Running out of everything.

• Author: Pal, Amitabh
• Position: 'The Race for What's Left: The Global Scramble for the World's Last Resources' by Michael T. Klare - Book review

The Race for What's Left: The Global Scramble for the Wodd's Last Resources By Michael T. Klare Metropolitan Books. 306 pages. $27.

Michael Klare's new book is ripped from the head-lines--a good and a bad thing. Any avid news junkie will know about a considerable portion of what he depicts. At the same time, he provides background and context that is missing in much of the coverage.

Klare, a professor at Hampshire College and The Nation's defense correspondent, has done yeoman's service over many years in analyzing issues such as "rogue states," small arms, and American defense planning. In the recent past, he has focused on resource conflict, and this is his fourth book in that series. (Full disclosure: Klare has contributed pieces to The Progressive and the Progressive Media Project.)

Klare's thesis is that the world is running out of easily obtainable resources for operating the global economy. The future, he says, portends environmental disasters, increasing conflict, and a desperate scramble for what remains. Klare includes in his survey everything from oil and natural gas to food and rare minerals. This readable account deals with an extremely important issue.

"The era of readily accessible oil and gas has come to an end: From now on, vital energy supplies will have to be drawn from remote and forbidding locations, at a cost far exceeding anything experienced in the past," Klare writes. "The world is entering an era of pervasive, unprecedented resource scarcity."

Using a rift that runs through the book and provides its title, he adds, "This has produced a global drive to find and exploit the world's final resource reserves--a race for what's left."

Klare opens his book dramatically by describing the scene where in 2007 a Russian submarine planted a flag at the North Pole as a way of laying claim to the region's resources now that the Arctic Ocean is thawing due to global warming. Klare provides a lot of additional detail, such as the official responses from Canada, Norway, Denmark, and the United States (which issued a Presidential directive outlining U.S. policy in the Arctic). Klare also does a good job in highlighting the possible devastation in this area to the ecosystem and indigenous peoples from resource exploitation.

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Klare discusses other issues and terms that are very much in the news--such as fracking, tar sands oil, and conflict minerals. He provides nice scientific background on the extraction of oil...