The Race for What's Left: The Global Scramble for the World's Last Resources

by Michael T. Klare

"As Michael Klare makes clear in this powerful book, the heads of our corporate empires have decided to rip apart the planet in one last burst of profiteering. If you want to understand the next decade, I fear you better read this book."---Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth

The world is facing an unprecedented crisis of resource depletion---a crisis that encompasses shortages of oil and coal, copper and cobalt, water and arable land. With all of the Earth's accessible areas already being exploited, the desperate hunt for supplies has now reached the final frontiers. The Race for What's Left takes us from the Arctic to war zones to deep ocean floors, from a Russian submarine planting the country's flag under the North Pole to the large-scale buying up of African farmland by Saudi Arabia and other food-scarce nations. With resource extraction growing more difficult, the environmental risks are becoming increasingly severe---and the intense search for dwindling supplies is igniting new conflicts and territorial disputes. The only way out, Michael T. Klare argues, is to alter our consumption patterns altogether, a crucial task that will be the greatest challenge of the coming century.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Environment, Science, Sustainability, Economics, Nature

320 pages, Paperback

First published December 6, 2011

About the author

Michael T. Klare is a Five Colleges professor of Peace and World Security Studies, whose department is located at Hampshire College, defense correspondent of The Nation magazine, and author of Resource Wars and Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Petroleum Dependency (Metropolitan).

Klare also teaches at Amherst College, Smith College, Mount Holyoke College, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Klare also serves on the boards of directors of Human Rights Watch, and the Arms Control Association. He is a regular contributor to many publications including The Nation, TomDispatch, Mother Jones, and is a frequent columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus.

Reviews

[Hadrian · Rating 3 out of 5]

A satisfactory summary of the worlds upcoming resource shortages, and the main focal points for what's left. Many previously ignored areas in great power geopolitics could suddenly become flash points.

Shale oil, deep water mining, rare earth elements, food supply. It's all there. An excellent point to begin discussion.

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Competently written rebuttal of the idea that technology is about to make resource shortages a relic of the past.

Only 3 stars as book comes off as a compendium of various essays -- write 20 pages about the current state of oil production. Next chapter, 10 pages on rare metals. Then, an essay about agriculture. And so on. You can hardly tell this book even has an author, it feels like an assembly by committee. Which is fine...

But the book has no core, there's no context, no narrative string tying it together. Which resources are most vulnerable. How will the oil/nat gas shortages affect agriculture. 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.

[Aharon · Rating 2 out of 5]

You know how you can protect those precious vanishing resources, Michael Klare? Stop repeating yourself and make this a 150-page book. Cool stuff about shale oil, though.

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Klare's The Race for What's Left is about the end of easy resources. His focus is fossil fuels, land for agriculture, and rare earths.

When we read the news, we should think about nations and corporations attempting to control easy resources now so that they can afford to pay more (when resources are scarce) later. When the Canadian military trains in the Arctic, for example, Canada is spending a resource now to assert its sovereignty. It does this because it plans to cash in on oil and gas reserves under the Arctic. Whenever we see chatter about combatting climate change as well as strategies to cash in on these resources, we're at best seeing an attempt to have it both ways.

More broadly, I read Klare as being in opposition to optimists. In Better Angels of Our Nature, for example, Steven Pinker argues that we have enjoyed a few decades of relative peace in part because the sense that growth was possible incentivized nations to work together. But if resources are running out, as Klare argues here, then we would expect a decline in international cooperation as countries begin battening down the hatches. Interestingly, even if Pinker is right to be optimistic, as he claims to be in Enlightenment Now, just a sense of foreboding taking hold in the general public might be sufficient to give rise to nationalism and xenophobia.

Readers hoping to make the argument for environmental determinism might find this a useful resource.

[Scriptor Ignotus · Rating 3 out of 5]

The perennial problem of resource scarcity is reaching a critically dangerous point, with potentially devastating environmental and geopolitical consequences, according to Klare's latest book. The industrialization of developing nations, particularly in East Asia, has created a unprecedented level of demand for a variety of resources, while the supply of such resources is simultaneously reaching a point of diminishing returns. With easy-to-access oil and gas reserves already exhausted, energy companies are now compelled to access new sources in some of the most inhospitable places on Earth, such as deep water offshore sites in the Gulf of Mexico or the Arctic Circle, with increasing risk and expense. Fossil fuels are not the only dwindling resource, as numerous minerals with industrial or technological uses are also in increasingly rare supply and high demand, and food shortages will likely plague the developing world to an unprecedented degree in the coming decades as the population continues to grow. A sobering read.

[Judy Lindow · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 written about much. 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.

[Neil Bhatiya · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit dated, but nevertheless a useful tour of how major powers are trying to plan for future resource scarcity.

[Rebecca Gilbert · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book for the first 40 pages or so. I thought it did a great job of bringing to light the issues associated with oncoming resource wars and the fact that our energy, metals, and available land resources are all suffering a dramatic decline all at once.
The problem with the book, however, was that it read as if the author combined a number of essays on the same topic into a book without realizing that books are typically read cover to cover. Each section of the book re-explains the same thing as if the author doesn't realize that the reader was given the same information 3 pages prior. It is highly repetitive.
I ended the book feeling disappointed that it wasn't better written because it started off so strong and it was initially such an interesting read. I still feel like I learned something from it and I'm glad that I picked it up but it could have been written in a third of the pages and been a much better read.

[Bill S · Rating 3 out of 5]

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. 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 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.

[Christophe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Goede, pijnlijke analyse voor hoe het er aan toe gaat in de wereld op gebied van grondstoffen. Inmiddels flink wat jaren oud, maar het lijkt alsof we er nog niets van hebben geleerd. Lastig om te lezen omdat het zout in een open wond lijkt te strooien

[Malcolm Pellettier · Rating 3 out of 5]

lord help us.

[Chloe · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read this for a research paper/thesis. Pretty boring and unmemorable, with an unastounding conclusion. Not worth the scorn of a 1-star review, but I wouldn't recommend this.

[Gustavo Mendez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Feels like I'm reading a history textbook. Interesting facts, but no solutions suggested for the reader's end.

[Hartley · Rating 5 out of 5]

pg 228 key to whole book

[Rodger Payne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Adopted for class, fall 2013. 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. Indeed, I have frequently used Klare's books in my security and environment classes: Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws: America's Search for a New Foreign Policy (1995), Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America 19s Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum (2004) and various editions of his World Security edited volume. 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: the so-called resource curse, great power competition for scarce resources, the environmental risks of explointing marginal territories, etc.

[Aubrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 2-5 were dry economics. If nothing, read the last half of the book.

Many of the investments cited began after the great financial crisis of 2008, 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.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

The thesis is clear after the first 2 dozen pages at most. The rest is a grim elaboration. To organize a book after that fashion demands much of the writing. This one succeeds less well than "Shock Doctrine" & "Tropic of Chaos," both of which held my attention with the writing & made me glad, during & after the read, that I stuck with it. (The writing can do this too well — making it unendurable to read not because it's below standards but because it's TOO strong. My go-to example is Mike Davis's stupefying "Planet of Slums.")

[Matthew Gibb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of facts and figures strung together under several different headings. The maps were very illuminating. The Arctic has 5-6 countries claiming sovereign rights to mining the sea there, and Russia owns the majority of that. The overall premise is that the world has already depleted the easy to extract resources, and there is some mention of adapting using various green technologies, but even they rely on destructive mining. When will the world wake up and embrace using less? Perhaps when it simply has no choice.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a frightening book. I've long known that resource depletion was a serious problem, but seeing the data makes it clear how little time we have left. Resource wars are already being fought. It's just a matter of time before major nations join the battle. With America consuming so much of the world's resources, other nations are going to start proclaiming us to be an enemy of the continuation of the human species.

[Derek Barnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Peak oil has been proven wrong, right? Klare and I aren't convinced. These newly discovered reserves almost always come from more remote, more dangerous, and more environmentally sensitive areas of the world which means that they are far more expensive to extract than conventional supplies. The ultimate reason that the global economy has stalled out is that its engine is literally running out of gas.

[Tom Webb]

Part of Michael T. Klare's triology exploring the sole dwindling resources may play in the national and international conflicts of the 21st century. Unless there becomes a way to distribute resources fairly rather than simply relying on the hegemony of those who control free markets, we may be in for a bloody century.

[Brendan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty informative, just a little repetitious in places. Didn't actually talk about water specifically as a separate resource ( should have ) Hadn't heard the term ' post soil ' ( like ' post oil ' before, good one )

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Peels the curtain back on current event stories you see continually come up in the news, country conflicts, international conflicts, border disputes and explains the primary reason why they occur (but the unspoken reason).

Very readable.

[!Tæmbuŝu]

KOBOBOOKS

[Ana · Rating 4 out of 5]

my only complaint I would have liked more information on extraction methods.

[Ken · Rating 3 out of 5]

A yawning amount of facts--emphasis on the word 'yawning'.

[Mike Stolfi · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great book for all of those who dream of a future powered by alternative sources & the complications therein. And why the arctic is becoming militarized for more conventional materials.....

[Barry Lando · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good, if repetitive, look at how we're tearing our world--and ourselves--apart

[Andrew · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good overview, but not too much depth.

[Saif · Rating 4 out of 5]

Outstandingly researched. Very informative. Not as concise as it could (should?) have been.