Paul Larmer

Publisher

Not long ago, many Westerners, including myself, assumed that the American West was about to outgrow its “extractive” past, when timber, mining and grazing dominated our economy and the public lands. Newcomers were pouring into the region and many of them were not attached to industry; they brought wealth from the cities on the coasts, and were as interested in fly-fishing and mountain biking as they were in the small businesses they bought or brought with them on a computer. The traditional industries — or “Lords of Yesterday,” to repeat a name coined by University of Colorado law professor and author Charles Wilkinson — were on the decline, finally beaten down by the country’s love of wild places and recreation.

Of course, anyone paying attention would have known that the demise of these industries had more to do with global economics than environmental regulations. Big Timber fell in the Northwest not because of the Spotted Owl, but because the companies had cut most of the easy-to-get-to trees, and were moving to greener and cheaper pastures in Russia and other parts of the world. Mining disappeared in many part of the West because prices were down due to new mines abroad flooding the market with cheaply mined metals.

The dormancy of the West’s extractive industries was just a temporary phenomenon. As soon as market conditions changed — and prices rose — industry would kick into gear. That is what is happening now, with natural gas, uranium and a bevy of metals (see HCN editor Jonathan Thompson’s mining story here). Now we have the Old West and The New West living cheek by jowl, creating some significant friction.

While there are many factors in the recent rise of commodity prices, one country’s appetite looms extremely large: China. In a recent Mother Jones cover story, called The Last Empire: China’s Pollution Problem Goes Global, writer Jacques Leslie lays out some jaw-dropping statistic surrounding “the most massive and rapid redistribution of the earth’s resources in human history.”

In a mere two and a half decades, China has awakened from Maoist stagnancy to become the world’s manufacturer. Among the planet’s 193 nations, it is now first in production of coal, steel, cement, and 10 kinds of metal; it produces half the world’s cameras and nearly a third of its TVs, and by 2015 may produce the most cars. It boasts factories that can accommodate 200,000 workers, and towns that make 60 percent of the world’s buttons, half the world’s silk neckties, and half the world’s fireworks, respectively.

China has also become a ravenous consumer. Its appetite for raw materials drives up international commodity prices and shipping rates while its middle class, projected to jump from fewer than 100 million people now to 700 million by 2020, is learning the gratifications of consumerism. China is by a wide margin the leading importer of a cornucopia of commodities, including iron ore, steel, copper, tin, zinc, aluminum, and nickel. It is the world’s biggest consumer of coal, refrigerators, grain, cell phones, fertilizer, and television sets. It not only leads the world in coal consumption, with 2.5 billion tons in 2006, but uses more than the next three highest-ranked nations—the United States, Russia, and India—combined. China uses half the world’s steel and concrete and will probably construct half the world’s new buildings over the next decade. So omnivorous is the Chinese appetite for imports that when the country ran short of scrap metal in early 2004, manhole covers disappeared from cities all over the world—Chicago lost 150 in a month. And the Chinese are not just vast consumers, but conspicuous ones, as evidenced by the presence in Beijing of dealers representing every luxury-car manufacturer in the world. Sales of Porsches, Ferraris, and Maseratis have flourished, even though their owners have no opportunity to test their finely tuned cars’ performance on the city’s clotted roads.

Leslie’s story goes on to explore the implications of China’s rise for the rest of the world’s resources, including air and water quality and biodiversity. It’s sobering stuff, and has large implications for the resources of the West. The story’s subtitle asks a provocative question: Can the world survive China’s headlong rush to emulate the American way of life? As an American who has lived a comfortable life due to our country’s ability to strip resources from the rest of the world, I know that pointing the finger at China is hypocritical. On a per capita basis, we are still the world’s leading consumers. Yet, the problems stemming from China’s industrialization are so great that hypocrisy may be an unavoidable condition. I’d be interested in your thoughts.