Sep 18, 2009

China's shocking energy consumption to exceed Earth's capacity

China's energy usage could exceed 100 billion tons of standard coal in 2050, more than the Earth's capacity to sustain and far more than the 16.1 billion tons of standard coal the entire planet consumed in 2008.

... if China's energy usage structure remains unchanged, its emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming would reach 17 billion tons a year by 2050. That would represent 60 percent of total global emissions and three times China's current production, it said. "If the current mode of economic development drags on, the scale of China's fossil fuel consumption will be shocking," said the study, titled "China's Low Carbon Development Pathways by 2050."- Washington Times