« An Amazing Parrot Story | Main | Good News: Paris To Ban SUVs? »
Wednesday, July 21, 2004
Bad News: He's Scared
A friend came home from a business trip to China a couple of weeks ago. "I'm scared," he said, "They're adding a thousand cars a day in Beijing alone."
The US has approximately 4% of the world's population, and accounts for 27% to 35% of the world's daily oil use, depending on how you calculate it.
China has approximately 20% of the world's population. We are teaching them to live like us, but they have no oil of their own.
After China comes India (15%), where we're sending our software and customer service work. And then Southeast Asia, where we have all our shirts and pants made.
They're all going to want more oil, and they're all going to have more money to pay for it. Meanwhile, oil production has peaked.
China wants to be like us. If they were like us today, they would want more than 100% of the daily oil supply. Their army is not like Saddam Hussein's or the Taliban. They have genuine Weapons of Mass Destruction, including nuclear bombs.
July 21, 2004 in Current Affairs, New Urbanism | Permalink
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/11457/942586
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Bad News: He's Scared:
Comments
No worries! We are going to have a HYDROGEN ECONOMY!!! Or, the magical Capitalist Fairies will sprinkle pixie dust over the world and we can have eternal economic "growth" for everybody. Or, THE LORD will smite the Chinese and give us their share of the oil. :)
Posted by: Brian Miller at Jul 21, 2004 6:23:20 PM
Wow, an architect who mentioned Peak Oil. Here's a link for everyone:
http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/
What kind of a community works best in the post-carbon world? What kind of building processes? Does traditional, vernacular architecture inevitably follow?
Posted by: Rob Asumendi at Jul 30, 2004 3:29:34 PM
