Ch. 5

The way I see it, China doesn’t really care about the environment, they just want the resources they require to manufacture goods to make money.   They have gone through most of their own resources, so they now have to relay on other countries to supply them, mostly oil and timber.  One thing that Dodson failed to mention is once China feels that it is equal to western countries if it will start to enforce strict environmental laws or if it will continue creating as much pollution as is currently.  Also, something I was wondering is if they would even get to the point of economical achievement they are reaching towards before, as Dodson puts it, a significant number of canaries in the coal mine dies.  In past chapters the numbers of people who have already died from environmental issues in China.  Then in this chapter there were many statistics about how much China’s environment is changing each year.  So they must be able to create a reasonable prediction on when China will reach it’s breaking point and of how many of their people will die before it will reach that point.  But I think the points the Dodson does mention can be applied to the US as well.  Whenever countries’ ranks in consumption of resources are mentioned the US is either second, after China, or first.  The US needs to learn the difference in need and want when it comes to consumption of resources, because the US also has the appetite of a dragon when it comes to nonrenewable resources.