If these nations were to follow the pattern of the mature developed economies the answer is that it will but only slowly

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If these nations were to follow the pattern of the mature developed economies, the answer is that it will, but only slowly. There are welcome signs in India of efforts to improve urban air quality by, for example, converting taxis and scooter cabs to natural gas. There are also welcome signs in China that the authorities recognise that the environment has become a major block on the rate of economic growth. But neither country can be happy about its performance - nor indeed can Russia or Brazil.However, where the leadership may lag behind, the market may race ahead. In key areas of potential pressure, such as the demand for oil, the market will surely have a larger role.For the surge in demand for oil from China and India may well hit the world markets just about the time that oil supply from present known sources starts to decline. What will matter will be the attitudes of the leadership of China, India, Russia and Brazil and the economic forces that will drive the economies.At the moment none of those countries has a particularly enviable record in its environmental practices. We have been warned."Meanwhile, there were fresh concerns of a house price crash after the Council of Mortgage Lenders said the number of borrowers behind on their mortgage had shown a "material" increase.Short-term arrears of between three and six months rose from 49,720 in the first half of last year to 53,960 in the second half - an 8 per cent increase.The CML said the numbers were "extremely low" by historic standards - there were 190,000 in the first half of 1994 - but admitted it pointed to problems ahead."With short-term arrears increasing, we are bound to see a rise in longer-term arrears and repossessions following behind," Michael Coogan, its director general, said.

If you accept that, the environmental burden that growth puts on the world's resources will come not from the present developed nations but from these "new" ones So what we do or say does not matter much. India, too, will experience rapid growth in oil demand, though that rise is further away.How should one react to these projections? I suggest that the essential starting point is to recognise that this growth is in all probability both inevitable and unstoppable It will happen. China already accounts for about 8 per cent of world demand, having passed Japan as the second largest oil importer That proportion is expected to double in the next 20 years. Even were the present progress on increasing fuel efficiency maintained, a world of one billion cars is going to use a lot of oil - if the internal combustion engine remains the main technology Some estimates for oil demand are shown in the second graph. As you can see, Brazil, Russia and India will all have more cars than Japan, while a country like the UK or Italy will be way down the league. The Goldman team reckoned that by about 2035 India would also pass the US to become number two in the car ownership table.If these projections are anything like correct, this will have huge implications for commodity demand and for the environment. There are already about 150 million of them in China.Middle class people buy cars.

The left-hand graph is a bit of a stunner, suggesting as it does that in 20 years there will be more cars in China than in the US - nearly 200 million of them. The Chinese economy is already larger than Italy's and it is possible that this year will be the moment when China passes the UK in terms of its total GDP, though it may have to wait until 2006.More recently, the BRIC team looked at some of the implications of this growth, focusing in particular on demand for commodities and consumer goods, as well as the implications of their growing might on the capital markets.If you take an income of $3,000 (£1,600) per head per year as the entry point to the "middle class", the team calculates that in another 10 years there will be about 800 million people in the four economies that pass that threshold. For the first time this year, the BRICs have been invited (by the UK as host) to the 4 February G7 economic meetings, a move that reflects their growing status. It pointed out that if its assumptions were correct, China would become the world's largest economy by 2050, passing the US, while India would be number three, passing Japan. The best starting point here is to note that a generation hence the main burden of economic activity on the environment will come not from the present developed countries (aside from the US) but from the large-population, middle-income ones.Some 18 months ago the economics team at Goldman Sachs produced a report on the economic prospects of Brazil, Russia, India and China - a group it dubbed the BRICs.