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Page added on April 6, 2014
The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources
By Michael Klare, the natural resources expert who told us that the disappearance of easy to access and extract “cheap oil” will lead to the development of unconventional energy resources like tar sands, oil shale, deepwater drilling, mountaintop removal, artic oil exploration and that these developments will come at growing environmental and human costs.
In this easy to read page-turner, Michael Klare argues that growing global demand for natural resources since the Industrial Revolution is now causing a major crisis of resource depletion: easy and cheap to access raw materials like wood, iron, copper, tin and coal, and more recently oil, natural gas, uranium, titanium and other specialized minerals are approaching exhaustion. Michael describes how multinational corporations and governments are increasingly competing in what he calls the “Race for What’s Left” to secure access, at escalating costs, to dwindling resources in increasingly remote locations like the deep oceans or the Arctic. In his view, the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico offers “only a preview of the dangers to come”. He illustrates how the race for resources inevitably results in tensions and conflicts – in the Falkland Islands that are contested by Argentina and the United Kingdom, it is believed that the region holds up to 18 billion barrels of oil, or in the East China Sea, or the Caspian Sea, to name a few examples. He warns that this struggle for resources intensifies friction between nations in ways that can lead to armed conflict and that we lack the institutions and global governance tools to properly address these geo-political challenges. According to Klare, our only way out is to dramatically alter our patterns of consumption, something he calls the “greatest challenge of the coming century”.
This dramatic call energy and resource productivity brings to mind two recent constructive and solutions-oriented books by practitioners on how to to reduce the pressure on natural resources through an energy and resource efficiency revolution:
– Factor Five (see Book Review) By Ernst von Weizsäcker and The Natural Edge Project on how to achieve 80%+ improvements in energy and resource productivity at a profit
– Reinventing Fire by Amory Lovins and the Rocky Mountain Institute on how America can overcome its oil and coal addiction by 2050 with a 158% bigger economy while saving $5 trillion (2010 net present value) – (Book Review coming soon).
15 Comments on "The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources"
Stilgar Wilcox on Sun, 6th Apr 2014 4:20 am
Speaking of higher priced resources, looks like fuel prices about to rise:
http://www.theleafchronicle.com/article/20140405/NEWS01/304050020/Gas-prices-heading-above-4-Calif-Hawaii
‘Gas prices heading above $4 in Calif., Hawaii’
“Gasoline prices are making their annual spring climb. But Californians may see some especially painful spikes while filling their tanks this weekend. Nationally, gasoline averages $3.55 a gallon, up from a 2013 low of about $3.18. But in California — now averaging $4.01 a gallon after a 35-cent jump in wholesale prices since mid-March — prices could hit up to $4.25 within days. What’s tarnishing pump prices in the Golden State? Lower supplies and rising crude oil costs.”
Arthur on Sun, 6th Apr 2014 8:02 am
Could it be that Klare is backpedalling from his ‘third carbon age’ vision?
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175734/
dolanbaker on Sun, 6th Apr 2014 8:26 am
That video is almost two years old! it pre-dates the ‘third carbon age’
Arthur on Sun, 6th Apr 2014 9:39 am
@dolanbaker: Ah, I missed that. Thanks.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Sun, 6th Apr 2014 12:55 pm
Well, here is the rub with Klares thinking. In a complex interconnected global world where the local depends on the global support system a trade or hot war will disrupt the entire global system. In a system where resources and products are dispersed throughout the global world based upon comparative advantage with just in time delivery from global distribution system disruptions affect the entire global industrial supply chain. When we reach the point of decline from a situation of limits of growth affected by diminishing returns to multiple converging predicaments the global social fabric, economy, and trade will fray and break down. What will come next is anyone’s guess. This has never happened in the history of mankind. With the human ecosystem being self-organizing entering a period of decline chaos will enter the equation. When the system breaks to another level there is no way to gauge where that landing and reboot will be. There are just too many variables to predict a nonlinear reaction. I imagine the resulting world will be a hybrid of global and local. All countries and regions will be poor by today’s standards. Regions in carrying capacity overshoot because of population and climatic position will be most severely impacted. Look to places like Egypt for population overshoot to food carrying capacity. Look at Las Vegas in overshoot to water resources as examples. Look at China to an overshoot of all vital resources with an overpopulation to carrying capacity. Those areas faring better are some of those areas near good water sources with small farm potential. Those areas with good rail and water transport potential. In any case there is no certainty the wmd’s, nuk waste, and all the other earth killing man made items can be managed in a post BAU world.
Nony on Sun, 6th Apr 2014 1:40 pm
Book review for a 2012 book. Yawn.
There’s a lot of news and analysis of current stuff…I do a daily Google search for last 24 hours and find all kinds of stuff better than this.
bobinget on Sun, 6th Apr 2014 3:19 pm
Some folks put a great deal of stock in books older then two years.
shortonoil on Sun, 6th Apr 2014 4:17 pm
“Michael Klare, the natural resources expert who told us that the disappearance of easy to access and extract “cheap oil” will lead to the development of unconventional energy resources like tar sands, oil shale, deepwater drilling, mountaintop removal, artic oil exploration and that these developments will come at growing environmental and human costs.”
Klare has certainly been right; depletion has led to many very destructive, and environmentally harmful practices. As it continues we can expect more of the same. What Klare doesn’t seem to fully understand is that the depletion of petroleum is a consequence of its intrinsic material properties, and its depletion rate can be measured from the state of those properties. The quantity of this resource that can be extracted is determined by its intrinsic properties, and only by those properties. Petroleum is an essential extractive commodity that makes all other production processes possible. Because of its property driven depletion dependence its production will reach a conclusion, then other extractive commodities will also.
Petroleum is unique among extractive commodities. It requires the output of it own production process (energy) to drive its own supply, and demand. Petroleum must be used to produce petroleum (and its products) and others use its energy which then creates its demand. From this respect it is the Alpha, and Omega of commodities.
The destructive behavior resulting from depletion that Klare is witnessing will only continue as long as petroleum is available to power it. The objective of our study is to determine how long that will be. Unless we have already passed the point where the planet can no longer repair itself, it probably won’t be available long enough to do irreparable damage!
http://www.thehillsgroup.org
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Davey on Sun, 6th Apr 2014 4:31 pm
Well put by short!
rollin on Sun, 6th Apr 2014 4:32 pm
Non GMO seeds. That is one of the most important and valuable resources.
GregT on Sun, 6th Apr 2014 6:18 pm
“Non GMO seeds. That is one of the most important and valuable resources.”
Yes rollin,
And the knowledge, experience, and skill set requirements of what to do with those seeds. Food and water are our most important commodities, and should be prioritized as such. All of the rest are niceties, and are not required for basic human survival. It appears likely that we are about to learn a very serious lesson, the hard way.
Northwest Resident on Sun, 6th Apr 2014 6:35 pm
“Unless we have already passed the point where the planet can no longer repair itself, it probably won’t be available long enough to do irreparable damage!”
What I think I hear shortonoil saying with this sentence is that he doesn’t expect oil to be available much longer.
Newsflash: David Letterman obviously has listened to my prediction for major unwind starting in 2015. He has announced his retirement in 2015, no doubt to beat feet for his well-prepared doomer retreat far from big cities. Coincidentally, the entire Afghanistan fighting force and their equipment will be returned to America by 2015, and the new advanced-tech nuclear generator being built in Georgia (surrounded by a plethora of major military bases) is still on schedule to be completed by 2016, but materials are expected to be on site ready for assembly by 2015.
Well, back to finishing the green house. I’ve got about a thousand seeds started yesterday and day before. Got my layer chickens into their new 64-sq foot home recently completed yesterday. This is one busy beaver — hope you are being the same.
shortonoil on Sun, 6th Apr 2014 7:49 pm
“What I think I hear shortonoil saying with this sentence is that he doesn’t expect oil to be available much longer.”
Personally my biggest concern is the 300+ nuclear power plants scattered around the world. The end of the oil age will come quit quickly, relatively speaking. It will occur in 5 years, not 50 as generally assumed. The ongoing deterioration we see in the world’s monetary/financial system appears to be the canary in the coal mine, it is saying that things are going afoul. The world’s complex, integrated production and distribution system will go when that system fails, and the means to maintain those 300+ behemoths will go with it. If only a third of them melt down the consequences for higher life form on the planet would be extreme..
John Orr on Sun, 6th Apr 2014 8:51 pm
Your luck we pay $6 a gallon here in UK!!!!
Davy, Hermann, MO on Mon, 7th Apr 2014 7:52 am
Short, my thoughts exactly!! What more can I add????
NR, I am hot n heavy in the garden also. Thinking about building something like this to follow the cattle around and pick through the cow patties! http://okiecritters.com/ChickenTractors.html. Life is better in the spring…man it was a bitch of a winter here!