Toward a New Iron Age? Quantitative Modeling of Resource Exhaustion by Robert B. Gordon, et al

Abstract

974 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE But the most serious fault is the failure to ask probing, insightful questions. In analyzing the vast number of dams built during the 20th century (and the opposition to these endeavors), Palmer’s analysis makes only brief and fleeting reference to the broader cultural and technological issues at stake. The book would have been far more forceful had he tried to illuminate more carefully the relationship between technology and social process, between technological devel­ opment, people’s responses, and the questions of power and authority. For example, Palmer notes that during the 1960s and beyond, the conservation movement adopted a more rigorous set of analytic tools founded on both science and economics. This approach stands in contrast to the earlier, more philosophical objections lodged against dam building prominent during the early 20th century. Palmer cor­ rectly explains that environmentalists since the late 1960s have sought to meet developers on their own terms (p. 134). But one wonders about the implications of this change. If the environmental ethos that has lately emerged is as thoroughly infused with rationalism and a commitment to economic principles as Palmer believes, one must won­ der about this brand of conservationism. In avoiding such questions, Palmer does not provide the deeper analysis of his subject that would have made this a more useful study. Theodore Steinberg Mr. Steinberg is an Irving and Rose Crown Fellow in the History of American Civilization at Brandeis University. He is currently working on a study of the rise of the Waltham-Lowell system that explores its environmental dimension. Toward a New Iron Age? Quantitative Modeling ofResource Exhaustion. By Robert B. Gordon, Tjalling C. Koopmans, William D. Nordhaus, and Brian J. Skinner. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987. Pp vi+ 173; figures, tables, notes, bibliography, index. $25.00. Fear of resource scarcity seems to be a cyclical phenomenon—its best-known proponent was the Reverend Thomas Malthus. The latest cycle started twenty years ago with the publication of the National Academy of Sciences’ report on Resources and Man (W. H. Freeman, 1969), followed closely by the widely disseminated Club of Rome Study, Limits to Growth (Universe Books, 1972), leading up to Global 2000 (Penguin Books, 1982), and its rejoinder The Resourceful Earth (Basil Blackwell, 1984). Limits held that the imminent exhaustion of natural resources (minerals and fuels, as well as environmental re­ sources) would lead to cataclysmic global disasters and has elicited strong counterattacks. An even earlier debate between “neo-Malthusians” and “cornucopians ” in Is There an Optimum Level ofPopulation? (McGraw-Hill, 1971) defined the central question: With the exhaustion of low-cost resources and the need to devote ever-increasing amounts of energy to the TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 975 extraction and refining of ever lower-grade ores, will the standard of living suffer; or will it rise, simply because economic growth based on technological advance is more important? This crucial question is addressed quantitatively—and bravely—in this pioneering collaboration of four Yale economists and resource experts. They focus on copper, as a paradigm of a scarce metal, con­ sidering all the details of geology, recycling, and substitution (e.g., by aluminum, optical fiber, etc.) that affect U.S. supply and demand. The methodology is innovative, substituting a linear programming prob­ lem for the daunting task of simulating a competitive market over the next 150 years. The results depend on the assumptions, as the authors readily admit. (For example, the book appeared before the discovery of high-temperature superconductivity.) Nonetheless, the base case yields specific predictions: Copper ex­ traction rate peaks at about the year 2100, but by 2070 copper mining of common rock (with maximum ore grade of 0.05 percent) becomes necessary (currently mined ore has a copper concentration of 0.5 percent). Recycling becomes big business as the price rises from $2 per kilogram to $120 (when common-rock mining takes over). But because of recycling and substitution, the macroeconomic impact is small; the estimated “drag” on GNP growth is about 0.03 percent per annum owing to all scarce metals, including copper—hardly a signif­ icant economic influence. An explicit assumption is the more or less simultaneous disappear...