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Rapid Growth Threatens Region

posted by System Administrator on 11/16/06

"New sources of energy are needed as world oil supplies begin to decline. About 35 percent of the world's energy comes from oil. In 2004, consumption of oil jumped 3.4 percent to 82.4 million barrels per day. This represents the fastest rate of increase in 16 years, driven primarily by China's growing energy needs, according to the Washington-based research and advocacy group Worldwatch Institute. Many petroleum experts believe that global oil production will peak in the next few years and begin a permanent decline.

World consumption of virtually everything from grain and meat to steel and oil peaked in 2004 as the growing economies of Asia, and particularly China, place an enormous strain on world resources. China's decisions will have a major bearing on the future health of humanity and the planet. There are more middle- to high-income consumers -- those earning more than 7,000 dollars per year -- in Asia and the Pacific than in Western Europe and North America combined. Yet this still represents only 26 percent of the region's rapidly growing population, according to a recent review by the Sustainable Consumption Asia (SC.Asia) project of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

''All this adds up to a future scenario where more and more people, by meeting their basic needs and demands through increased consumption, increase the consumption pressure to levels corresponding to the ones found in Europe or North America today,'' said Wei Zhao, UNEP's SC.Asia project manager. While world population has soared from about 1.4 billion in 1900 to over six billion today, total consumption of natural resources has skyrocketed by a factor of 16. And nowhere are consumption levels rising faster than in Asia. ''Average household consumption increased 68 percent from 1980 to 1998, oil and paper consumption more than tripled since the early 1960s, and the road traffic in several Southeast Asian countries more than doubled from 1990 to 1999,'' she said.

Future rapid growth in consumption levels across Asia could devastate the region's environment, experts say, hence what they term an urgent need to find ways to minimise those impacts. At the same time, however, development demands that the region's poor gain access to products and services to achieve an improved quality of life. China's recent recognition that environmental sustainability is key to successful economic development is cause for cautious optimism since the Chinese government has committed to generating 10 percent of its electricity using renewable energy sources by 2010.

It will take more than switching to bioenergy to become sustainable. Energy efficiency, conservation and new technologies all are needed. China also happens to be the world's top producer and user of compact fluorescent light bulbs and has 75 percent of the world market for solar water heating devices. And most U.S cars cannot be sold in China because they cannot meet stiff new efficiency standards."

Excerpted from Inter Press Service "Green Bioenergy Aids Cities and Farmers" by Stephen Leahy June 2006