The Daily Reckoning, Bill Bonner (newsletter) =================================================================== Here’s an article sent to us yesterday describing China’s remarkable effect on world commodity prices, especially food (the following comes from a recent issue of Mother Jones ):
“Per-capita income in China is less than 1/10 of America’s and its per-capita greenhouse gas emission is less than 1/5 of ours. But if 1.3 billion Chinese were to consume at the level Americans do, we’d need several more Earths. China’s effect on world resources, quantified: China is: • The world’s largest consumer of coal, grain, fertilizer, cell phones, refrigerators, and televisions • The leading importer of iron ore, steel, copper, tin, zinc, aluminum, and nickel • The top producer of coal, steel, cement, and 10 kinds of metal • The No. 1 importer of illegally logged wood • The third-largest producer of cars after Japan and the United States; by 2015, it could be the world’s largest car producer. By 2020, there could be 130 million cars on its roads, compared to 33 million now. More Facts: • China produces half of the world’s cameras, 1/3 of its television sets, and 1/3 of all the planet’s garbage. • There are towns in China that make 60% of the world’s button supply, 1/2 of all silk neckties, and 1/2 of all fireworks. • China uses half of the world’s steel and concrete and will probably construct half of the world’s new buildings over the next decade. • Some Chinese factories can fit as many as 200,000 workers. • China used 2.5 billion tons of coal in 2006, more than the next three highest-consuming nations—Russia, India, and the United States—combined. • It has more than 2,000 coal-fired power plants and puts a new one into operation every 4 to 7 days. • Between 2003 and 2006, worldwide coal consumption increased as much as it did in the 23 years before that. China was responsible for 90% of the increase. • China became the world’s top carbon dioxide emitter in 2006, overtaking the United States. • Russia is China’s largest timber supplier; half of all logging there is illegal. In Indonesia, another timber supplier to China, up to 80% of all logging takes place illegally. • 90% of all wood products made in China are consumed in the country, including 45 billion pairs of wooden chopsticks each year. • The value of China’s timber-product exports exceeds $17 billion. About 40 percent go to the United States. • More than 3/4 of China’s forests have disappeared; 1/4 of the country’s land mass is now desert. • Until recently, China was losing a Rhode Island-sized parcel of land to desertification each year. • 80% of the Himalayan glaciers that feed Chinese rivers could melt by 2035. • In 2005, China’s sulfur-dioxide emissions were nearly twice those of the United States. • Acid rain caused by air pollution now affects 1/3 of China’s land. • Each year, at least 400,000 Chinese die prematurely of air-pollution-linked respiratory illnesses or diseases. • A quarter of a million people die because of motor-vehicle traffic each year—6 times as many as in the United States, even though Americans have 18 times as many cars. • Of the world’s 20 most polluted cities, 16 are in China. • Half of China’s population—600 to 700 million people—drinks water contaminated with human and animal waste. A billion tons of untreated sewage is dumped into the Yangtze each year. • 4/5 of China’s rivers are too polluted to support fish. • The Mi Yun reservoir, Beijing’s last remaining reliable source of drinking water, has dropped more than 50 feet since 1993. • Overuse of groundwater has caused land subsidence that cost Shanghai alone $12.9 billion in economic losses. • Dust storms used to occur once a year. Now, they happen at least 20 times a year. • Chinese dust storms can cause haziness and boost particulate matter in the United States, all the way over to Maine. • In 2001, a huge Chinese storm dumped 50,000 metric tons of dust on the United States. That’s 2.5 times as much as what U.S. sources produce in a typical day. • Currently, up to 36 percent of man-made mercury emissions settling on America originated in Asia. • Particulate matter from Asia accounts for nearly half of California’s annual pollution limit. • Environmental damage reportedly costs China 10 percent of its GDP. Pollution-related death and disability heath care costs alone are estimated at up to 4 percent of GDP. • In 2005, there were 50,000 pollution-related disputes and protests in China. • China’s middle class is expected to jump from 100 million people today to 700 million people by 2020.
These statistics are drawn from “The Last Empire: Can the world survive China’s rush to emulate the American way of life?” in the current issue of Mother Jones .
Gobble, gobble, gobble – the Chinese are eating up the worlds resources, putting huge upward pressure on prices.
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