Message-ID: <3.0.1.32.19970310062759.01751f80@aloha.net> Date: Mon, 10 Mar 1997 06:27:59 -1000 From: "Jay Hanson mailto:mailto:j@qmail.com" <j@QMAIL.COM> Subject: Re: UNITED NATIONS: Third World Lacks C To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
>/* Written 2:38 PM Mar 5, 1997 by newsdesk in igc:ips.english */
>/* ---------- "UNITED NATIONS: Third World Lacks C" ---------- */
> Copyright 1997 InterPress Service, all rights reserved.
> Worldwide distribution via the APC networks.
>
> *** 02-Mar-97 ***
>
>Title: UNITED NATIONS: Third World Lacks Capital for Energy Needs
>
>UNITED NATIONS, Mar 2 (IPS) - The international community will
>need to find an additional 300 billion dollars annually to meet the
>world's energy needs by the year 2020, according to a new report
>released here.
>
>''We don't know from where the money will come,'' says Anders
>Wijkman, Assistant Administrator of the U.N. Development Programme
>(UNDP). And he adds that developing nations have increasingly
>difficulty in obtaining the necessary capital for energy-related
>infrastructure projects.
>
>''If you spend more on energy, you have less capital for
>development needs,'' he adds.
This is exactly how the Limits to Growth scenario plays out.
"As both food and nonrenewable resources become harder to obtain in this simulated world, capital is diverted to producing more of them. That leaves less output to be invested in basic capital growth.
"Finally investment cannot keep up with depreciation (this is physical investment and depreciation, not monetary). The economy cannot stop putting its capital into the agriculture and resource sectors; if it did the scarcity of food, materials, and fuels would restrict production still more. So the industrial capital plant begins to decline, taking with it the service and agricultural sectors, which have become dependent upon industrial inputs. For a short time the situation is especially serious, because the population keeps rising, due to the lags inherent in the age structure and in the process of social adjustment. Finally population too begins to decrease, as the death rate is driven upward by lack of food and health services." [p.p.132-134]
[P. 133, Meadows, et al., BEYOND THE LIMITS; Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 1992. 800-639-4099, 603-448-0317, Fax 603-448-2576; ISBN 0-930031-62-8]