Scarcity and Growth Revisited: Natural Resources and the Environment in the New MillenniumRalph David Simpson, Michael A. Toman, Robert U. Ayres In this volume, a group of distinguished international scholars provides a fresh investigation of the most fundamental issues involved in our dependence on natural resources. In Scarcity and Growth (RFF, 1963) and Scarcity and Growth Reconsidered (RFF, 1979), researchers considered the long-term implications of resource scarcity for economic growth and human well-being. Scarcity and Growth Revisited examines these implications with 25 years of new learning and experience. It finds that concerns about resource scarcity have changed in essential ways. In contrast with the earlier preoccupation with the adequacy of fuel, mineral, and agricultural resources and the efficiency by which they are allocated, the greatest concern today is about the Earth's limited capacity to handle the environmental consequences of resource extraction and use. Opinion among scholars is divided on the ability of technological innovation to ameliorate this 'new scarcity.' However, even the book's more optimistic authors agree that the problems will not be successfully overcome without significant advances in the legal, financial, and other social institutions that protect the environment and support technical innovation. Scarcity and Growth Revisited incorporates expert perspectives from the physical and life sciences, as well as economics. It includes issues confronting the developing world as well as industrialized societies. The book begins with a review of the debate about scarcity and economic growth and a review of current assessments of natural resource availability and consumption. The twelve chapters that follow provide an accessible, lively, and authoritative update to an enduring-but changing-debate. |
Contents
Mineral Resources and Consumption in the TwentyFirst Century | 33 |
The State of the Debate | 54 |
The Roles | 78 |
Copyright | |
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agricultural analysis assets Azar benefits billion biodiversity bioenergy biomass carbon carbon tax climate change coal consumption copper cost Dasgupta decline degradation depletion deposits developing countries diversity Ecological Economics economic growth economists ecosystem services Edward Elgar effects efficiency EJ/yr electricity emissions endogenous energy environment Environmental Economics environmental policy environmental resources evolution evolutionary evolutionary economics example factors firms fossil fuels future global growth theory human impact improvements incentives income increase industry innovation inputs institutions intergenerational equity investment Journal Kuznets Curve land Limits to Growth MBIs measures ment mineral National natural capital natural resource neoclassical nomics optimal output percent Pezzey pollution population problems production reduce regulation resource commodities Resource Economics resource scarcity result Scarcity and Growth sector social society species studies substitution Sustainable Development technological change technological progress Tilman tion United University Press World Bank