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Politics : Moderate Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (6735)	2/10/2004 11:15:16 AM
From: The Philosopher	Respond to of 20773

I wish I could agree with you. But I don't see the world resources being able to support all countries moving to those standards of living, even if they had the social and governmental infrastructures to achieve it, which many don't. Japan is a relatively small country, as are Korea and Taiwan. And t hey were growing during a period of relatively cheap oil and natural resources. Per the CIA Factbook, the combined populations (millions) of the US (290), Japan (127), Korea (48), Canada (32), Germany (82), UK (60), France (60), toss in another 200 for the rest of developed Europe and for Taiwan, which the CIA can't report separetely from China, and you get roughly 900 million people living in something close to our standard of living, though in Europe and Japan the standard of living in houses, cars per family, etc. is lower. But assume those 900 million have "made it." There are about 6 billion people in the world at recent count. To bring 5 billion people up to the standard of living of the top 1 billion, how much more oil will the world have to produce, how much lumber to build them all quality housing with indoor plumbing and central heating, how many cars, how many airplanes and airports to whisk them all around the globe, and on and on. And how much pollution would all this produce? Sorry to appear Malthusian (and in fact he was right in theory although he badly underestimated the advances of technology), but I don't think it can happen. Already our population, on figures I have seen but can't quote, uses something like 1/4 of all the world's energy. That's for 5% of the population. Bring the other 95% up to our standard of living, and how much energy will it take??? It's not going to happen.