China's emerging environmental consciousness

While Congress was debating last month an energy bill stripped of provisions to raise fuel-efficiency standards for sport utility vehicles, the Chinese government announced fuel-economy standards for all new cars that are significantly stricter than anything contemplated in the United States. China's economy is booming, and with that boom China must decide how to address areas of increased energy production, recycling, transportation, building standards and clean water.

The industrialization of the East which I like to divide into China, India and the others will inevitably lead to one of two possibilities in the history of the human species.

For most of the history of our species we were hunter-gatherers. The earth provided an abundance of game and wild grains, fruits etc. Early humans, who are actually part of nature themselves (as we remain today), were so ingenious at developing tools to better exploit nature's abundance that they continued to increase their population until there was no longer enough for all to eat. As a reaction many left their traditional hunting grounds and went elsewhere.

This happened many times over until it became increasingly clear until humans spanned the globe and were capable of exploiting all available resources. There was no new place left to go without the need to engage in conflict with other humans.

Thus, ingenious man, about 10,000 years ago, invented agriculture. Now early agriculture was a tough thing - much harder than hunting and gathering- but he had no choice and developed the specialization and other necessities (writing, government, classes, etc.) Man became ever better and more productive at this new way of life.

Eventually the sum of his inventiveness and desire for a higher standard of living led to the age of industrialization. Over the last 300 years, he has used his capacity to more effectively exploit the resources provided by the earth.

Roughly 300 years after this "industrial revolution" he has managed to build a civilization that spans the globe and is capable of exploiting all available resources.

In other words, we are nearly back to the point at which we invented agriculture.

It is not contradictory to conservative ideology to state that the earth is a finite planet with limited resources. It is simply common sense.

Moreover, our economy which basis continues (and always will) to rest on our ability to produce food is merely a reflection of our throughput. Throughput are the resources we take from the earth, move through the economy and eventually put back. There is a total limit to what the earth can provide sustainably (obviously depending on the resource and no one really knows the exact figures) and a total limit to what it can take (in terms of what we put back into the air, water, soil as waste). The only thing to which there is no limit is human ingenuity to more efficiently use those resources.

As the United States moves forward in its history, we will increasingly come into competition with the east in our pursuit of limited resources.

If we all want to avoid a war of incomprehensible destructiveness, we are going to need to learn to work with them to share the resources and discover how to keep making ourselves richer while using a sustainable amount (The ocean’s limited ability to produce fish is the best example).

To do this and still maintain our individualism, and freedom from socialism is the conservatives' main task and dilemma.

To fail is to enter a new Dark Ages as a result of poverty, war, or government. The other possibility is success.

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