In an article in Money Week Nigel Milton said, “Consider China, which, with a fifth of the world’s population, is undergoing a modern day industrial revolution and developing at a pace and on a scale never before witnessed in human history. It is likely to move 300 million of its population to new cities by 2020, for example – that’s equivalent to moving the entire population of the EU. All those new city dwellers are soon going to aspire to first-world standards of living – they are going to want cars, for example. Right now, there is one car for every eligible driver in the U.S. In China, there are nine per every thousand eligible drivers. That won’t last – some estimates suggest that there could be anywhere from 100 million to 200 million cars in China by 2020.
“And of course, cars require roads. The Chinese are planning to build 50,000 miles of motorway – equivalent to the entire U.S. interstate network – over the next five years. This is serious stuff. But add it to the fast development taking place elsewhere in the emerging world and the upshot is that the IEA is forecasting global energy consumption to increase by 50% by 2030 and energy-related greenhouse-gas emissions by around 55%. If you believe that global warming is man-made – as most scientists and commentators now do – this is very bad news indeed.
