Editorial Reviews. Review. “A first-rate, well-researched wake-up call.” ―The Christian Science The Race for What's Left: The Global Scramble for the World's Last Resources - Kindle edition by Michael Klare. Download it once and read it on.
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- Michael Klare's The Race for What's Left
- The Race for What's Left: The Global Scramble for the World's Last Resources
- Resource Races: Michael T. Klare’s The Race for What’s Left | Harvard International Review
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- Michael T. Klare’s The Race for What’s Left
More importantly, fallow and potentially productive farm land has become scarce in various locales due to overuse, desertification, urbanization and other destructive forms of consumption. We can expect food shortages to intensify as time passes. Brazil, Russia, India and China are industrializing or reindustrializing in Russia's case. Other countries have also taken off. Many are trying to develop their productive capacity and their natural resources. The industries in many of these countries are now competitive in the global market and will consume a growing share of the planet's raw goods.
Consumer demand, the system of production it drives and the quest for profits will thus continuously diminish the quantity of available raw materials. These goods are finite in number and, in some cases, lack an adequate substitute. Impelled by local and global demand as well as by the scarcity of the materials needed to compete, countries and firms will intensify their search for new sources of these increasingly scarce resources.
Finding and using these goods will be neither easy nor cheap. We can expect competition for these resources to be intense. This, therefore, is the race for what's left: We have consumed so much of the planet's resources that we can only renew our supply of these materials by finding new sources, mostly in inhospitable locales.
Michael Klare's The Race for What's Left
We can also expect these new sources to be either less productive than the sources they replace or made to produce only with more effort, greater risks and higher costs. Arctic drilling and mining provide the exemplary cases of this problem. They are not the only cases, however. Worst of all, the race for what's left can never end given the nature of a modern and global economic system. Resource use today necessarily generates the scarcity of tomorrow. Klare, oddly enough, gives little attention to one resource now in decline: An environment fit for human habitation. Global warming can and will likely become a species threat.
Industrial waste befouls the land, water and atmosphere. A proud humankind may not survive the externalities generated by its supposed achievements. Of course, the global warming catastrophe has already begun, and the task humans must complete to survive goes well beyond taking measures that will ensure we avoid that dire situation. There is no magic bullet solution to this situation. The task instead requires pulling on the brake handle before it becomes too late to save ourselves and the world we have long inhabited.
The Race for What's Left: The Global Scramble for the World's Last Resources
It may have been inevitable that "The Race for What's Left' will not inspire hope for the future. The race is driven by the need to conserve the industrial method of production, techniques and resource usage which cause global warming and resource depletion. The sense I got from reading Klare's book is that we can expect national states to seek to secure the resources they need before it is too late to do so, too late to keep pace in a increasingly ruthless world economic system.
Capitalist firms, on the other hand, will continue to seek out profitable uses for their technological capabilities and, of course, their property in general. The fortunate ones may take superprofits from their efforts, using resource scarcity to extract rents from the consumers of their goods. The stakes for these firms are very high and will increase in the future since countries and firms that fail to compete in the emerging markets can end in social disintegration, subjugation and bankruptcy because of their failure.
Path dependent development entails confronting a socio-political rigidity that can prove fatal. At present, the world devotes little to the effort to pull on the brake handle, to radically alter the direction of material progress. Rather, it devotes treasure and blood reproducing the disaster.
- 'The Race For What's Left: The Global Scramble for the World's Last Resources' by Michael Klare.
- Michael Klare's The Race for What's Left | HuffPost?
- The Race for What's Left: The Global Scramble for the World's Last Resources by Michael T. Klare?
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The situation grows increasingly dire, and hopes for the future depend upon the human capacity for reasonable thought and action as well as for generating solidarity among humanity's diverse parts. In this situation -- yoked as we are to techniques and social forms which cannot sustain themselves -- gaining hope for the future entails confronting the hopelessness of our very modern predicament. I gave "Race for What's Left" four stars.
It is an accessible, well-researched and timely intervention into the world public sphere. I deducted a star because it is not the definitive work on the subject, although I should state that Klare clearly did not mean it to be such. Kindle Edition Verified Purchase. Klare presents to his reader regarding our dwindling resources or rather our dwindling, easily recoverable resources is not in dispute; however, I find he exhibits an American bias in that he spends a good deal of the book, writing about what China and other countries are doing to secure the minerals, land, and hydrocarbon resources they need to ensure their economic security, but little was said about the United States, who also has an interest in ensuring its economic security.
The book ended rather abruptly, with predictable platitudes about developing alternative energy, something which is fraught with its own problems. In the end, Mr. Klare says nothing about population, I suppose because there isn't an easy answer to that, only to say that if humanity does not control its population, we will change our planet in dramatic ways which may very well lead to our extinction. This is the best published description of my own gloomy geopoliticoeconomic analysis, which says the planet's dominant species is plunging headlong toward self-destruction.
Klare describes the last great "play" being made by big-energy, mining and other elite capitalists for the control and sale of all the non-renewable resources still remaining on our abused Mother Earth. His research is magisterial, and like myself, he does not easily see a way out of the momentum toward and past tipping points that he describes.
Resource Races: Michael T. Klare’s The Race for What’s Left | Harvard International Review
Next chapter, 10 pages on rare metals. Then, an essay about agriculture. You can hardly tell this book even has an author, it feels like an assembly by committee. But the book has no core, there's no context, no narrative string tying Competently written rebuttal of the idea that technology is about to make resource shortages a relic of the past.
But the book has no core, there's no context, no narrative string tying it together. Which resources are most vulnerable. How will the pressures on rare earths impact the energy picture. These are the sorts of subjects I was hoping Klare would expound on, instead, we get a very dry though thoroughly informative look at various resources and the state of play for them going forward.
Dec 08, Judy Lindow rated it liked it Shelves: As someone interested in our food system and the global ramifications of our food choices, I found the chapter 'Global "Land Grabs" and the Struggle for Food' very interesting! It gave me new insight into the way the land on our planet is currently being divided up; who are the players driving land use and efficiencies or lack of efficiencies , who are making the investments, who will be loosing out.
It describes the big picture of land use as it relates to animal agriculture that is not writte As someone interested in our food system and the global ramifications of our food choices, I found the chapter 'Global "Land Grabs" and the Struggle for Food' very interesting! It describes the big picture of land use as it relates to animal agriculture that is not written about much.
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When you realize how fast investors private, government, corporate work to make a profit and exploit resources without regulation and people's rights and the environment considered - it's mind boggling that this isn't common knowledge. May 02, Neil Bhatiya rated it liked it. A bit dated, but nevertheless a useful tour of how major powers are trying to plan for future resource scarcity. Dec 30, Bill Shavce rated it liked it. Klare highlights the challenges posed by dwindling resources around the world, covering hydrocarbons, minerals, rare earth elements, and food.
He shows that there is increasing competition among both state actors and corporations to gain and maintain access to these resources.
Michael T. Klare’s The Race for What’s Left
Klare also stresses that many of these are on the decline and that it will become more difficult and dangerous to extract them. He claims that the competition to maintain continued access, while necessary for economic deve Klare highlights the challenges posed by dwindling resources around the world, covering hydrocarbons, minerals, rare earth elements, and food. He claims that the competition to maintain continued access, while necessary for economic development, could lead to conflict. However, the mechanisms that lead from resource competition to conflict are not well developed in the book.
Overall, the book is a decent survey of the competition to obtain critical resources and makes a good addition to any reading list on security issues. May 31, Phoebe rated it it was ok Shelves: Pretty boring and unmemorable, with an unastounding conclusion. Not worth the scorn of a 1-star review, but I wouldn't recommend this. Feb 12, Malcolm Pellettier rated it liked it Shelves: Adopted for class, fall Klare is now an academic, but he previously worked in Washington's policy world as a journalist. That means he writes effectively about interesting and important topics.
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Indeed, I have frequently used Klare's books in my security and environment classes: Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws: However, I was a bit disappointed in the organization of this book. It examines the "race for what's left" of scare oil, mineral, and land resources, but includes dozens of short subsections on specific situations. These are mostly organized by geography. A more effective books might have focused on some central common concerns: Nov 25, Aubrey rated it liked it. Eye opening account of a race for what remains of the world's resources.
A great topic of discussion, this book presents facts on large investment firms and governments razing the world over for rare earths, peak 'soil' in Africa, and arctic circle mining operations. Quick read, and chapters were dry economics. If nothing, read the last half of the book. Many of the investments cited began after the great financial crisis of , leading me to believe the race for what's left is often invest Eye opening account of a race for what remains of the world's resources.
Many of the investments cited began after the great financial crisis of , leading me to believe the race for what's left is often investors taking advantage of bargain basement commodity prices. For this reason, and the eventual dated nature of the material, I am only giving three stars. The author presents a strong one sided case. I would have preferred to see a little more debate given his keen intellect. A skeptic might ask: What is wrong with this competition? The obvious answer, implicitly accepted by corporate and government officials alike, is that there are not enough resources to go around.
In this situation, prices will rise and the living standards of many people throughout the world will fall. In the midst of growing scarcity, some will emerge winners and others losers, with the poorest among them starving and dying. But, as Klare demonstrates, there are other great drawbacks, as well. One is that corporations and governments, in their determination to reach previously inaccessible resources, are employing extractive technologies that are destroying the environment. BP's deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, corporate hydrofracking in the northeast United States, and the massive Canadian tar sands operation are three well-known examples of this phenomenon.
Also, the rising consumption of fossil fuels will accelerate climate change. Furthermore, wealthy investors, hedge funds, and a growing number of governments including those of Saudi Arabia, other Persian Gulf nations, China, India, and South Korea are busy buying up farmland in other nations -- in alone, an estimated million acres, an area the size of Sweden. According to Susan Payne's Emergent fund, "Africa is the final frontier," with land that is "very, very inexpensive.