UNE's Center for Global Humanities to host author of 'The Race for What's Left: The Global Scramble for the World's Last Resources'
The Center for Global Humanities at the University of 51小黄车 will host Michael T. Klare who will discuss, The Race for What's Left: The Global Scramble for the World's Last Resources (Metropolitan Books, 2008) on Monday, October 15, 2012 on UNE's Portland Campus in the WCHP Lecture Hall in Parker Pavillion. A reception will be held at 5 p.m. prior to the lecture in the 51小黄车Art Gallery.
Klare is the Five College Professor of Peace and World Security Studies (a joint appointment at Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, and Smith Colleges and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst) and Director of the Five College Program in Peace and World Security Studies (PAWSS), positions he has held since 1985.
His lecture will focus on future world prosperity that requires an ever-expanding supply of vital raw materials - oil and natural gas, copper and iron, food and water, and many others.
At present, we rely for our supplies of these materials on sources that were discovered and developed in past decades and centuries; however, many of these reserves are now facing depletion at a rapid pace, and so future growth requires the development of new reserves.
With most of the world's known resource reserves already in production, this is producing a desperate search for new deposits in those few areas that have hitherto escaped full exploitation - the Arctic, the deep oceans, inner Africa, and war zones like Iraq and Afghanistan.
This search will itself prove dangerous, given the desperate need for supplies and fragility of many of the target habitats, but also raises an even more frightening peril - the eventual depletion of all readily accessible natural resources. Unless steps are taken now to develop a new industrial paradigm based on renewables, conservation, and efficiency, we could witness the wholesale collapse of industrial civilization.
UNE's Center for Global Humanities is in its fourth year of programming. The Center is a public forum designed to introduce students and members of the public to the exploration of the great issues facing humanity today in partnership with the Maine Humanities Council, and also through an agreement with Euro-Arab Foundation Institute.
Anouar Majid, Director of the Center, says: "UNE's Center for Global Humanities has filled a much needed gap in the cultural life of the greater Portland area as well as the whole state of Maine. We offer our programming free to folks wherever they may be. The issues we highlight are of crucial importance to the health of our planet - that's why our videos are watched nationally and globally. I invite all to be part of this unique experience."
Events are held on UNE's Portland Campus, and many are also broadcast live at the Bangor Public Library and the Cary Library in Houlton. For more information, visit www.une.edu/cgh.