We should worry about China, and its exploding oil consumption is only an early indicator of the problem. China's determined to raise the standard of living of its people to Western standards, and think what that means: Americans consume something like 25-32 times the resources per capita compared to people in underdeveloped countries.

That would mean that China would consume resources as if it had, not 1.3 billion people, but more like 30-40 billion people.

If you normalize the numbers to take into account the billion-or-so people already at First World standards, raising everybody in the world to the same standards means an average rise in resource consumption of about 15 times. That would burden the Earth with an effective population of something like 90 billion people (based on today's population of about 6.5 billion).

We're hosed. And hoist on our own petard of successfully marketing the American Way Of Life. We should've kept our mouths shut.