ABSTRACT
Many aspects of the problems Nordhaus was analyzing are still with us today. The availability of abundant energy supplies at low prices remains fundamental to a highly industrialized economy like the United States. Even though, on many measures, the US is now much more efficient in converting energy into well-being, one cannot make the case that our lifestyle is not dependent on energy. Indeed, the pervasive influence of information and communications technologies makes modern life more vulnerable to disruptions, than the economy of four decades ago. The major difference now is that the problems of resource scarcity are inherently global ones; as the 80% of the people in the world that live in developing countries are in the midst of, or are aspiring to, an energy-intensive process of industrialization. Global markets are linked financially and physically in ways they were not before, such that the relevant demand for US resource security is truly a global one.
