If propane gas stops arriving from the city, then we will burn firewood; if matches to light our firewood stop coming from the city, then we will warm ourselves by burrowing under piles of straw, and eat uncooked brown rice and raw potatoes instead of cooked food; if the city stops sending shrimp taken from far out at sea, we will give up eating shrimp and catch and eat locusts and digger wasps; if salt no longer comes from the city we will consider it an unexpected blessing since it is only human beings who ruin their health by eating too much salt (we never hear of wild animals ingesting too much salt and damaging their health); if shoes stop coming from the city we will make sandals out of straw; if aluminum sashes and bricks stop coming from the city we can build sunken huts with logs and straw; if there is no electricity we will go to bed at sundown and rise with the sun to work in the fields. This is the country. This real country at present no longer exists (except in certain "uncivilized" places in the world), but if we get rid of the cities everyone will find themselves plunged immediately into this kind of country life, and that will instantly become "reality." And is there in this real country any place where pollution can be produced? The Fate of the Wealth- and Prosperity-Seeking Cities The city and the country -- this is none other than the contrast between extravagance (wealth) and austerity (indigence). China, which aims to modernize itself, has begun saying that "Being wealthy is the Right Way" (essay in the People's Daily), and has found it necessary to discard the immortal virtue, alive in China since long ago, that "Wealth is evil, indigence is honorable." That such a thing has come to pass is proof that China could not overcome the lure of extravagance. The present urbanization of the developing countries (including that behemoth, China) is proceeding relentlessly as they seek "wealth," "modernization," and "extravagance." In the near future, it is said, Mexico city will become a city of 20 million, outstripping New York (UN population survey). When in this way the developing countries achieve the same level of modernization as the developed countries, it will be time for humanity to pay the fiddler. If, for example, 90 percent of China's one billion people, in their quest for ease and gluttony (i.e., modernization, wealth, and prosperity), come to live in the cities, they will demand an incredible amount of resources, and create an equally incredible amount of poisons. The reason the developed nations achieved modernization is that they were able to rob the developing nations of all manner of materials, and discard the leftover garbage in every place imaginable. If urbanization spreads to every corner of the globe there will no longer be anyone to rip off, and no place to stash the trash.