PLASTICS IN THE WORLD IN 2020, PLASTINDIA, DELHI 2003

Françoise Pardos, Pardos Marketing, February 2006

Introduction

Only two years ago, in the still so-called industrialized world, analysts used to refer with awe to the growth of China, and rarely, if ever, to India. In the last two years, or less, and all of the sudden, the two giants are currently mentioned in the same breath, as if they were so linked in any future analysis as to be mentioned, sometimes as an entity, named ChinIndia. The word was coined at the recent World Economic forum in Davos. ChinIndia, with over 2.3 billions is more than 36% of total world population.

Highlights

The time frame for reflexion is what can be called The Twenties, starting about in 2020, only half a generation away, not farther from us now than the late Eighties,1985-1990, a time that most of us remember, and many of us were already in their professional lives.

The major change, highly visible, is the fantastic growth of Asia, an historical phenomenon that never before happened in the history of mankind, so fast and so vast.

This growth is totally contrary to the dire previsions that were made fifty years ago about the outlook for Asia, the teeming populations, destined to be poorer and poorer, for ever. By the way this shows how all long term forecasts must be taken with a sizable pinch of salt…

What is happening in Asia took two generations or less.

Which model of civilization by 2020-2030??? A very open question.

The essential question may be the oil peak. Will it happen? When? Has it already happened? Will it go slow or fast? What imagination is needed to cope with the oil peak, or end oil as an energy source?

Anyway, oil was not made for burning; only Barbarians would burn this earth distillate, refined and cultured organics that took hundreds of million years to elaborate. Modern mankind operates like the worst hunters gatherers who had the excuse of ignorance, and burnt forests, killed wildlife for survival. The present world knows, or should, and must still endeavor to save this extraordinary oil, from which all petrochemicals and derivatives are made of, all of the last seventy year civilization.

In the recent history of the world,

Europe was the nineteenth century
America was the twentieth century
Asia will be the twenty first century

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