China is Running Short of Natural Gas, Too

As China has emerged as a world manufacturing leader, it has also become a world leader in the consumption of fossil fuels, the production of pollution. Two recent reports suggest it's exhausting two key fuels -- coal and natural gas.

The report on natural gas comes in today's Asia Pulse, which reports that China will face a shortage of up to 60 billion cubic meters of natural gas by 2010 -- just three years from now. The shortage will grow to as much as 80 billion cubic meters by 2015, according to the deputy director of the Oilfield Gas Institute of the China Petroleum Planning and Engineering Institute. Just about a week ago, another report suggested China was leading Asia into a coal shortfall.

The 25 million-ton surplus of coal will be erased, and replaced with a 103 million-ton deficit by 2020, according to a forecast of Asia-Pacific coal demand by UBS Investment Research Associates and written about in Business World. Asian economies will increasingly look to Africa to supply coal, according to the report. Reports like these should be a wake-up call that the world needs to invest in alternative energy research and development faster.

The rise of China and other fast-developing nations is an opportunity to lift billions of people out of poverty, and to re-orient the world stage in a globalized economy. But it can't come at the expense of the environment, which is increasingly showing signs of having given as much as it can without suffering greatly.

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