China's population and economy are a double whammy for the world
China's 'one-child' policy has slowed population growth and brought prosperity — but it couldn't avert massive damage to the environment.For more than three decades, the most populous nation on Earth has been running a massive social experiment, using elaborate incentives and penalties to limit family size.
The aim was to banish hunger and raise living standards, and by many measures the results have been impressive. By reducing the number of dependents per household and freeing more women to enter the workforce, population control efforts have helped lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and contributed to China's spectacular economic growth.
Prosperity has exacted a steep environmental toll, however.
The colossal industrial expansion of recent decades has depleted natural resources and polluted the skies and streams. China now consumes half the world's coal supply. It leads all nations in emissions of carbon dioxide, the main contributor to global warming. Pollutants from its smokestacks cause acid rain in Seoul and Tokyo.China's experience shows how rising consumption and even modest rates of population growth magnify each other's impact on the planet.
The country's population of 1.3 billion is increasing, even with the controls on family size. What is driving the growth is that hundreds of millions of Chinese are still in their reproductive years. On such a huge base, even one or two children per couple adds large numbers —
an effect known as population momentum.Moreover, the Chinese are living better overall: consuming more food, energy and goods than ever. One-fourth of the population — the equivalent of everyone in the United States — has entered the middle class.The U.S. consumes much more per person. But with a population four times larger, China has a greater collective appetite — and a greater ecological impact — than any other country.The compounding forces of economic and population growth are a source of increasing concern to scientists.
An international team of 1,300 researchers organized by the United Nations concluded that evidence points to "abrupt and potentially irreversible changes" in ecosystems in the next few decades, including mass extinctions and rapid climate change.Within China, signs of environmental damage are pervasive: massive fish kills, lung-searing smog, denuded landscapes. They have stirred popular discontent and the beginnings of greater official concern for curbing pollution and preserving natural resources.
How this drama plays out is not merely China's concern. Because of the nation's sheer size, the rest of the world has an enormous stake in the outcome.To drive the birthrate down further, Deng Xiaoping imposed the "one-child policy" in 1979. It led to mandated abortions and other abuses by zealous enforcers.
Today, there are many exceptions to the rule: Rural couples and ethnic minorities, for instance, can have two or more children. Yu, the family planning official, acknowledged that the policy has caused hardships.
But he said such forbearance benefited the country, creating a bulge of working-age people with fewer dependents. The resulting burst in productivity is known as the demographic dividend.Those who work for the vast family planning bureaucracy take great pride in what they see as their contributions to China's prosperity.
In discussing the country's population policies, the giddy bureaucrats turned again and again to the economic rewards.
"We want to get rich before we get old," was a common refrain.In Shanghai, whose population of 23 million exceeds that of Australia, high-rises sprawl in all directions until their silhouettes slip from view, obscured by brown haze.China, by varying estimates, has more than 100 cities with 1 million or more residents, compared with 9 in the United States. The number of million-plus cities will reach 221 within two decades, according to the McKinsey Global Institute, an economics research firm. More than a dozen will have populations of 25 million or more each.
All this development is being stitched together with high-speed rail and new highways to prepare for 600 million vehicles expected on the roads by 2050.
The U.S. automotive fleet, by far the largest in the world, is less than half that size.China isn't hustling just to satisfy the demand from the United States and other countries for cheap merchandise. Increasingly, it is bent on meeting the needs of its own people.
More and more, it is being forced to confront the environmental consequences.
In nearby Datong, a thick gray-brown haze clings to the city like a dark mist, obscuring the tops of high-rises.
A half-day's drive south is the ancient city of Linfen, identified by the World Bank six years ago as the most polluted city on Earth.The city, once known for its fruit and flowers, is now infamous for respiratory illnesses and the shroud of smog that regularly blots out the sun. When the sun does manage to poke through, it appears as a burnt orange fireball, reminiscent of Southern California's eerie skies during raging wildfires.
China likes to consider itself the world's factory. Yet it has also become the world's smokestack.
Tendrils of soot extend across the Pacific. On some days, almost 25% of the pollutants in the air above Los Angeles originated in China, the Environmental Protection Agency has found.
After the World Bank's rebuke, officials in Shanxi province closed some of the illegal coal mines in Linfen and its dirtiest coal-fired furnaces.
Such steps reduce pollution at the local level. But they do nothing to curb China's consumption of coal or the resulting carbon dioxide emissions.
China relies on coal to meet about two-thirds of its energy needs. Despite major investments in solar, wind and nuclear energy, coal consumption continues to climb.Although China has the third-largest reserves in the world, it is reaching around the world for more. It overtook Japan this year as the world's largest coal importer, drawing mostly from Indonesia and Australia. Its imports are expected to double by 2015.Those trends are worrisome to climate scientists, who say that in order to avoid a potentially catastrophic rise in global temperatures, worldwide carbon dioxide emissions must be cut in half by 2050.For that to happen, China's emissions would have to peak by 2020, said Nobuo Tanaka, former director of the Paris-based International Energy Agency, which advises governments on energy issues.
But by China's own projections, its output will rise at least 50% from current levels before peaking around 2035.It would be all but impossible for other nations to compensate for such an increase, Tanaka said.
Chinese leaders say that capping emissions would cripple industrial growth and urban development in a country that still has 100 million poor people.
The industrialized countries polluted their way to prosperity, their argument goes, so why should the Chinese be penalized?China's leaders also have sought credit for their population control policies, which they say averted 400 million births and thus billions of tons of greenhouse gas emissions.At the same time, they acknowledge that the one-child policy was never meant to be permanent. When it was started in 1979, officials promised to revisit the issue in 30 years. There is some internal pressure and even more international pressure to lift the restrictions.
Link-
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/population/la-fg-population-matter...==============================
Dilemma's, the world is full of dilemma's!
China, India, the existing industrialised Western World all want the same things, but we can't all have, all that we want, because the world has not got the resources to supply what we all want, nor has the planet got the capacity to maintain the Climate necessary for humanity to continue to expand at the rate of the last 100 years!
Things are set to change, either by the free willed choices of humanity, by the accidents caused by humanity not making those choices or by the planet invoking its own remedies, because we avoided making the necessary choices!
At present, these necessary choices are not being made, because self interest is getting in the way and unless that is addressed quickly it will result in the interests of all being downgraded. That downgrading may well be substantial and the final outcome would be one where there are no winners?
For all of those who want a continuation of the status quo, I say we can not, it is not possible.
We are already verging on the edges of the planets capacity to satisfy our Energy requirements, for a Global Population of some 7 Billion, most of whom are no where near being "middle class".
In fact, we are already at or very close to Peak Energy Production, particularly in the most widely used Energy formats, those being Crude Oil & Coal and there are no Energy replacements available, that would not result in a large net loss of Energy Production.
That said, the worlds two most Populace countries are now trying to bring more of their populations into the middle class and they will greatly increase the Global Energy Consumption.
In so doing, there will be great consequence, for human Economics, for the planets climate, for the quicker depletion of our planets capacity to keep up the Supply of Energy, even for our current 7 billion people, let alone any more.
As I said, we have choices, we still have choices!
But, if we don't choose, then the choices will be made for us!!!
Forum
Pages: 
For the Record (Read 224781 times)
