The data show that the total GDP of the G8 in 2008 was $22 trillion using today’s exchange rates – but this is a decreasing figure – there is no way to avoid seeing that they the G8 institution is in decline.

Russia, part of the G8, started from way behind so it is considered a developing market, but politically, based on post World War II history, it is sort off hovering in between the two worlds.

China, India, Brazil and Mexico are considered pure emerging states and the total of the four reached the GDP level of one quarter of the G8 minus Russia – and is growing.

 Pope Benedict XVI in a recent encyclical warns: “Sometimes modern man is wrongly convinced that he is the sole author of himself, his life and society.”

In practice, watching L’Aquila, any one could agree that the annual talking shop for eight still relatively rich, northern hemisphere nations, taking place in Italy on Wednesday, has an inflated view of its own influence – although this sense of self-importance is now diminishing given the powerful unwinding of global economic forces that have been decades in the making. But there are those that go further and reckon the G8 is now almost irrelevant and that the really important economic action is to be found further south and east. The Financial Times, based on its Northern upbringing, thinks that this view is wrong.

The strange thing is that The Financial Times bases its argument on the fact that the consumption factor is at present still with the old G8 – private consumption there totalled $14 trillion last year, according to Economist Intelligence Unit data, seven times more in dollar terms than that in China, India, Brazil and Mexico combined.

The economists of the North still believe that consumption is what will increase global demand, and thus propel back the global economy into growth which they see as the way out of the present global economy slump.

But we humbly suggest that the above is crazy. The facts are that we caused the global economy crash by over-consuming – so unchecked consumption is in fact rather our way down to historical oblivion.

It is insane to think that if the G8 produce 4 times as much as the combined domestic production of China, India, Brazil, and Mexico, they have a God given right to consume 7 times as much as those four nations. Does nobody realize that this imbalance is exactly what caused the economic crash in the G8 countries –   based directly on the high consumption rather then on the decreasing production?

Does nobody think of the harm to the environment and the decreased natural resources stash that comes with the noted imbalance?

Of course, emerging countries will now grow bigger and faster. It is rather for the North to tighten their own belts and to make space for the emerging economies to grow not just in production, but also in consumption.   What this means is to buy less from them, and to advise them to sell to their own internal markets so their own people will be the beneficiaries of their newly found global importance.

It is the emerging economies that have the largest internal markets because they have those large numbers of people intended not just as cheap labor but also as loyal consumers!   If we are ready to allow their economies to work for their own markets, we could all get back in some balance with our environment and with the idea that we must recognize our interdependence not by exploitation but by making space to others. This is the only way G8 could still keep some relevance for their members – that is in context of working within larger groups – perhaps as a G20 group.