The people of India and China are the new prosperous consumers. Additionally, there are more than one billion super-prosperous consumers in the European Union, the United States, and other developed countries. These consumers are infusing immense pressure on the earth’s natural resources.
Rapidly developing countries, like China, Brazil, South Korea, Mexico, and India are adding another one billion consumers--people attaining a middle-class lifestyle. The number of middle-class people of China and India are practically three times larger than the entire U.S. population. In fact, the population of India and China total 40 percent of the world’s population combined.
China's Population is Leading in Consumption
The world’s leading consumer of coal, meat, rice, wheat, cement, steel, and fertilizer is China. After the United States, China is also the second-largest consumer of oil. In addition, China consumes close to two and a half times more steel and twice as much meat than do the people of the United States.
Additionally, China is at the forefront of the world’s consumption of consumable goods, such as cell phones, refrigerators, and televisions. In the not too distant future, China will overtake the United States in the number of personal computers. China is also expected to be the world’s largest producer and consumer of cars and have the world’s leading economy by the year 2020.
India and China's Education and Professionals
There are about 22 world’s top universities in America. However, India and China have top-flight universities that produce approximately 500,000 engineers and scientists each year, compared to 60,000 in the United States.
As populations continue to increase exponentially, and natural resources like oil, trees, grains, and water continue to be consumed by the world’s population, according to environmentalists, by the year 2031, mineral resources, grains, and oil will be scarce, and in many areas, unattainable.
How will governments encourage world economists, engineers and scientists to design and develop more sustainable ways of living?
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