Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet by Mark Lynas

Author:Mark Lynas
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Fourth Estate
Published: 2009-04-03T04:00:00+00:00

Capitalism with Chinese characteristics

Climate change is not the only major ecological challenge facing humanity, although it is undoubtedly the most serious and urgent. Global warming is joined by other mounting threats-including population growth, soil loss, fossil aquifer depletion, and the wholesale destruction of ecosystems-each of which has the potential to escalate into a major survival crisis for modern civilisation. Nowhere is this more apparent than in China, which is industrialising at breakneck speed, transforming itself from a largely peasant nation into an economic powerhouse in less than two decades. The country's leaders and population have been heading towards a Chinese-variant hypercapitalism ever since Chairman Mao breathed his last, and the economic reformers led by Deng Xiaoping came to power and quickly declared that ‘to get rich is glorious’.

Glorious it may be for the new millionaires who cruise through the glittering canyons of Shanghai and Beijing, flaunting their new prosperity with celebrity-style conspicuous consumption. Glorious it may be too for the tens of millions of ordinary Chinese who no longer live in dire poverty, and own substantial capital for the first time. But for China's ecological capital, economic growth has been utterly disastrous. A fifth of the country's native biodiversity is now endangered. Three-quarters of its lakes are polluted by agricultural or industrial run-off, whilst the Yellow River is depleted and virtually toxic along much of its lower reaches. Almost all China's coastal waters are polluted by sewage, farm pesticides and oil spills, causing on average 90 poisonous red tides per year. Approximately 15,000 square kilometres of grasslands are annually degraded by overgrazing and drought. Acid rain falls on a quarter of its cities. Three out of four urban residents breathe air which falls below minimum health standards. In Hong Kong's 2006 marathon, for example, several runners were hospitalised and one died after completing the course in persistent smog.

Because of its sheer size and population, China is on a collision course with the planet. The country's oil use has doubled in the last ten years, and if the Chinese by 2030 use oil at the same rate as Americans do now, China will need 100 million barrels of oil a day. However, current world production is only around 80 million barrels per day, and is unlikely to rise much further before the ‘peak oil’ point is reached. There simply isn't enough oil in the ground to bring Chinese consumption up to Western levels-the global resource buffer is already being hit.

Similarly for food: as the Chinese diet becomes increasingly rich in meat and dairy products, more grain is needed. By 2030, if Chinese consumers are to become as voracious as Americans, they will use the equivalent of two-thirds of today's entire global harvest. If Chinese car ownership were to reach current US levels of three cars for every four people, China's automobile fleet would number over 1 billion by 2030-substantially more than the entire current world fleet of 800 million.

In almost every sector of resource use, China's ascension to Western consumption standards will clearly demand far more than the Earth can provide.

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