The Race for What’s Left

from truthdig:


The Race for What’s Left
Posted on Jun 5, 2013

“The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources”
A book by Michael T. Klare

Reviewed by Louise Rubacky


There’s an AT&T commercial that’s been running on TV recently. A guy in a suit sits on a schoolroom floor, surrounded by a circle of preschool-aged kids. He poses a question: “Who thinks more is better than less?” A lisping little girl answers, in a cute and incoherent way, then wraps up her ramble with: “We want more, we want more; like, you really like it, we want more.” The deadpan man nods, “I follow you … ” and the screen cuts to an animated graphic with voice-over: “It’s not complicated—more is better, and AT&T has the largest 4G network.”

The setting alone stands as a marvel of irony, but the “more is better” message of the ad sums up the mantra of almost every corporation selling any commodity today. Kids don’t necessarily learn that in school; they absorb it as a cultural truism well before they get to kindergarten. Because of that, partly, things on our planet are going to get ugly.

Michael T. Klare’s vastly researched, minutely detailed book “The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources,” now out in paperback, can be read as a direct rebuke to the “we want more, we want more” world. The author, a professor of peace and world security studies at the Five College Consortium in Massachusetts and a contributor to The Nation and TomDispatch, has long written about potential conflict resulting from humans claiming rights to and using too much of what comes from the earth. His latest is something of a sister volume—with different angles and emphases—to his “Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet” (2005) and “Resource Wars” (2002.)

In “The Race for What’s Left,” he continues his exploration of the high stakes at play when the demand for resources is bottomless. Powerful nations are on collision courses marked by differing claims of ownership; economically weak countries have little chance of prevailing in contests of greed over need. In addition to those conflicts are the disasters that climate change will foist on large swaths of people, causing millions to become refugees. ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/the_race_for_whats_left_20130605/