Pathology of Empire. Oil Wars

The differenceБЂ”nearly nine million tonsБЂ”stays in Lisbon, mostly in the form of added buildings and landfills. So not only do cities feed on their outside natural resource base, they retain and grow from it.93 Clearly then, our global rush to urbanize does not mean giving the natural world a break. As we saw in the previous chapter, when people move to modern cities, consumption goes up, not down. And cities import all sorts of materials besides food, water, and consumer goods. Roads, buildings, and power plants require serious tonnage of steel, chemicals, wood, water, and hydrocarbons. Even in rural areas, the departing farmers are being replaced by tractors and petrochemicals.94 As described in the last two chapters, the developing world will experience extraordinary urban and economic growth over the next forty years. What does this portend for our third global force, demand for natural resources? Do we face oil wars and crazy steel prices? Stump forests and dried-up water wells? Are we about to run out of the raw materials our cities and mechanized farmlands so desperately need? Are We Running Out of Resources? The debate over natural resources, and whether we are running out of them, is a contentious and surprisingly ancient debate ...»