Regional Growth Theory, Location Theory, Non-renewable Natural Resources and the Mobile Factors of Production

Periodically, thinking men become worried about the pressure of demand on limited natural resources. Malthus was primarily concerned about food supplies for the world’s population, an anxiety that during the nineteenth century receded only to return in the twentieth — as witness the many publications of the Food and Agriculture Organisation. During the 1960s and the present decade, a new spectre has emerged — the prospect that the world’s supply of non-renewable minerals and fuels may be exhausted within the foreseeable future. Pessimists argue that the stock of these resources is finite and that exponential growth in consumption can lead to only one outcome, the complete depletion of the resources. Optimists opine that the supply of minerals and fuels yet to be discovered is vast, that technological improvements will permit leaner deposits to be worked, deposits in remote locations and/or at great depths (both on land and at sea) to be exploited, and that in any case the price mechanism will ensure substitution of materials, economy of use and recycling.