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China Dialogue: consumption in China

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn, July 25, 2006 11:32 AM

China Dialogue, the bilingual discussion website about Chinese environmental issues, has published an article about consumption and consumerism. The piece looks at how the growth of Western style consumerism is not sustainable:

If by 2030 China and India alone were to achieve a per-capita [resource consumption] footprint equivalent to that of Japan today, together they would require a full planet Earth to meet their needs.

So what are environmentalists to do? Not easy. The article also quotes from Jared Diamond's book Collapse: “China will, of course, not tolerate being told not to aspire to first world levels”. Quite so.

There is more on this debate at Open Democracy: China, India, and Brazil: activists debate climate change.

For a rosier view of our world, read this New Scientist article Climate Change: Menace or Myth?. Excerpt:

The apparent scientific consensus over global warming only exists, they say, because it is enforced by a scientific establishment riding the gravy train, aided and abetted by governments keen to play the politics of fear.

There are currently 4 Comments for China Dialogue: consumption in China.

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Comments on China Dialogue: consumption in China

If there is a shortage of commodities the prices will rise. The market will take care of the problem. The real story, is how are the citizen's of what is today the "rich world" going to compete as the number of people reasonably prepared to join the rich world increases from 1B to 3B over the next 40 years? Earth is already proven to support at least 1B people using today's technology. 40 years worth of technology development will probably open new resource frontiers including the poles and the oceans.

Don't worry. The market will probably be able to handle it. In any case, mankind will survive.

Posted by: Ryan | July 25, 2006 10:58 PM

the first link to "consumption and consumerism" doesn't work.

Posted by: pine | July 26, 2006 6:58 AM

Thanks, fixed.

Posted by: Jeremy Goldkorn | July 26, 2006 10:41 AM

I agree with Ryan, in fact, we are already seeing the effect of this. Oil prices are going up and the US feels its economy is threatened. So what does it do? It pressures China to let the Yuan float so that it can import more goods from the US to balance the trade and has slipped in to protectionism and pre-emptive strike. Evidence Iraq and soon, Iran and N. Korea.

Posted by: Tony | July 26, 2006 12:54 PM