“A great book which should wake up humankind!” –Klaus Schwab, World Economic Forum
Chapter 1. Entering a New World: China - Why the Existing Economic Model Will Fail
For almost as long as I can remember we have been saying that the United States, with 5 percent of the world’s people, consumes a third or more of the earth’s resources. That was true. It is no longer true. Today China consumes more basic resources than the United States does. 38
Among the key commodities such as grain, meat, oil, coal, and steel, China consumes more of each than the United States except for oil, where the United States still has a wide (though narrowing) lead. China uses a third more grain than the United States. Its meat consumption is nearly double that of the United States. It uses three times as much steel. 39
These numbers reflect national consumption, but what would happen if consumption per person in China were to catch up to that of the United States? If we assume that China’s economy slows from the 10 percent annual growth of recent years to 8 percent, then in 2030 income per person in China will reach the level it is in the United States today. 40
If we also assume that the Chinese will spend their income more or less as Americans do today, then we can translate their income into consumption. If, for example, each person in China consumes paper at the current American rate, then in 2030 China’s 1.46 billion people will need twice as much paper as is produced worldwide today. There go the world’s forests. 41
If we assume that in 2030 there are three cars for every four people in China, as there now are in the United States, China will have 1.1 billion cars. The world currently has 860 million cars. To provide the needed roads, highways, and parking lots, China would have to pave an area comparable to what it now plants in rice. 42
By 2030 China would need 98 million barrels of oil a day. The world is currently producing 85 million barrels a day and may never produce much more than that. There go the world’s oil reserves. 43
What China is teaching us is that the western economic model—the fossil-fuel-based, automobile-centered, throwaway economy—is not going to work for China. If it does not work for China, it will not work for India, which by 2030 may have an even larger population than China. Nor will it work for the other 3 billion people in developing countries who are also dreaming the “American dream.” And in an increasingly integrated global economy, where we all depend on the same grain, oil, and steel, the western economic model will no longer work for the industrial countries either. 44
The overriding challenge for our generation is to build a new economy—one that is powered largely by renewable sources of energy, that has a much more diversified transport system, and that reuses and recycles everything. We have the technology to build this new economy, an economy that will allow us to sustain economic progress. Can we build it fast enough to avoid a breakdown of social systems?
ENDNOTES:
38. The New Road Map Foundation, “All-Consuming Passion: Waking up from the American Dream,” factsheet, EcoFuture, updated 17 January 2002.
39. USDA, op. cit. note 18; International Iron and Steel Institute, Steel Statistical Yearbook 2006 (Brussels: 2006), pp. 77–79.
40. IMF, op. cit. note 29; U.N. Population Division, op. cit. note 10.
41. U.N. Population Division, op. cit. note 10; FAO, op. cit. note 36.
42. Ward’s Automotive Group, World Motor Vehicle Data 2006 (Southfield, MI: Ward’s Automotive Group, 2006); area for paving calculated using 0.02 hectare per car from Lester R. Brown, “Paving the Planet: Cars and Crops Competing for Land,” Issue Alert (Washington, DC: Earth Policy Institute, 14 February 2001); USDA, op. cit. note 18.
43. BP, Statistical Review of World Energy 2007 (London: 2007); U.N. Population Division, op. cit. note 10; International Energy Agency (IEA), Oil Market Report (Paris: July 2007).
44. U.N. Population Division, op. cit. note 10.
Copyright © 2008 Earth Policy Institute