China's growth is no threat to the world's resources

By Gerard Jackson

In support of their doom-laden scenario they asserted that China's demand for primary resources already exceeded American levels, even though America was still the biggest consumer of resources. Furthermore, Chinese emissions of carbon dioxide were rapidly reaching the American level of 1.39 billion tonnes annually*. (Incredible as it seems, American scientists estimate that the world's termite population releases about 46 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide into the environment each year). In short, unless we send the Chinese economy into reverse (and by implication, the rest of Asia too) there will be damaging climatic changes, the world's resources will be rapidly depleted resulting in a global disaster. None of this is true.