Current levels of resource and energy consumption indicate that not all of the world can achieve high levels of development.
Total global resource use increased by 45% from 1980 to 2005, and per capita levels of resource consumption are at their highest level in history.
Each source has distinct characteristics – they require different levels of resource to exploit them and have different timeframes to deliver a result.
The committee continues to anticipate a gradual return to higher levels of resource utilization in a context of price stability.
Higher rates of core inflation may mostly reflect the indirect effects of energy prices, but the Federal Reserve will need to be alert to the risks that high levels of resource utilization may put upward pressure on inflation.
Although the Committee anticipates a gradual return to higher levels of resource utilization in a context of price stability, progress toward its objectives has been disappointingly slow.
They must address levels of resource use and efficiency worldwide as well as reflecting differences between countries (in levels of development, wealth and resource endowments).
After its last monetary policy meeting, the Fed released a statement declaring that it "anticipates a gradual return to higher levels of resource utilization" — Fedspeak for falling unemployment.
Although economic activity is likely to remain weak for a time, the committee anticipates that policy actions to stabilize financial markets and institutions, fiscal and monetary stimulus, and market forces will support a strengthening of economic growth and a gradual return to higher levels of resource utilization in a context of price stability.
Stressing that the economy was still characterized by a combination of steady growth, low unemployment and an expanding trade deficit, he said the Fed would "need to be alert to the risks that high levels of resource utilization may put upward pressure on inflation".
And the more I looked at what was wrong — an exploding world population, exploding levels of resource consumption, rising global temperatures, the trashing of the oceans, the logging of our last old-growth forests — the angrier I became.
