I’ve been reading Thomas Friedman’s book Hot, Flat and Crowded. He cites a passage from Jared Diamond New York Times Op Ed piece in 2008 that the industrialized societies have a consumption factor of “32″. Analysts observed that in general most of the developed world consumes 32 times more materials and expels 32 times more waste than do countries in the developing world. So, the United States through its meat-heavy diet, its car culture, its relatively large abodes that require all manner of heating and lighting, use about 32 times more resources than the Bushmen of the Kalahari in Africa. That used to be the case in the ratio between the Western, developed countries and China, at least up until the mid-1990s, when China’s economy kicked into high gear. Diamond cited China in 2007 at 11 on the consumption/waste scale, and rising. The Chinese government and its citizens have their sights set on achieving as American as possible levels of the “good life”, as quickly as they can. And there seems little in the way of lessons learned from the economic rise of the Western nations – environmental and social costs, mostly – that are being observed or are deterring China’s march to realizing its goal of a “universal middle class”.

“”China’s catching up alone would roughly double world consumption rates. Oil consumption would increase by 106 percent, for instance, and world metal consumption by 94 percent.”

Diamond makes the point that if the developing countries were to match the American levels of consumption that it would be like the world supporting 79 billion people; not the 6.5 billion there are today. That stark reality seems in no way to slow the Chinese economic juggernaught (and it seems to have not impinged on American consciousness, either). Since China says all its doing is following the “American Model”, maybe it will follow the leader if the leader acts to dramatically change its consumption habits.