National security expert Michael Klare devotes much of his time these days to thinking about the intensifying competition for increasingly scarce natural resources. 
His most recent book, The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources, discusses how the world economy has entered a period of what he calls “tough” extraction for energy, minerals, and other commodities, where the easy-to-get resources have been exploited and a rapidly growing population is now turning to resources in the most remote regions. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Klare talks about China’s surging appetite for resources, the growing potential for political and military conflict as commodities become scarcer, and the scramble for agricultural land. The way to reduce resource conflicts, says Klare, is to find substitute materials and significantly boost efficiency in a host of realms, most notably energy. Hope for the future, he says, lies with innovative entrepreneurs and, especially, the young. “They all want to be involved in developing solutions,” says Klare, “and they have a lot of optimism and enthusiasm for this.”
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Michael Klare
Read the interview