A Note on Stewardship

I am now reading about China, its current environmental state, its efforts to expand its economy, its attempts at acquiring 1st world status, and what that means to it's global environmental impact. FASCINATING really.

Many people are familiar with the governmentally instituted and enforced "mandatory fertility control" in China, but did you know that it "dramatically decreased the population rate to 1.3% per year by the year 2001". I am so amazed because statistics are usually never reached in my life time - they usually spout out years like ... in 2065 ... but I guess twenty or thrity years ago 2001 was a far off. The year twenty-oh-one. Yeah. That was the year I graduated from High School.

Anyway, the reason I brought this up was because he goes on to point out a lesser known fact regarding the Chinese population.

"... the number of China's households [did you catch that, households - it took me a few minutes to get what was being said here] has nevertheless been growing at 3.5% per year over the last 15 years, more than double the growth rate of its population during the same period. That's because household size decreased from 4.5 people per house in 1985 to 3.5 in 2000 and is projected to decrease further to 2.7 by the year 2015. That deceased household size causes China today to have 80 million more households than it would otherwise have had, an increase exceeding the total number of households in Russia" (page 360).

Now you may be wondering - how is this so? I was. And I was also thinking - so the 1 billion 300 million people in China shouldn't be allowed to have a better quality of life, have a "first world" life??? Is that what Diamond is saying - cuz that ain't right. He goes on to say:

"The household size decrease results form social changes: especially, population aging, fewer children per couple, an increase in previously nearly non-existent divorce, and a decline in the former custom of multi-generation households with grandparents, parents, and children living under on roof. At the same time, per-capita floor area per house increased by nearly three-fold [translation - fewer people live together but have a house three times bigger than they previously would have ... kind of sounds like the good old U.S. of A]. The net result of those increases in the number and floor area of households is that China's human impact is increasing despite its low population growth rate" (page 360).

He continues to point out that the problem lies in the fact that while these social customs are changing the way the environment is used, the production practices and manufacturing mechanisms remain in third world fashion - using more resources with less efficiency. Change is ok, but you have to be careful how it will effect your surroundings and adjust accordingly.

While I still have 150 pages or so to go in the book, I have developed my own theories ... mainly that this earth has sooo many resources and soo many things to offer. BUT we must manage the earth and its resources responsibly and with the aim of using as little as possible at a time, not whatever we want whenever we want. We need to be environmentally frugal or it might not be there the next time we want it. With the rising of the "global economy" we also must be responsibly for our local actions and their global impacts. [Can't you just see that bumper sticker on the back of a hybrid - "Think Globally, Act Locally"]. We can do so much! We have amazing technologies these days and its only expanding. But our resources are not unlimited ... we gotta take care of this little earth and be good stewards over what God has created for us.

And now I will step down off my soap box and start to recycle on a more regular basis.