Overview

A shocking scarcity of natural resources is about to hit the whole world, and the crisis is being accelerated by mankind's heedless overexploitation and pollution of what's left. This is an unprecedented and mind-boggling challenge for humanity. It also signals a change of the economic paradigm, the lens through which economic experts view the world. Pablo Rafael Gonzalez documents the dire state of the whole earth's reserves of oil, food and water in 150 tables and graphs. Gonzalez, a political analyst, has advised Venezuela's President and Congress for 25 years on energy and resource issues. In this book he convincingly demonstrates that we are well on the way to exhausting both renewable and nonrenewable natural resources, even if we are in denial about it. Capital, economists like to say, is the scarce factor of production; but starting in this century, it's the scarcity of natural resources that will limit growth. It's time we recognized that fact and dealt with it. Until now, it has been relatively easy to keep on expanding production as mankind conquered the globe, continually gaining access to rich new lands; and rapid population growth has meant there were generally enough hands to do the work. That halcyon era is coming to an end, and economists will have to shift their focus from problems of distribution to problems of resources. The evidence presented in these pages, drawn largely from World Bank and UN reports, adds up to an urgent plea that governments and other policy-makers abandon some traditional economic ideas and invent radically new approaches in order to shape responsible policies for the future. * Pablo Rafael Gonzalez was founder (1992) and Director of the Political Analysis Office of the Venezuela Senate and served as Information Director of the Central Office of Coordination and Planning of the Republic Presidency. As a researcher with a wide experience in the political sciences, economy and philosophy, his principal interest has been in themes as employment and economic growth, external debt, globalization, energy and natural resources.

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