Is American dream a Chinese nightmare?

"For China's 1,300,000,000 people, the American dream is fast becoming the Chinese dream," says Lester R. Brown, president of Earth Policy Institute, Washington, D.C. "Millions of Chinese are living like Americans--eating more meat, driving cars, traveling abroad, and otherwise spending their fast-rising incomes much as Americans do."

Total consumption in China of several basic commodities--including grain, meat, coal, and steel--has overtaken that of the U.S. Yet, what happens when projected income per person in China reaches the current U.S. levels in 2031 and its consumption per person of grain, oil, and steel does the same?

The answer is that China's grain consumption would be two-thirds of current world production. Its oil use of 99,000,000 barrels a day would exceed current global output of 79,000,000 barrels. Moreover, China would consume more steel than the entire Western industrialized world does today.

The fossil-fuel-based, automobile-centered throwaway economy that evolved in the West will not work for this mighty Asian nation simply because there are not enough natural resources, Brown warns. Nor will it work for India or for the other 3,000,000,000 people in the developing world. Most importantly, in an integrated global economy where all countries are competing for the same dwindling resources, it will not continue to work for the 1,200,000,000 who live in the affluent industrial societies, either.

China is teaching the industrialized West that a new economic model is needed, Brown maintains. Energy usage, for instance, will not be based on fossil fuels, but, rather, renewable sources, including wind power, hydropower, geothermal energy, solar cells, solar thermal power plants, and biofuels. In the search for new energy, wind meteorologists will replace petroleum geologists--and transport systems will be designed to maximize mobility rather than car use.

If not, Brown cautions, the geopolitics of oil, grain, and raw material scarcity will lead to economic instability, political conflict, and a disruption of the social order on which economic progress depends.

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