Earth Day Thoughts

Happy Earth Day!  I'd first like to point out the efforts going on by hundreds of companies and organizations around the world who donate through 1% For The Planet.  This is a great cause and every year thousands of local, regional and national non-profits are benefiting from these generous donations.

Second, here are some alarming numbers taken from Deep Economy, a book by Bill McKibben about the wealth of communities and the durable future:

"Given the current rates of growth in the Chinese economy, the 1.3 billion residents of that nation alone will, by 2031, be about as rich as we are.  If they then eat meat, milk and eggs in the same quantities as we do, they'll consume 1,352 million tons of grain, or two-thirds of the world's entire 2004 grain harvest.  They'd use 99 million barrels of oil a day, 20 million more barrels than the entire world consumes at present.  If China's coal burning were to reach the current U.S. level of nearly two tons per person, the coutry would use 2.8 billion tons annually - more than the current world production of 2.5 billion tons.  They'd use more steel than all the West combined.  Paper?  At the American rate, they'd consume 303 million tons, roughly double the world production.  Cars?  They'd have 1.1 billion on the road, half again as many as the current world total.  And that's just China.  By then, India will have a higher population, and its economy is growing almost as fast.  And then there's the rest of the world."

Scary huh?