We had a flight late out of Shanghai in the afternoon, so we could sleep late. The view from our room at the Ritz Carlton, as before, was stunning. It was nice just to relax a bit.
The trip home, although long and boring, was uneventful. I fought the urge to kiss the ground when we landed in Chicago. We were home! We even went to McDonald’s to have a hamburger and fries while waiting for our final flight to San Diego.
Having had a bit of time to digest the experience, I’ve come to a couple of conclusions. One is that three weeks is too long to live in a suitcase. If I ever go back to China, I want to visit one or two places and spend more time seeing them.
China, as a country, is impressive, but the pollution and the crowds are very, very depressing. I’m glad that I saw China and I met some very nice local people, but what I saw gave me chills. Is this our future – masses of humanity with heavily polluted skies and limited supplies of unsafe water?
Don’t think that China’s growth problems will stop at their border. Air pollution is something that will spread to the entire world –look at poor Canada choking on our acid rain. Nor will their growing demand for energy lessen anytime soon. We are already reaching the finite limits of fossil fuels. What is going to happen as America competes with China for the remaining oil supplies?
I also think that population growth is the 800 lb. gorilla sitting in the room. No one in American politics wants to talk about this, but any discussion of pollution, climate change, and quality of life needs to address this issue. I know that the Chinese have instituted a one child policy. Even so, their population is going to continue to grow for several more years.
If you want to reduce the burden that we place on the environment, our world population needs to be reduced. In my lifetime, the world’s numbers have roughly doubled. The prediction is that our numbers are still rising and won’t peak for a couple of decades. What kind of life will we have when water, food, and energy become in short supply?
Do you realize that in a conflict China or India could lose 300 million people and still have a billion left? If we lost that many, we would have an empty country. The scale of humanity in parts of the world is overwhelming and the demands for the energy, water and food are on an unimaginable scale. How all of these needs will destabilize world politics is an open question, but the thought worries me.
Sometimes, I’m glad that I’m old….
