We humans have a deep tradition, one that goes back to our earliest days, huddled around the fire, trading Ook and Eek jokes.
That tradition is "use it up and then move on."
The problem, of course, is that we've run out of easy stuff to use up, and we've run out of unused frontiers to move on to.
We are depleting our resources as if we had another planet to move on to, once this one was all used up.
The clearest example of what we're talking about is that thing called "Peak Oil." But remember, it's more "peak everything" -- Peak Oil as just the iconic example.
The basic premise of Peak Oil is that humankind has already burned up the easiest-to-acquire oil and natural gas in the world -- the stuff that can be simply pumped right out of the ground. Once past peak -- the halfway point -- getting energy costs more energy, and the acquisition energy required costs more itself, causing a spiral in costs and availability.
The question is when we hit that tipping point, not if. When we hit the peak (and many say that happened in 2006, or 2008, or right now), then the cost of energy begins to inexorably rise -- albeit chaotically, in fits and starts -- but eventually dramatically and rapidly.
For modern society, when oil hits $150 to $250/barrel (resulting in $7-$15/gallon gas and diesel), then all sorts of presumptions begin to go awry -- not unlike what happened the day that credit default swaps were discovered to be absurd.
Unfortunately, oil has become completely intrinsic to our just-in-time society. We've been mainlining it, and, like any long-term junkie, the paroxysms of rapid withdrawal could be dramatic.
That junkie -- Homo sapiens -- has had a garage full of its "medicine" for generations. What happens when it realizes the supply is nearly gone?
Sadly, this same "peak premise" can be applied to nearly all our fundamental resources. Aquafirs -- sometimes called "fossil water" -- are being drained for agricultural irrigation. Most of the powerful rivers have been already been dammed, and wells are going dry, or going toxic. Most of the glaciers, whose melt-off produces the fresh water for more than a billion people, are not being replenished. Many analysts think that water access will be the kindling for the next world war.
We're also in danger of hitting "peak minerals." The easiest-to-get lithium, copper, magnesium, iron, and other minerals vital for modern life has already been harvested -- when energy was cheap! Gold, platinum, silver, and titanium are all oversubscribed. As mining and processing gets harder, it gets more expensive, and eventually, it will be too costly to afford.
Fundamental minerals are at the base of our industrial food system, and while many are still temporarily abundant worldwide, the United States, for example, is a net importer of potash and nitrogen, because domestic supply has already been depleted.
Humans have found temporary fixes to some limits -- for example, in response to soil depletion, blanket the wimpy soil with energy-intensive fertilizers. But this fix can also only go so far, especially if energy prices begin to go up, and nitrogen and potash prices increase. After all, the scarcer the hen's teeth, the more pricey they become.
Perhaps most horrifying, the ocean itself is becoming depleted beyond our imaginings. According to most estimates, in the last fifty years our fisheries -- the vertebrate life of the ocean -- have dropped to 10 percent of their former strength. Orcas, seals, whales, salmon, and more are starving to death as their food sources dry up. We have been robbing the bounty of the ocean with miles-long nets, wiping out ecosystems we don't even understand.
The darkest of the "peak oil doomers" envisage a sudden spike in prices, catastrophic supply breakdowns and a "long emergency" in which commuting is no longer viable, where suburbs become cut off from their urbs, where food not grown within walking distance becomes merely an imaginary salivary stimulant.
We ApocaDocs think that's a little extreme -- after all, a crisis is just an opportunity in wolf's clothing. Stone soup goes a long way. And surely the value of suburban mini-mansions will always go up, right?
The convergence of multiple resource depletions holds real danger, because our economy, not unlike an ecosystem, is ... well, an interrelated system. If fish harvests continue to decline, the fishmeal used to provide cheap protein to "farmed" salmon (and chicken and beef) becomes more expensive, then perhaps we'll change to soy. But soybeans require topsoil, and if fertilizer is increasingly expensive, then the price of that protein increases. And if the cost of moving those beans from farm to processing plant rises (not to mention the fuel costs of harvestin' them beans), then we're reaching deep into our increasingly shallow pockets.
We can almost hear the deniers' voice... "that's a lot of 'ifs,' ain't it?"
Well yeah, except for all the evidence that we're using everything up as fast as we can now, today, because baby needs new Nikes, and we need to get while the getting is good.
Ook and Eek are sitting hungry on treeless Easter Island.
Ook asks: "Where did all the trees go?"
Eek says: "Don't you remember? We cut them all down so the economy could grow."
(The text of this post comes predominantly from Converging Emergencies, 2010-2020, a short free funny book my fellow ApocaDoc and I just completed.)