|
|
|
|
Too much for Mother
Earth
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - Even if per capita income in
China grows at only 8% per year - lower than the
red-hot pace of 9.5% at which it has grown since
1978 - it will still overtake the current per
capita US income in just over 25 years, according
to the latest analysis by the Earth Policy
Institute (EPI).
And if those increased
incomes translate into the kind of lifestyle
currently enjoyed by most US citizens, Chinese
demands will overwhelm what the planet can
provide, according to the analysis, "Learning from
China: Why the Western Economic Model Will Not
Work for the World". While geopoliticians worry
whether China will integrate itself into the
current Western-dominated international system,
Lester Brown, EPI's founder, is far more worried
about the impact of a wealthy China on the Earth's
diminishing resource base.
"If it does not
work for China," he notes, "it will not work for
India, which has an economy growing at 7% per year
and a population projected to surpass China's by
2030." China's demands on basic raw materials to
feed its galloping economy have become
increasingly clear in just the past few months as
successive trade delegations, including one headed
by President Hu Jintao himself, have made their
way to Latin America to sign long-term supply
contracts for commodities from agriculture to
mining. On a 12-day, four-country trip in
November, Hu announced more than US$30 billion in
new Chinese investments in Latin America in basic
industries and infrastructure designed to
facilitate exports of raw materials from the
region across the Pacific over the next
generation.
China's economic boom is the
biggest single factor in the steady rise of
commodity prices worldwide over the past years, a
factor that - coupled with its investments and
shrewd diplomacy - is buying it considerable
goodwill in much of the developing world, but
especially in South and Southeast Asia, as well as
Latin America. A survey of 22 countries
commissioned by the British Broadcasting Corp
(BBC) and released recently found that China is
now viewed as playing a significantly more
positive role in the world than either the US or
Russia and that majorities in 17 of the countries
surveyed are particularly positive about China's
growing economic clout. The poll, of nearly 23,000
people, was conducted by GlobeScan and the
University of Maryland's Program on International
Policy Attitudes in late 2004.
But Brown,
a founder and former director of the Worldwatch
Institute who has long warned about limits to the
Earth's ability to sustain wealthy lifestyles - at
least as they exist in the United States - now
argues that, to the extent China's growth is aimed
at replicating such lifestyles, its efforts will
ultimately prove futile. Chinese consumption of
each of the "five basic commodities - grain, meat,
coal, oil and steel - has already overtaken that
of the US in all but oil", he writes. "Now the
question is, what if consumption per person of
these resources in China one day reaches the
current US level?"
China's current per
capita income is estimated at about $5,300 a year,
only about 14% of US per capita annual income of
about $38,000. If its economy's annual growth rate
slows to 8% per year, China would reach the
current US income by 2031; if it grows at a mere
6% a year, it would reach current US levels by
2040. Assuming the 8% growth rate and that Chinese
consumption habits will be similar to those of the
US today, per capita grain consumption would climb
from 291 kilograms today to 935kg for a US-style
diet, according to Brown. That would bring total
Chinese grain consumption in 2031 to 1.352 billion
tonnes from only 382 million tonnes in 2004 -
equal to two-thirds of the entire 2004 world grain
harvest.
"Given the limited potential for
further raising the productivity of the world's
existing cropland, producing an additional 1
billion tonnes of grain for consumption in China
would require converting a large part of Brazil's
remaining rainforests to grain production,"
according to Brown, who notes that if Chinese per
capita meat consumption alone were to rise to
today's US levels, about 80% of the world's
current meat production would be consumed by
Chinese.
Even more daunting are similar
estimates for energy production. If by 2031 the
Chinese use oil at the same rate as the US does
today, it would need 99 million barrels of oil a
day, or 20 million barrels per day more than the
entire world currently produces. Similarly, if
China's coal burning were to reach current US
levels of two tonnes per person per year, the
country would use nearly 3 billion tonnes annually
by 2031. Current annual global production stands
at 2.5 billion tonnes. As fossil fuels, more use
of oil and natural gas will also mean
unprecedented amounts of greenhouse gases - blamed
by scientists on climate change and global warming
- released into the atmosphere.
If steel
production per person in China were to climb to US
levels, it would mean that China's aggregate steel
use would double by 2031 to a level equal to the
current consumption of the entire Western world.
If China were to reach current levels of
automobile ownership in the US (three cars for
every four people), it alone would have a fleet of
1.1 billion cars by 2031, compared with the
current global fleet of nearly 800 million. "The
paving of land for roads, highways, and parking
lots for such a fleet would approach the area now
planted for rice in China," according to Brown.
Similarly, if China were to ape current US
consumption of paper products, which are reliant
on forests and recycled paper today, it would need
nearly twice the amount of paper produced
worldwide last year to satisfy its needs just for
2031. "The point of this exercise of projections,"
writes Brown, "is not to blame China for consuming
so much, but rather to learn what happens when a
large segment of humanity moves quickly up the
global economic ladder ... Plan A, business as
usual, is no longer a viable option. We need to
turn quickly to Plan B before the geopolitics of
oil, grain and raw-material scarcity lead to
economic instability, political conflict, and
disruption of the social order on which economic
progress depends."
(Inter Press
Service) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
All material on this
website is copyright and may not be republished in any form without written
permission.
© Copyright 1999 - 2005 Asia Times
Online Ltd.
|
|
Head
Office: Rm 202, Hau Fook Mansion, No. 8 Hau Fook St., Kowloon, Hong
Kong
Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
|
Asian Sex Gazette China Sex News
|
|
|
