Excellent editorial in the NYTimes by Paul Krugman, titled The Finite World.He describes how copper and cotton are hitting record highs, and oil prices are peculating upwards, despite an under-heated USA economy. Rapidly emerging economies - What I describe as Korea-zation - is having a dramatic effect on climate, mining, extraction, habitat loss, extinction and resource consumption.
Krugman writes:
[T]he big problem with those blaming the Fed for rising commodity prices is that they’re suffering from delusions of U.S. economic grandeur. For commodity prices are set globally, and what America does just isn’t that important a factor.
In particular, today, as in 2007-2008, the primary driving force behind rising commodity prices isn’t demand from the United States. It’s demand from China and other emerging economies. As more and more people in formerly poor nations are entering the global middle class, they’re beginning to drive cars and eat meat, placing growing pressure on world oil and food supplies.
And those supplies aren’t keeping pace. Conventional oil production has been flat for four years; in that sense, at least, peak oil has arrived. True, alternative sources, like oil from Canada’s tar sands, have continued to grow. But these alternative sources come at relatively high cost, both monetary and environmental.The same demand for our recyclables is pressuring Brazil's rain forests, Congo's watersheds, and Papua New Guinea's coral reefs.
