Chapter 5-Response

I find the analysis of China’s natural resources and energy needs a bit shocking. The fact that a country uses so many resources without thinking twice about what this could cause in the future is dumbfounding. China is already experiencing trouble with producing the resources it needs for their urbanization and growing middle class, which isn’t pointing to a bright future for the ever-growing population. It has been forced to look to many different places outside of their country for domestic goods, resources, and land. China has been in the process of modernizing for several decades already, tearing down land for crops and agricultural purposes for big cities, highways, and homes. The government had to put a “red line” on their land usage at 120 million hectares, but it really means nothing because low-paid government employees and poor districts sell the land regardless, illegally to foreign countries. Because of this, China has been forced to become a net importer of foodstuffs and to buy farmland in other countries like Africa in order to continue to produce enough for their ever-growing lifestyle. Not only is China running out of land, but it is running out of wood, water, and other resources like steel and iron. All of these things, China has to now receive from other countries, besides water, which you can’t really import. The fact of the matter is that China didn’t set up any plans or techniques to conserve their natural resources including one of the most important being water. Dodson predicts that by 2025 modernization will begin to digress in China; however, by this time the population will be well into the billions requiring more than 32 times more than the country is currently producing. I don’t know if I see any flaws in how he came to this conclusion, except for the fact that maybe he painted it all at an angle, showing how self-consuming China is and how they made no plans to conserve anything. He didn’t really highlight anything in which the country is doing or plans to do in the future to protect its resources and products. I don’t think he is considering the plans of the country or the fact that they are a wealthy country that can possibly afford to import their goods and resources. It’s important to recognize this because it could mean the difference between them deteriorating and thriving in their future. The U.S.’s future will be different than China’s because as Dodson pointed out we planned for conservation and making sure that we have well-enough land and resources for our own society to thrive by itself. The future should be brighter than China’s, maybe even causing China to rely on the U.S. for goods.