This say it all.. Exponential growth the key and Congressman Bartlett talks about it too and why its a bad thing..
Energy Policy: If you think there's a gas crunch now, just wait until a couple billion more people take to the world's highways. The competition for oil resources will get worse. So why are we sitting on ours?
With 5 million car sales in 2004, China became the world's third-largest car market, after the United States (17 million) and Japan (5.9 million). And within the next two or three years, according to David Thomas, head of China distribution for Ford Motor Co., China is going to become No. 2.
Thomas also thinks that sometime between 2010 and 2015, China will be the world's largest market for new cars. In 2002 demand for cars in China increased 56% and an astounding 75% in 2003, before slowing to a mere 15% in 2005, as China tightened rules for credit purchases.
As The Economist notes, China has been pouring much of its trade surplus into frantic highway construction. At the end of 2004, China had 34,000 kilometers of modern highways, double the 2000 figure. Only the U.S. has more.
China's total road network is the world's third largest, some 1.8 million km, with 44% of it built in the last 15 years. By 2020, the ambitious Chinese plan to double that figure. In the next 25 years, the number of new cars sold in China is expected to reach 62 million.
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2632&ncid=2632&e=12&u=/ibd/20060512/bs_ibd_ibd/2006512issues01
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