ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with an issue in the ongoing debate between cornucopians and ecologists, namely the overall condition of the global environment. It focuses upon the new "factory of the world": East and Southeast Asia. When the governments of the world take a stand on ecology issues, the tradeoff between national interests and environmental concerns entails risk estimations that figure prominently in their assessments. The energy-environment conundrum constitutes one of the most important sources of interdependencies among states. One may distinguish between different forms of pollution as well as between alternative sources of biocapacity. The key hypothesis behind the global footprint framework and its construction of a comparative database is that mankind today is running at an increasingly serious ecological deficit. It is true that the threat of petrol shortages has diminished, but the energy-environment conundrum remains the same as burning shale oil adds considerably to the emissions of greenhouse gases.
