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VivianLea Doubt

Thompson Rivers University

Geography 230: Assignment Five

June, 2008
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The idea that resources are a cultural concept can be illustrated by some recent facts

about gold. World reserves are estimated at 100,000 tons; the price of gold has risen about 20 %

from 2007 (doubled from 4 years previous); this sharp rise in price has reduced demand –

however, the gold exchange trading fund market has increased by 100% (World Gold Council,

n.d.). Gold is seen by many investors as a safe place to store funds in a volatile and uneasy stock

market. Central banks of all countries maintain some gold reserves: this is a resource that is

widely perceived to have, and to hold value. Of course, it has value because we as humans agree

it has value – a cultural construct, albeit broadly held. Apart from its obvious use in jewellery,

gold is used in dentistry and other applications, for many of which, adequate (even superior)

alternatives exist.

Let us turn to 2 other non-renewable resources for a moment: oil and copper. The price of

oil is rising dramatically and is the subject of endless conversations these days. World (proven)

reserves are estimated at approximately a 65-year supply at current use levels (IEA US

Department of Environment, 2007). Copper (proven) reserves are estimated at 61 years: the price

of copper, too, has risen substantially (ICSG, 2007). It would seem that the price of all these

resources is rising in light of their relative scarcity, a textbook example of classical economic

theory. As Haggett remarks:

As the price of a resource increases, a chain of compensating movements occurs.

First, high prices bring greater care in the way resources are used. Supplies of
products with high values per tonne are carefully metered and their use carefully
recorded; conversely, wastage results from low-value products. (Haggett, P.,
2001, p. 310)

The debate between the Malthusians and Cornucopians is thus framed. The optimists believe that

scarcity is reflected in higher prices, which promotes conservation as well as exploration for new
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resources and technological alternatives; pessimists point out the exponential nature of

population growth (hence resource demand) as well as the exponential per capita increase in

energy use in the last 6 decades, as evidence that we are headed towards crisis: the earth is a

finite landscape, with finite resources, they say. The evocation of the problem in these terms is

not particularly fruitful, however.

World population growth is slowing – feminists might argue that education and equality

for the world’s poorest women would have an even more dramatic effect – but it is still rising.

Higher prices certainly drive new exploration efforts and alternatives to present technologies.

There are those who welcome higher oil prices ( not to mention carbon taxes) as a means to

achieving less traffic congestion, pollution, and other assorted ills of car culture – yet many

people have no alternative modes of transportation, and monetary incentive is not likely to

influence the most well-off. The price of copper is high enough to encourage rampant thievery of

all kinds of things containing the metal, yet copper found in electronics routinely (still!) goes to

the landfill. From the encouraging: China has recently banned free plastic bags, and it is

estimated this will save 37 million barrels of oil a year – to the depressing: 500 billion to 1

trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide every year (CNN, 2008; National Geographic,

2003). So is one a Malthusian when expressing the sentence thusly, and becomes a Cornucopian

when reversing it to read from the depressing… to the encouraging…? The debate goes on,

framed in much the same way, ad infinitum.

I began with a look at gold as a cultural construct and bring us back to that precious

metal. A short time ago, some priceless gold artefacts were stolen from the UBC Museum of

Anthropology: the police speculated they were stolen to be sold for the value of the weight of the

gold they contained. (I am aware that they were recovered, or at least most of them.) To some:
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sacred treasures, a shining, golden example of human society in its highest expression, absolutely

irreplaceable. To some others: money. This is an extreme example of wildly diverging cultural

concepts, yet not terribly removed from the wildly diverging cultural concepts of the earth: “little

blue planet” versus “one vast cornucopia of riches” (for some).

Paul Ehrlich, commenting on his current thoughts regarding The Population Bomb said:

Some things I have predicted have not come to pass. For instance, starvation has
been less extensive than I (or rather the agriculturists I consulted) expected. But
it’s still horrific, with some 600 million people very hungry and billions under- or
malnourished (Ehrlich, 2004).

The U.N. estimate for that number is 874 million people right now… In our own Canadian cities

large and small, thousands are homeless (exact figures being hard to come by) and hundreds of

thousands use food banks (Doubt, V., Lawson, S. & Orr, R., 1986). What will rising oil prices,

rising food prices as a consequence, and even more food crops diverted to biofuels mean for all

these people? What does it mean that 68 % of all the world’s oil reserves are controlled by 10

companies (Natural Resources Canada, 2007)? Can we trust the reported reserves, not only for

oil, but for metals such as copper that are integral to a vast number of products in the developed

nations? Can we expect events like 9/11 – or even the theft of museum pieces – to become ever

more prevalent as the gap between the malnourished or starving classes and the throw-away

classes becomes more glaring? Can we expect future citizens to be mining the landfills of North

America?

The debate between what will or will not happen in the future seems a waste of time:

there are too many variables for anyone to confidently predict what will happen 50 years hence.

We have a reasonably good grasp of what is happening right now, however, and what the short

term consequences are. Any vision of life of earth for humans must pay attention to aspects in
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addition to the economic to be meaningful to humans; it must pay attention to those who cannot

afford to make the “consumption choices” that will keep them alive: it must, in other words,

centre on people and not an arbitrary cultural construct. As it moves on, the debate is more and

more on how to move people and their collective desires into the decision-making process, how

to ensure a mechanism other than monetary (arbitrary cultural construct) defines what will

happen to collective resources… but as I have previously pointed out, in democratic countries we

already have that mechanism: democracy. If 874 million people starving does not constitute a

“population bomb”, it certainly constitutes a deeply shameful disgrace. If hundreds of thousands

using food banks in one of the world’s richest countries does not constitute a crisis, it does

constitute a national wound that we will be striving to heal for decades to come…

A local environmental columnist writes of emergence in the context of systems theory:

Oil prices are reorganizing the economics of global trade. The mass marketing of
merchandise, which depends on fast mobility for products and cheap travel for
consumers, finds its business premise under threat… The price of oil is also
beginning to affect the economics of food… World hunger could easily escalate
to massive starvation, setting up a series of explosive and humanitarian crises…
Emergence does not necessarily mean disaster. But it does mean dramatic change.
(Grigg, R., 2008)

Using our resources more wisely is an imperative in every sense of the word: the future is here.
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References

CNN. (2008) http://www.Cnn.com/asia

Doubt, V., Lawson, S. & Orr, R. (1986) Neighbours Helping Neighbours. Campbell River:
Mirror Publishing

Ehrlich, P. (2004) Grist. Retrieved from:

http://www.grist.org/comments/interactivist/2004/08/09/ehrlich/index1.html

Grigg, R. (2008) Emergence: The coming changes. Comox Valley Echo.

Haggett, P. (2001) Geography: A global synthesis. Harrow: Pearson-Prentice Hall

ICSG. (2007) World Copper Factbook. Retrieved June 23, 2008 from:
http://www.icsg.org/Factbook/default.htm

IEA, US Department of Environment. (2007) World proved reserves of oil and gas, most recent
estimates. Retrieved June 24, 2008 from:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/reserves.html

National Geographic (2003) September.

Natural Resources Canada. (2007) How world oil markets work. Retrieved June 23, 2008 from:
http://www.fuelfocus.nrcan.gc.ca/fact_sheets/oilmarket_e.cfm

World Gold Council. http://www.gold.org/