There must be a limit to growth and consumerism

Date published: 3/30/2008

GAZE OFF into the suburban haze along Interstate 95 in Northern Virginia, and you might think the tract-home developments are limitless. After all, the "growth is good" mantra has become something of a secular creed. Grow or die seems to be the choice.

Even with a temporarily sputtering economy, we continue to pay the price of congested highways, temporary trailer classrooms lined up behind public schools, and pristine woodlands being gobbled up by new subdivisions with "lake" or "view" in their names. But of course, there are limits. Uncontrolled population growth and ravenous new appetites for consumption are raising anew the once discredited thesis of the 1972 book, "The Limits of Growth."

As The Wall Street Journal reported in a penetrating story last week, there are only so many times new technology can bail out mankind from a dead end of sustainable resources. Look no farther than King George County, now the second-fastest growing locality in Virginia, to see once pastoral intersections that have become commercial clusters.

But the more dramatic reports come from abroad. As the Journal reported, Nagpur in central India was once known as one of the greenest metropolises in the country. But with a population that has grown over the past decade from 1.7 million to 2.5 million, "Local roads have turned into a mess of honking cars, motorbikes, and wandering livestock under a thick soup of foul air."

There are now at least 40 cities in India with more than a million people. By 2025, the world's population is projected to grow from 6.6 billion to 8 billion. That's 1.4 billion more people in just 17 years.

Even more dire are the trends in consumption. Consider this example from the Journal article: "In 2005, China had 15 passenger cars for every 1,000 people, close to the 13 cars per 1,000 that Japan had in 1963. Today, Japan has 447 passenger cars per 1,000 residents, 57 million in all. If China ever reaches that point, it would have 572 million cars--70 million shy of the number of cars in the entire world today."

And let's not let the United States, with its gas-guzzling culture, off the hook. With less than one quarter the population of China, the United States consumes 20.7 million barrels of oil a day compared to China's 7.9 million. In centuries past, technology enabled the world to switch from wood to coal as a fuel. But there's no substitute for arable land and fresh water.

The sky is not falling. But it's past time for a more serious discussion of growth trends and resource limits, and yes, Virginia, there is a finite limit to those tract homes off I-95.

Date published: 3/30/2008

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