Livin' Large in China: What Does It Really Mean?

This past weekend was our nation’s 234th birthday.  In just over 200 short years, we have gone from a reasonably successful, rural based, primarily agrarian society to one teetering on the brink of industrial and financial collapse.  How did we manage to mess things up in so short a time?

Meanwhile, halfway around the globe, the world's oldest continuous country is experiencing growth like it has never known . . . China, which is older than 4000 years,  is growing like a weed and, in the process, gobbling up ever-increasing amounts of the earth’s resources and emitting ever-increasing amounts of pollution, especially CO2.

Why is this happening?  To put it very simply, they want to live like Americans.

While we may have done a very good thing in showing the world the benefits of democracy, we may not have presented such a good model with our materialistic, consumer-based economic system.

We never stopped the think what would happen if the whole world tried to live like we do.  Well, the bad news is that other countries are trying to, and, in the process, they are beginning to strain the earth's resources beyond the breaking point.

China's 1.3 billion people have decided that they, like Americans, want bigger cars, electricity dependent appliances and gadgets, air conditioned workplaces and malls, and larger living spaces.  The days when workers would work and live in hot, crowded environments are going to come to an end, as new, younger workers demand larger, air conditioned apartments and work places.  A recent strike at a Honda plant included the demand that the thermostat be set to a lower temperature.

China is working hard to increase energy efficiency; it has surpassed the rest of the world as the largest, single investor in wind turbines and other clean energy technology.  And it has dictated tough new energy standards for lighting and gas mileage for cars.  But even with these tough new standards, they cannot keep up with a billion-fold demand for consumer energy-consumptive goods . . . and, as a result of the increasing demand, China's emissions are getting worse—rapidly.  This past winter and spring showed the largest six-month increase in emission tonnage ever by a single country.

So, in a sense, by raising our standard of living to an unsustainable level, we are hastening the day of reckoning by enticing other countries to try to match our standard, all the while realizing this can't go on . . . did anyone see Wall-E?

The Earth's resources are finite, and if we destroy the Earth trying to recover every last ounce of every resource, we will truly destroy ourselves as well as most of the rest of Creation.  How sad to think this upstart nation with such a beautiful dream of equality and freedom could have become mired down in a consumerist nightmare that threatens the whole planet?  We must rethink the path we are on and find a model that is truly sustainable, not only for America but also for all the inhabitants of the Earth.