*NEWS*BOOMING NATIONS ’THREATEN EARTH’

[Anonymous]

Booming nations ‘threaten Earth’

Earth lacks the water, energy and agricultural land to allow China and
India to attain Western living standards, a US think-tank has warned.

The Worldwatch Institute
said the booming economies of China and India are “planetary powers
that are shaping the global biosphere”.

Its State of the World 2006 report said the two countries’ high economic growth hid a reality of severe pollution.

It said the planet’s resources could not keep pace with such growth.

Important choices

“The world’s ecological capacity is simply insufficient to satisfy the
ambitions of China, India, Japan, Europe and the United States as well
as the aspirations of the rest of the world in a sustainable way,” the
report added.

It said that if China and India were to consume as much
resources per capita as Japan in 2030 “together they would require a
full planet Earth to meet their needs”, it said.

The institute’s report said that in the next few years
the choices China and India made could lead to political and economic
instability, or they could usher in an age of better stewardship of
resources and more efficient technology.

China and India are positioned to leapfrog today’s industrial powers

The reports said the US – which continues to consume more of the
Earth’s resources than any other country – needed to cooperate with
China and India to help develop more environmentally friendly practices
and technologies.

“China and India are positioned to leapfrog today’s
industrial powers and become world leaders in sustainable energy and
agriculture within a decade,” Worldwatch Institute president
Christopher Flavin said.

“We were encouraged to find that a growing number of
opinion leaders in China and India now recognise that the
resource-intensive model for economic growth can’t work in the 21st
Century,” he said.

China already has a solar-powered heating system which
supplies hot water to 35 million homes, while India has pioneered a
system bringing clean water from rainfall, the report said.

[Author]

January 13, 2006 at 10:33 AM