Publisher's Synopsis
Twenty-five percent of all the people ever born are still alive today. Three-quarters of the world's mined gold was produced this century. Today we burn four times as much energy - coal, gas, oil, nuclear - as we did 40 years ago.;Yet 80 percent of us still live in the less developed world. That proportion will into 85 percent, although by that time the total population will have grown by another 60 percent to almost 8.6 billion.;The World Index of Resources and Population systematically analysed the 30-year trend in population and related resource demand, globally and regionally from the early post-war years to 2025. It interprets the effects of changes in the politics, economics and prices of all the important mineral commodities, particularly energy.;It shows how these translate into the fortunes of the 61 countries, 31 companies and 40 minerals which collectively represent 95 percent of the world's largest business, over on trillion dollars per year.
