China Shows Free Market Too Much For Mother Earth

A similar case to this below can be made also for India:

"China's current per capita income is estimated at about $5,300 a year, only about 14% of US per capita annual income of about $38,000. If its economy's annual growth rate slows to 8% per year, China would reach the current US income by 2031.

"Assuming Chinese consumption habits will be similar to those of the US today, per capita grain consumption would climb from 291 kilograms today to 935kg for a US-style diet. That would bring total Chinese grain consumption in 2031 to two-thirds of the entire 2004 world grain harvest.

"Producing an additional 1 billion tonnes of grain for consumption in China would require converting a large part of Brazil's remaining rainforests to grain production," according to Brown, who notes that if Chinese per capita meat consumption alone were to rise to today's US levels, about 80% of the world's current meat production would be consumed by Chinese.

However, the health consequences of a grain and beef diet would be a boon for pharmaceutical companies and actually drive Chinese GDP even higher. One day people will scratch their heads and wonder how GDP-based social planning was ever the norm.