Lester R. Brown

Although the United States has long consumed the lion™s share of the world™s resources, this situation is changing fast as the Chinese economy surges ahead, overtaking the United States in the consumption of one resource after another.

Among the five basic food, energy, and industrial commodities”grain and meat, oil and coal, and steel”consumption in China has already eclipsed that of the United States in all but oil. China has opened a wide lead with grain: 382 million tons to 278 million tons for the United States last year. Among the big three grains, the world™s most populous country leads in the consumption of both wheat and rice, and trails the United States only in corn use.

Although eating hamburgers is a defining element of the U.S. lifestyle, China™s 2004 intake of 64 million tons of meat has climbed far above the 38 million tons consumed in the United States. While U.S. meat intake is rather evenly distributed between beef, pork, and poultry, in China pork totally dominates. Indeed, half the world™s pigs are found in China.

With steel, a key indicator of industrial development, use in China has soared and is now more than twice that of the United States: 258 million tons to 104 million tons in 2003. As China™s population urbanizes and as the country has moved into the construction phase of development, building hundreds of thousands of factories and high-rise apartment and office buildings, steel consumption has climbed to levels not seen in any other country. (See data.)

With oil, the United States is still solidly in the lead with consumption triple that of China™s”20.4 million barrels per day to 6.5 million barrels in 2004. But while oil use in the United States expanded by only 15 percent from 1994 to 2004, use in the new industrial giant more than doubled. Having recently eclipsed Japan as an oil consumer, China is now second only to the United States.

Looking at energy use in China means also considering coal, which supplies nearly two thirds of energy demand. Here China™s burning of 800 million tons easily exceeds the 574 million tons burned in the United States. With its coal use far exceeding that of the United States and with its oil and natural gas use climbing fast, it is only a matter of time until China will also be the world™s top emitter of carbon. Soon the world may have two major climate disrupters.

In addition to steel, China also leads in the use of other metals, such as aluminum and copper. Not only has China overtaken the United States in use of these materials, but it is widening the gap, leaving the United States in a distant second place.

In another key area, fertilizer”essentially nitrates and potash”China™s use is double that of the United States, 41.2 million tons to 19.2 million tons in 2004. In the use of the nutrients that feed our crops, China is now far and away the world leader.

In China™s consumer economy, sales of almost everything from electronic goods to automobiles are soaring. Nowhere is the explosive growth more visible than in the electronics sector. In 1996 China had 7 million cell phones and the United States had 44 million. By 2003 China had rocketed to 269 million versus 159 million in the United States. In effect, China is leapfrogging the traditional land-line telephone stage of communications development, going directly to mobile phones.

The use of personal computers is now also taking off in China. After a late start, the number of personal computers jumped to 36 million in 2003 compared with 190 million in the United States. But with the number of computers in use doubling every 28 months, it will only be a matter of time before China, a country of 1.3 billion people, overtakes the United States, which has a population of 297 million.

With household appliances, such as television sets and refrigerators, China has long since moved ahead of the United States. By 2000, for example, TV sets in China outnumbered those in the United States by 374 million to 243 million. With refrigerators, perhaps the most costly household appliance, production in China overtook that of the United States in 2000.

Among the leading consumer products, China trails the United States only in automobiles. By 2003, it had 24 million motor vehicles, scarcely one tenth the 226 million on U.S. roads. But with car sales doubling over the last two years, China™s fleet is growing fast.

And the race is far from over. With a per capita annual income in 2004 of $5,300, one seventh the $38,000 in the United States, China has a long way to go to reach U.S. per capita consumption levels. For example, despite China™s wide lead in total meat intake, the meat consumed per person is only 49 kilograms (108 pounds) a year compared with 127 kilograms (279 pounds) in the United States. As Chinese incomes rise at a world record pace, use of foodstuffs, energy, raw materials, and sales of consumer goods are continuing to climb.

China is now importing vast quantities of grain, soybeans, iron ore, aluminum, copper, platinum, phosphates, potash, oil and natural gas, forest products for lumber and paper, and the cotton needed for its world-dominating textile industry. These massive imports have put China at the center of the world raw materials economy. Its voracious appetite for materials is driving up not only commodity prices but ocean shipping rates as well.

The new industrial giant™s need for access to raw materials and energy is shaping its foreign policy and security planning. Strategic relationships with resource-rich countries such as Brazil, Kazakhstan, Russia, Indonesia, and Australia are built around long-term supply contracts for products such as oil, natural gas, iron ore, bauxite, and timber. These strategic ties it is forming are welcomed in countries like Brazil as a counterweight to U.S. influence.

China™s eclipse of the United States as a consumer nation should be seen as another milestone along the path of its evolution as a world economic leader. Its record-high domestic savings and its huge trade surplus with the United States are but two of the more visible manifestations of its economic strength. It is now China, along with Japan, that is buying the U.S. treasury securities that enable the United States to run the largest fiscal deficit in history.

The United States, the world™s leading debtor nation, is now heavily dependent on Chinese capital to underwrite its fast-growing debt. If China ever decides to divert this capital surplus elsewhere, either to internal investment or to the development of oil, gas, and mineral resources elsewhere in the world, the U.S. economy will be in trouble.

China is no longer just a developing country. It is an emerging economic superpower, one that is writing economic history. If the last century was the American century, this one looks to be the Chinese century.

February 2, 2005
Reporting by Roddy Scheer

An international task force of business leaders, scientists and politicians has released a report predicting dire environmental consequences if the leading industrial nations of the world don't work quickly to combat global warming.

'An ecological time-bomb is ticking away,' says Stephen Byers, the British political advisor who co-chaired the task force with U.S. Republican Senator Olympia Snowe (ME). 'World leaders need to recognize that climate change is the single most important long-term issue that the planet faces,' says Byers.
The report was released against the backdrop of British prime minister Tony Blair announcing that he would use the U.K. presidency of the upcoming G-8 summit meeting of the world's leading industrial nations to push for a renewed international commitment to mitigating the global warming threat.
Report authors say that the G-8 countries must significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions, double their spending on green technology R&D, and work with developing countries to strengthen the terms of the Kyoto Protocol in order to avert a global catastrophe of unprecedented proportions. A commitment by the U.S. to significantly cut its carbon dioxide emissions and to shift agricultural subsidies from food crops to biofuels would represent a serious advance in the battle against global warming, the report concludes.

The independent task force was established last March as a joint effort by the Institute for Public Policy Research in Britain, the Center for American Progress in the United States and The Australia Institute. Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairperson of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Cha"

Using statistics released by the USGBC in May 2004, one can understand the frequency with which different green building measures are used in LEED projects. Based on the first 84 LEED-certified projects, the percentage use of measures can be divided into three categories: 1) Highly likely to be used (67 % or more of projects), including low VOC paints, coatings, adhesives and sealants; low VOC carpeting; and 10% or more recycled-content materials. 2) Somewhat likely to be used (33 to 66% of projects), including alternative fuel vehicles (i.e. hybrids, natural gas, electric); bioswales, detention/retention ponds, and rainwater reclamation systems; and green roofs. 3) Unlikely to be used (less than 30% of projects), including solar PVs; Forest Stewardship Council-certified wood products; and operable windows. The Construction Specifier, Jan 05, p 49, by Jerry Yudelson.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the most talked about topic in the architecture universe is how to reduce the environmental impact of everything from summer cottages to skyscrapers. Here are five examples of how this trend is playing out: 1) Easier to be Green: Green building is proving itself a potent trend, and high energy prices should continue developer's thirst for frugal digs. A huge challenge will be to get home building into the fold. 2) Material Matters: New materials are fueling the environmental building revolution. Examples include see-through concrete and SmartWrap, a transparent building membrane that adjusts its properties to changes in light and temperature. 3) Race to the Top: Only one thing is in doubt about the next generation of skyscrapers: which will be the tallest? 4) China, China, China: An architects dream come true, Chinas red-hot strong economy is igniting a building bonanza, giving designers a chance to experiment with whole communities from scratch. 5) Cars vs. No Cars: The rapid spread of suburban-style sprawl isn't slowing. Yet theres a parallel movement of dwellers into more pedestrian-friendly communities closer to downtowns. More and more people are willing to pay extra for well-designed mixed-used neighborhoods. The Wall Street Journal, 31 Jan 05, p R5, by Alex Frangos.

By Mark Jaccard

Like a rat in a maze, our federal government hits dead-end after dead-end in pursuing its Kyoto protocol commitment to reduce Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2010. After signing the protocol in 1997, the government asked the provinces to help out, but the response ranged from feigned support to outright hostility in the case of Alberta. The government has also been trying to convince Canadian businesses and individuals to voluntarily reduce emissions. But while TV ads may have some entertainment value – with Rick Mercer playing Don Quixote in a futile duel against the hordes of ads for gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs – energy analysts have long known that calls for voluntary action have little effect. And so Canada’s emissions continue their relentless climb as the Kyoto target slips further away.

In a new Kyoto plan and its upcoming budget, the federal government is about to unveil its latest strategy. This will involve more voluntarism combined with major subsidies to foster everything from low emission vehicles to windpower to more efficient industrial equipment.

But do not expect this latest policy to help our rat (I mean government) exit the maze. Massive subsidy programs might look great for politicians – as they dole out taxpayers’ money to happy recipients – but they will not sustain the required technological change. Energy analysts know this thanks to over 20 years of evidence from electric utility subsidies to energy efficient technologies. Sometimes up to 80% of the subsidies were captured by free-riders – businesses and individuals who would have made such investments anyway (our economy generally shifts to more efficient equipment even without subsidies). When subsidies are eventually removed, as budgetary priorities change, those cleaner technologies that were dependent on them stagnate or die off.

Who is to blame for these wrong-headed policies?

Start with some sympathy for the rat. The policy maze results from myths that different interest groups tell themselves and government. Industry tells government that emission reduction is inevitably costly, so it refuses to design creative policies that evidence shows can drive long-run technological change without causing economic harm. Many environmentalists tell government that emission reduction is profitable and easy today, implying that voluntarism and a few modest subsidies are sufficient. The media loves to hammer government the minute it hints at a tax increase, even when the intent is only to shift taxes to better reflect environmental costs.

Constrained by these myths, government dare not explore the obvious exit from the maze. That path is a gradually rising tax on emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Decades of experiments with all sorts of environmental taxes – including a decade of carbon dioxide taxes in several jurisdictions – have shown that a properly designed tax can meet everyone’s concerns. Government reduces other taxes, so there is no net tax increase. Industries whose exports are threatened are given tax-exemption and reduction options, as Norway does with its $70 tax per tonne of carbon dioxide. Tax payments are returned to regional governments, like Alberta, so there are no net losers. The tax starts at a modest level and is scheduled to rise gradually, so it affects new investment decisions but not the profitability of old equipment, and so its rise can be slowed or reversed if scientists change their minds about climate change. Canada’s tax should be about $15 today, rising to $50 by 2020. Independent research shows that this would have no effect on the competitiveness of Canadian industry and, in fact, would match current policies at the US state level.

Speaking of the US, even if we won’t try the easy tax solution, we can approximate its effect by looking in the most unlikely of places – recent environmental policies enacted by Republican politicians. In 1990, George Bush senior passed US legislation that established a declining number of tradable permits for sulphur dioxide emissions that resulted in a dramatic and inexpensive reduction in these emissions over the next decade. An identical program could be implemented for carbon dioxide. In 1997, as governor of Texas, George Bush junior implemented a renewable electricity requirement that has resulted in his state leading the nation in windpower development, far outstripping any effort in Canada to reduce greenhouse gases from electricity generation. In 1990, California passed vehicle emission legislation (for local air pollutants) that has been largely responsible for the hybrid electric-gasoline car. Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger just passed legislation that extends the vehicle policy to include greenhouse gas emissions. Because other states mimic California’s standards, the US will lead Canada in greenhouse gas reduction in spite of not signing the Kyoto protocol.

There is an obvious policy path out of the maze. But as long as we continue with our own myths, the rat’s lonely quest will continue.