Here's another example of the kind shoddy journalism that really chaps my hide and inspires so many of us to blog.   CNN, via Reuters, reports from Australia --

China's ambitious economic growth plans are environmentally unachievable because the world does not have enough resources to allow its 1.3 billion people to become Western-style consumers, a U.N. official has said.

Klaus Toepfer, head of the U.N. Environment Program, said China's aim of quadrupling its economy by 2020 can only occur if developed nations radically change their consumption habits to free up scarce resources for the world's poor.

Oh boy.   And while we're at it, let me knock down my (already low) level of respect for UNEP by a couple of notches.   The jist of Toepfer's argument is:

"Quadrupling the GDP of a country of 1.3 billion, can you imagine what are the consequences if you go in the same structure as was done in the so-called developed countries?"

He said that if China had the same density of private cars as, for example Germany, it would have to produce 650 million vehicles -- a target that environmentalists say the world's supply of metal and oil would be unable to sustain

Wow, well I guess Klaus is an expert on automotive production.   I won't get into the all the standard counterarguments here -- there are many famous folks who focus their careers debunking this garbage.  

For example, if *we* built our cars the way we did 50 yrs ago, we probably wouldn't be able to 'sustain' that production today either.   As resources shift in availability, their prices change.  As prices change, tech innovation happens to fill in the gaps  in ways too varied to count (e.g. progressively better plastic technology means BMW's dashboards aren't made of cherry wood;  until someone finds a new, cheaper way to harvest cherry trees).    As tech and prices change, manufacturers change in response with newer / better / redesigned products.    This is Schumpeterian Econ 101.

Klaus simply doesn't grasp this constant dynamic reorganization of the economy.   He predicates his belief system on the assumption that a central planning committe has ordained a specific way to build cars.

Klaus also makes the classic error of keeping all other things constant and straight line projecting what would have to happen if 1 Billion Chinese folks suddenly started driving Chevy Nova's.   There would no doubt be a LOT more steel on the road. The only solution he sees, of course, is to allow Klaus and his band of like minded bureaucrats at UNEP to "radically change consumption habits" -- in effect, EVERYTHING.  

Of course, they won't call it that and in their warm fuzzy heart of hearts they don't even believe they're trying to march towards world domination.   They'll couch their diktats as "environmental guidelines" and they'll use the ICC as their party appartchiks.  Instead of the labor unions, they'll use "grassroots organizations."   But the end result - when you start with such a sweeping goal & regardless of intentions - is the same.   Chairman Mao and Comrade Stalin would be quite impressed with the breadth of Klaus's ambition.  Keep this in mind next time Klaus Toepfer and the UNEP issues an environmental report that ranks the US at the bottom of whatever scale they've constructed.

CNN / Reuters deserves to be skewered here as well - do we see a *single* counter quote from an economist of any stature in the article?   No, of course not.  The reporter here was simply telling a story about something he/she perceived to be an a priori Good Cause and didn't feel the need to introduce a combative tone to the piece - a de facto free pass.   Would a set of similarly sweeping statements from, say, a member of the Bush cabinet or a corporate executive be regurgitated so directly without a counter opinion?

Say what you want about Fox News, but here's how they reported the entire story on a backpage vs. the front page link CNN gave it.   CNN might have tried to avoid combat but Fox goes straight to the heavy artillery:

The head of the U.N. Environmental Program says China needs to stay relatively poor, for the sake of the planet. Klaus Toepfer says China will invite ecological catastrophe if it pursues all-out prosperity because the globe doesn't have enough resources to slake the consumerist desires of its 1.3 billion people. Toepher, apparently unaware of economic research indicating that societies pollute less as they become more affluent, says of his keep-China-poor views: "this is the rationality of economics."

The Fox version of the story is perhaps too cursory in its dismissal but, you can probably guess which of the 2 I agree with more 

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