Richard points to Lisa who points to an Asia Times article titled Too Much for Mother Earth. The message is simple: if China emulates America's current consumption patterns it could result in "an earth sucked dry", according to Richard. Lisa wants "a Manhattan Project to rid ourselves of fossil fuel depedency" (does she appreciate the fully irony of that statement?). Being a good blogger I go to the original article and sure enough by paragraph two we come across our favourite alarmist: Lester Brown.

It's time for a good ol' fashioned fisking.

Too much for Mother Earth By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - Even if per capita income in China grows at only 8% per year - lower than the red-hot pace of 9.5% at which it has grown since 1978 - it will still overtake the current per capita US income in just over 25 years, according to the latest analysis by the Earth Policy Institute (EPI).

And if those increased incomes translate into the kind of lifestyle currently enjoyed by most US citizens, Chinese demands will overwhelm what the planet can provide, according to the analysis, "Learning from China: Why the Western Economic Model Will Not Work for the World". While geopoliticians worry whether China will integrate itself into the current Western-dominated international system, Lester Brown, EPI's founder, is far more worried about the impact of a wealthy China on the Earth's diminishing resource base.

"If it does not work for China," he notes, "it will not work for India, which has an economy growing at 7% per year and a population projected to surpass China's by 2030." China's demands on basic raw materials to feed its galloping economy have become increasingly clear in just the past few months as successive trade delegations, including one headed by President Hu Jintao himself, have made their way to Latin America to sign long-term supply contracts for commodities from agriculture to mining. On a 12-day, four-country trip in November, Hu announced more than US$30 billion in new Chinese investments in Latin America in basic industries and infrastructure designed to facilitate exports of raw materials from the region across the Pacific over the next generation.

China's economic boom is the biggest single factor in the steady rise of commodity prices worldwide over the past years, a factor that - coupled with its investments and shrewd diplomacy - is buying it considerable goodwill in much of the developing world, but especially in South and Southeast Asia, as well as Latin America. A survey of 22 countries commissioned by the British Broadcasting Corp (BBC) and released recently found that China is now viewed as playing a significantly more positive role in the world than either the US or Russia and that majorities in 17 of the countries surveyed are particularly positive about China's growing economic clout. The poll, of nearly 23,000 people, was conducted by GlobeScan and the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes in late 2004.

But Brown, a founder and former director of the Worldwatch Institute who has long warned about limits to the Earth's ability to sustain wealthy lifestyles - at least as they exist in the United States - now argues that, to the extent China's growth is aimed at replicating such lifestyles, its efforts will ultimately prove futile. Chinese consumption of each of the "five basic commodities - grain, meat, coal, oil and steel - has already overtaken that of the US in all but oil", he writes. "Now the question is, what if consumption per person of these resources in China one day reaches the current US level?"

China's current per capita income is estimated at about $5,300 a year, only about 14% of US per capita annual income of about $38,000. If its economy's annual growth rate slows to 8% per year, China would reach the current US income by 2031; if it grows at a mere 6% a year, it would reach current US levels by 2040.

Assuming the 8% growth rate and that Chinese consumption habits will be similar to those of the US today, per capita grain consumption would climb from 291 kilograms today to 935kg for a US-style diet, according to Brown. That would bring total Chinese grain consumption in 2031 to 1.352 billion tonnes from only 382 million tonnes in 2004 - equal to two-thirds of the entire 2004 world grain harvest.

"Given the limited potential for further raising the productivity of the world's existing cropland, producing an additional 1 billion tonnes of grain for consumption in China would require converting a large part of Brazil's remaining rainforests to grain production," according to Brown, who notes that if Chinese per capita meat consumption alone were to rise to today's US levels, about 80% of the world's current meat production would be consumed by Chinese.

Even more daunting are similar estimates for energy production. If by 2031 the Chinese use oil at the same rate as the US does today, it would need 99 million barrels of oil a day, or 20 million barrels per day more than the entire world currently produces. Similarly, if China's coal burning were to reach current US levels of two tonnes per person per year, the country would use nearly 3 billion tonnes annually by 2031. Current annual global production stands at 2.5 billion tonnes. As fossil fuels, more use of oil and natural gas will also mean unprecedented amounts of greenhouse gases - blamed by scientists on climate change and global warming - released into the atmosphere.

If steel production per person in China were to climb to US levels, it would mean that China's aggregate steel use would double by 2031 to a level equal to the current consumption of the entire Western world. If China were to reach current levels of automobile ownership in the US (three cars for every four people), it alone would have a fleet of 1.1 billion cars by 2031, compared with the current global fleet of nearly 800 million. "The paving of land for roads, highways, and parking lots for such a fleet would approach the area now planted for rice in China," according to Brown.

Similarly, if China were to ape current US consumption of paper products, which are reliant on forests and recycled paper today, it would need nearly twice the amount of paper produced worldwide last year to satisfy its needs just for 2031.

"The point of this exercise of projections," writes Brown, "is not to blame China for consuming so much, but rather to learn what happens when a large segment of humanity moves quickly up the global economic ladder ... Plan A, business as usual, is no longer a viable option. We need to turn quickly to Plan B before the geopolitics of oil, grain and raw-material scarcity lead to economic instability, political conflict, and disruption of the social order on which economic progress depends."

Did you learn something? I did. Lester Brown is a potential source of hot air, a perfect replacement for fossil fuels. Most of us have been lulled into this sense of general panic over the environment and rapid growth in the developing world. But it doesn't stack up. There's plenty to go around. Indeed China and other developing nations' demand will drive increases in supply to match.

Don't panic. Instead enjoy watching the rest of humanity catch up to your standard of living. And next time you see the name Lester Brown, panic.