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.