China Crisis: threat to the global environment

Western politicians queue up to sing its praises. Economists regard it with awe and delight. Other countries are desperate to imitate it. Yet there is another side to China's exploding, double-digit-growth miracle economy - it is turning into one of the greatest environmental threats the earth has ever faced.

An ominous sign of the danger is given in a groundbreaking report from Greenpeace, published today, which maintains that China is now by far the world's biggest driver of rainforest destruction. The report documents the vast deforestation driven by the soaring demands of China's enormous timber trade - the world's largest - as the country's headlong economic development sucks in ever-more amounts of the earth's natural resources.

THE NUMBERS

Consumption
China - growing at nearly 10% a year - already consumes more grain, meat, coal and steel than the United States

Wealth
China's population will grow from 1.3 billion to 1.45 billion in 26 years - when per capita income will be equal to that of the US today

Oil
On current trends, China will by 2031 be consuming 99 million barrels of oil per day. Total world production today is only 84 million bpd

Forestry
China is already the biggest driver of rainforest destruction, says Greenpeace. Half of all rainforest logs head for China

Global warming
By 2025, China will overtake the US as the top emitter of the greenhouse gases causing global warming

Cars
By 2031, China would have 1.1 billion cars if it matches current US trends - bigger than the current world fleet of 800 million