Not so known are US gambling interests on Indian reservations, but I think the Fed has to approve them all through the BIA or something.

The Bahamas is a hot spot for gambling for sure; one of the Ministries should have some numbers for you. I heard that areas around Macao in China are extremely hot casino and gambling areas as well - they claim to have the largest casinos in the world there. An article search might help you there. Don't forget the Med area (or is gambling in a palace OK?).

Cool research topic!

Onward through the fog

by Sam Wells at 12:28 PM on 26 Nov 2007

Data --

Getting data on world industries is a tough one, Tom, but the best source -- off the top of my head I can't remember the exact name -- is from the UN, and it's a big book filled with data about industries from each country, with a chunk in the beginning giving percentages for particular industries -- although they might be industrial, not services. By the way, if you look just at the USA, gaming + entertainment + sports +tv + movies + music, and all the other stuff that people are really interested in, account for only 3% of total gdp, value added.

Anyway, since you twisted my arm, here are a few sources, although as I said it might be for manufacturing:

UNIDO 1988. United Nations Industrial Development Organization. 1988. Handbook of Industrial Statistics 1988. Vienna:United Nations Industrial Development Organization.

UNIDO 1997. United Nations Industrial Development Organization. 1997. Industrial Development Global Report 1997. Oxford:Oxford University Press.

And also, for cross-country comparisons and comparisons through history, my main man is Angus, as in Angus Maddison:

Maddison, Angus. 1995. Monitoring the World Economy 1820-1992. Paris: OECD.

He may have also done something more recent.

by Jon Rynn at 12:51 PM on 26 Nov 2007

Minor notes...

Well, I know that many of the new mega casinos bein' built now are supposed to be LEED certified to help cut down on energy consumption. I'm not so sure on existing casinos, but many of the bright glow lights that they use are flourescent and pretty energy efficient (compared to incandescents), but even so they do use quite a few of 'em.

The Colorado River is near Las Vegas and is heavily dammed, but I don't know how much of Las Vegas' power specifically comes from hydro sources.

Much of the problem is that Vegas is set in a geographical formation that resembles a bowl, with mountains on all sides, so pollution and smog get trapped very easily, and the swelterin' temperatures certainly don't help much (not to mention the energy it must take to air condition all those mega structures). They did just install a new monorail system, that connects many of the hotels and casinos, so hopefully that'll encourage some people (mostly tourists) to cut down on car use.

I do know that Vegas is fairly strict on water conservation though.

I know Paramount (which owns Paramount Parks which owns the awesome Star Trek: The Experience) offsets some of it's CO2, but I don't know if the park specifically does. I also know that the Hilton hotel chain sometimes partners with the Nature Conservancy on various programs.

But I think the Hilton in Vegas is a fairly old structure, and thus, is probably not very enenry efficient.

by Tasermons Partner at 6:46 PM on 26 Nov 2007

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