PART III

OUR SHRINKING FORESTS

If China consumes paper at the same rate we do, it will consume twice as much paper as the world is now producing. There go the world’s forests.

The point of these conclusions is simply to demonstrate that the Western economic model is not going to work for China. All they’re doing is what we’ve already done, so you can’t criticise them for that. But what you can say is, it’s not going to work.

And in some way it will not work for the industrialised countries either. . . . The bottom line of this analysis is that we’re going to have to develop a new economic model. If we want civilisation to survive, we will have to have that. Otherwise civilisation will collapse.

—LESTER BROWN, PRESIDENT, EARTH POLICY INSTITUTE