Geopolitics scholar and teacher Michael Klare addresses how 21st century wars will be driven by competition over access to scarce and valuable natural resources due, on the one hand, to rising world affluence, population growth and the rise of China as a major industrial economy and, on the other hand, to the depletion of the world’s resources. Because we lack effective mechanisms for the peaceful resolution of disputes over contested resources, he forecasts that conflict is a likely outcome of such disputes.