ABSTRACT
Towards the end of the last century and round about the tum of the present century there was a public debate, just as heated as the present one, revolving round the question of the exhaustion of the world's raw material resources by the industrial countries. The discussion abated somewhat when the First World War broke out. The inter-war years, with their low utilisation of capacity, feeble economic growth, and mass unemployment, moreover, provided no basis for renewing this discussion. The Second World War, too, provided the industrial countries with problems other than the exhaustion of resources and the protection of the natural environment. The period after the Second World War, and up to the beginning of the 1970s, was marked by steady economic growth in most countries; at the very least any interruption in the growth rate proved of far more modest scope than during the inter-war years. This steady post-war growth can be explained in part by the high rates of investment, technical and organisational progress and the more methodical political management of many countries' economies. Not until the 1970s was the debate on the exhaustion of resources once again resumed, and given increasing urgency in view of the sharp rise in the price of oil in the 1970s.
