There are a bevy of news articles beginning to appear, all centered on one of the central themes of the Crash Course – scarcity.
Below we see three examples. While there are more than a few who use the term “Malthusian” as though it were in irrefutable intellectual negation of an argument, more and more nation states and wealthy individuals are acting as if resource scarcity were a very real condition.
I truly believe that as net energy declines, the impact on resources, especially those requiring a lot of energy to extract and refine, will be multiplied.
I will be writing more on this at a later date. Here are the articles.
Averting a perfect storm of shortages
As the world’s population grows, competition for food, water and energy will increase. Food prices will rise, more people will go hungry, and migrants will flee the worst-affected regions.
That’s the simple idea at the heart of the warning from John Beddington, the UK government’s chief scientific adviser, of a possible crisis in 2030.
Specifically, he points to research indicating that by 2030 “a whole series of events come together”: •
• The world’s population will rise from 6bn to 8bn (33%) •
• Demand for food will increase by 50% •
• Demand for water will increase by 30% •
• Demand for energy will increase by 50% •
He foresees each problem combining to create a “perfect storm” in which the whole is bigger, and more serious, than the sum of its parts.
by former_user