Liberal Talk Radio

Sometimes you shouldn’t read too much Wired Magazine. It can frighten you:

It turns out that if their economy continues to grow at 8 percent per year, which is slower than the last few years, in 2031 income per person in China will be same as in the U.S. today. And if we further assume that they will be spending their money more or less the same way we do, then China’s 1.4 (billion) or 1.5 billion people in 2031 will be consuming the equivalent of two-thirds of the current world grain harvest.

Their paper consumption at U.S. per capita levels will be double the current world production. There go the world’s forests. Cars: three cars for every four people in China? That’s 1.1 billion cars. The current world fleet is 800 million cars. Oil consumption? Ninety-nine million barrels of oil a day. Current world production is 84 million barrels a day, and it’s probably never going to be much more than that.

So what China is teaching us is that the Western economic model — fossil-fuel-based, automobile-centered, throwaway economy — is not going to work for China. If it doesn’t work for China, it won’t work for India, which is projected to have an even larger population by 2031. Nor will it work for the other 3 billion people in the developing countries who are also dreaming the American dream. And perhaps most importantly, in an increasingly integrated global economy, where we all depend on the same oil, grain and steel, it won’t work for us either.

Damn. 2031 is not that far away. It was 2001 like three days ago, I swear. And later on, incidentally, a nice shout out to Gridlock Greg:

One of (the) most interesting things happening right now is the movement by mayors in this country — I think, at last count, 260 of them — to sign onto the Kyoto Protocol. This began with mayor of Seattle. He was the first.