Nowhere are the ultimate limits of the western economic model more visible than in China. China is teaching us that the western industrial development model will not work for China because there are not enough land, water, and energy resources for everyone in China to consume at U.S. levels. For example, China has already passed the United States in the consumption per person of some basic items, such as pork. To raise this amount in beef in feedlots would take some 343 million tons of grain a year, the equivalent of the entire U.S. grain harvest. But the world's farmers are already struggling to meet current demand.
Transportation provides another telling example.
Three years ago, Beijing decided that the automobile industry would be one of its basic growth industries over the next few decades. If China continues along this path, and if car ownership and oil use per person were to reach U.S. levels, the Chinese would burn 80 million barrels of oil per day, well beyond the current world production of 64 million barrels per day. These examples underline the urgency of restructuring the economies, not just of China, India, and other developing nations, but of the industrial world as well. State of the World 1998 demonstrates that we already have the technologies to meet the challenge of building an economy that is ecologically sustainable, one whose structure respects the carrying capacity of natural systems. A sustainable economy is one that reuses and recycles materials, is powered by renewable energy sources, and that has a stable population.