So, I finally got around to reading the cover story of the most recent Mother Jones. And after doing so, I realized once again why I am so apprehensive about opening up the magazine. It is depressing. The cover story is: The Last Empire – Can the world survive China’s rush to emulate the American way of life? At the very least, I feel the need to describe and reiterate the scope of the problem.
So, let’s start with that mineral we all know and love: Coal. In 2006, China consumed around 2.6 billion short tons of coal (according to EIA’s most recent estimates). As of 2005, the most current year EIA has for a global estimate of coal consumption, China accounted for 36% of total global consumption of coal. On top of that, if you look at the change in coal consumption in 2003 (443 million short tons), 2004 (444 million short tons), and 2005 (333 million short tons); China accounted for 70.9%, 75.8%, and 82.99% of the change in those respective years. In fact, coal consumption increases in 2003, 2004, and 2005 are greater than the prior 20 years combined thanks to China’s demand. China overtook the U.S. in coal consumption in 1982, and they now consume over two times the amount we do. That’s phenomenal! Though we cannot know with certainty what economic growth in China will be, the most recent trend suggests exponential growth in coal consumption.
For those of you who know the effects of coal fired generation, you can imagine the huge scope that numerous coal fired power plants have. For those of you who don’t, the sulfur dioxide causes respiratory illnesses and acid rain. Nitrogen oxide also inflames the lungs and combines with sunlight to create smog, you can see a nice picture of the result at NASA’s visible earth site. And as has been reported in many media outlets (including CBS News), this toxic cocktail of gases spreads to their neighbors in Korea and Japan and reach even to the Western coast of the United States.
In oil consumption, China has moved from being the 8th largest consumer of oil in 1980 to the second largest consumer in 2006. China became a net importer of oil in 1993 and they are now third behind the U.S. and Japan in imports.
Since 1990, China’s demand for oil has grown at an average of 7.5% per year. In the 2002 – 2006 range that pace stepped up a bit (all information provided from and calculations based off of EIA’s international data).China is now a major player in the world oil markets, and with the introduction of a cheap car from India could surpass us in a few decades if not in less time. Suffice to say that China is becoming the world’s largest consumer. That isn’t limited to coal or soon to be oil. According to the Earth Policy Institute, you can pick a raw material or finished product and China tops the list (see full table here). But China is not even close on a per capita basis to our consumption. So, let’s do some fun math to see how much China would consume if every Chinese person lived as we do.
Let’s start with electricity, residential energy consumption in the U.S. totaled 1.35 billion megawatt hours in 2006 (according to the EIA’s retail electric sales data). That’s an average of 4.5 megawatts per person (based on U.S. census estimates of 299 million people). So, if every Chinese person (1.321 billion according to the CIA World Fact Book’s estimate) consumed 4.5 megawatts a year, then they would need to produce 5.97 billion megawatts of electricity to satisfy demand.
Now, what does that mean in terms of coal? Well, about 80% of their generation comes from coal. And from a handy Howstuffworks article, I got a conversion factor for kilowatt hours into tons of coal. They currently produce 2.197 billion megawatt hours (according again to EIA's international data); so, let’s assume they only need to produce the difference (though it might be higher since we are only talking residential usage).
So, using this information, we would expect China to consume an additional 3.77 billion megawatt hours. That would then mean that China would have to consume 1.225 billion more tons of coal nearly 50% more of their current consumption. Just to give you a point of comparison, the Three Gorges Damn will reach a generating capacity of 207,600 gigawatt hours when completed. Thus, it would take nearly 18 Three Gorges Damns to fill that new demand.
Let’s go through one more example, this time we’ll do gasoline. According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, there are 136.5 million registered passenger cars in the U.S. All these cars used 73.9 billion gallons of gasoline. As of 2000 Census data, there were 105.5 million households in the U.S. If the average number of people per household remained constant, that would put us at 115.6 million households in 2006. That gives us an average of 1.18 passenger cars per household (of course, the distribution of car ownership is uneven, but for simplicity we are just working with the mean).
According to the United Nations Statistics Division (and the best data I could get here was 1990 data), the average household size in China was 4, which would mean they have 330 million households. If each had one car using the same amount of gas as an American passenger car, then they would use a total of 178.5 billion gallons of gasoline. Based on 2006 refinery yield, about 46% of a barrel of crude yields gasoline; and there are 42 gallons in a barrel.
So, China would need 9 billion barrels of crude to satisfy that demand. That would triple their current demand for crude. But this is of course excluding their current demand of 7 million barrels a day some of which is going to satisfy current passenger vehicle fuel demand. So, the actual increase would be lower, but would still be spectacular. And don’t forget, all that extra oil must come from imports as China’s domestic production already fails to satisfy their full demand.
Just to give you a better idea of scope, a 6 billion barrel increase in demand represents 20% of world supply in 2006. I am just using China as an example of a much broader problem. I didn’t even bother to discuss India who is racing to catch up with China and they are not far behind.
The point is that the problem is massive in scope, and I hope the examples above demonstrate that clearly. We, Americans, have had a successful economic model founded on a culture of consumerism that we have exported around the world. We provide a dream to billions of people who want to live as we do. The only problem is that they can’t. Our lifestyle is unsustainable for all 6 or 7 billion people living on this planet.
The biggest issue we face is setting a new example. We cannot ask China and India to not imitate us if we are not willing to make sacrifices and set an example. We cannot say: “Hey guys, I know nearly every household in America has air conditioning; but we’re sorry, 1 billion plus new households with A/C are not feasible.” We know that every nearly every American household has at least one car, but you can’t have that. That is the tradeoff, plain and simple. If you don’t want China and India to mirror our consumption, then you have to give it up. There is no way that we can continue to consume as we do and expect the Chinese and Indians (not mention the 1 billion plus people on the continent of Africa) to live as have-nots so that we may enjoy our excessive consumption forever. That’s the cruel message that must be delivered to Americans. This is the bitter pill that we must all swallow.
The lie is that you can continue to live in your 2,000 square feet home with a range of amenities, install some compact fluorescent bulbs, sort your trash, drive a fuel efficient vehicle to work and save the world. Real sacrifice is what is required. And I question whether in this me-driven culture we can do it. From childhood, we are pumped with commercialism, consumerism, and materialism. Can we unmake the world we have made? Our legislatures move slowly. Our politicians have not even reached a consensus on what to do; some don’t even recognize this as the greatest problem we face. There is no massive public movement. We need to do something now, but we are happy just taking baby steps. And on top of that, American business looks to China and India with dollar signs clouding their vision. They see new middle class households being created and all of the consumer dollars that flow from them. That’s more factories, producing more goods, requiring more energy.
We are going to have live with whatever nasty effects climate change will have. Once the nasty things start happening on a large enough scale to create public outcry, will we still have time do something? Will we be able to mitigate the problems?
While I don't disagree with your point that we need to conserve (and it can't be comfortable conservation), I doubt the rest of the world will follow suit until they have to. Yes, they have been looking up to the U.S. for many years, but once they finally get a taste of the "good life", I seriously doubt they'll decide to give it up because we have. In fact, I could easily see them saying to us you had your turn and now it's ours. We'd be total hypocrites to continue our current consumption and ask them not to consume, but I don't think our lowering consumption (and not being hypocrites) is in itself nearly enough to get them to also lower consumption.
As much as I hate the simplistic "rely on technology" solution, I think this is the only realistic possibility to avoid total environmental and then economic collapse. What I don't mean is our government's recent pathetic attempt at raising the fuel economy standards - we need to be exporting the technology for 300-500 mpg vehicles to China and India in the next 20 years. Outrageous concept? Sure, but it's how we need to be thinking.
Not many developing countries will follow a conservation lead (if it ever happens), but if we produce ultra efficient products we have a good shot at convincing them to use those products instead. And we need to start developing and producing them today so they can be exported tomorrow.
I hope you are right on the technology point. But we need to get on that quick. Time, unfortunately, is not our friend in this matter.
I do think that if we substantially curbed our own consumption, we would have an impact on China and India. We are such a large consumer that we can make a big splash. But I don't know that we as a society are willing to do that.