If every Chinese bought just one . . .

NYT story by Keith Bradsher raising the usual bugaboo about China's middle class dooming the planet to environmental ruin--if it replicates the West's consumption trajectory.

My usual reply is that it cannot, simply because China won't be able to acquire enough energy to power all that growth unless it is channeled differently--i.e., you can't get there from here.

The basics:

Premier Wen Jiabao has promised to use an “iron hand” this summer to make his nation more energy efficient. The central government has ordered cities to close inefficient factories by September, like the vast Guangzhou Steel mill here, where most of the 6,000 workers will be laid off or pushed into early retirement.

Already, in the last three years, China has shut down more than a thousand older coal-fired power plants that used technology of the sort still common in the United States. China has also surpassed the rest of the world as the biggest investor in wind turbines and other clean energy technology. And it has dictated tough new energy standards for lighting and gas mileage for cars.

But even as Beijing imposes the world’s most rigorous national energy campaign, the effort is being overwhelmed by the billionfold demands of Chinese consumers.

Chinese and Western energy experts worry that China’s energy challenge could become the world’s problem — possibly dooming any international efforts to place meaningful limits on global warming.

If China cannot meet its own energy-efficiency targets, the chances of avoiding widespread environmental damage from rising temperatures “are very close to zero,” said Fatih Birol, the chief economist of the International Energy Agency in Paris.

Aspiring to a more Western standard of living, in many cases with the government’s encouragement, China’s population, 1.3 billion strong, is clamoring for more and bigger cars, for electricity-dependent home appliances and for more creature comforts like air-conditioned shopping malls.

As a result, China is actually becoming even less energy efficient. And because most of its energy is still produced by burning fossil fuels, China’s emission of carbon dioxide — a so-called greenhouse gas — is growing worse. This past winter and spring showed the largest six-month increase in tonnage ever by a single country.

I learned this first in my workshops with Cantor Fitzgerald:  with energy use doubling (or more)  across China in a generation's time, it gets awfully hard to shift those percentages of coal versus gas versus renewable, etc. You race like crazy just to stay in place.

In many ways, this is why it's impossible for America to dream of overtaking China on alternative energy: we just don't have the same vast necessity that they face. Simply put, the world needs China to become the global leader in this realm, because nobody but China can afford to make it happen in China.