Do you worry about resource scarcity?

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2011-09-22/helium-ballon-shortage/50517780/1

We are facing a ration of helium where I work, and it is causing us to look at alternatives (hydrogen). But, there seems to be a lot of other resources that with 7 billion people on the planet, should be hard to come by, but whenever I want it, I don't have to worry.

How is it that millions of gallons of gasoline always get to the store in time for people to buy it? I've lived through one oil shortage in Phoenix when there was a 33% cut. I handled it fine by riding my bike. Others and the news were panicking about it.

How is it that even with floods, droughts, and elimination of farm land this past year, there is still enough food at the grocery store that they have to throw a lot away?
http://news.yahoo.com/un-warns-25-pct-world-land-highly-degraded-112400858.html

And then there is the part of how much we throw away, and luckily our waterways don't look as bad as some third world countries...yet.
http://news.yahoo.com/photos/pollut...ow/polluted-playgrounds-photo-1322360957.html
Where are we getting enough clean water to drink for 7 billion people, clean, and produce stuff with? If I tried to use rain water, I would have to go without water a lot of times. The rivers, lakes, and aquifers are going down a little, but it still is a lot of water that people demand and get.

How about overfishing that wiped out entire types of fish?
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=201bc0cd-fd29-4c8a-92ba-bed6db11efad&p=2

http://articles.latimes.com/1994-03-29/news/wr-39615_1_fishing-boats

Do people even care about trying to prevent or prepare for the possibility of problems in a few years?
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A lot of people care. The main problem, as I see it, is that the people who make huge amounts of money exploiting resources, spend lots of money buying legislation and political spin to make sure they get all the access to the available resources they want. For these people, there is never enough. Some people also believe in limitless resources, somehow.

Until more people care about facts and longevity of systems, we will always be up against the wall on natural resources. The good news is, that as we run out of some resources, we will adjust and find new ways to live. Up until the time we can no longer adjust, then we will die off...

 

I don't think we'll ever have any national crisis due to shortages... we have the ability to adapt. Wouldn't be surprised to see gasoline become replaced in our lifetime.

 

That is a pretty bold statement. With the population growth, it just seems like a numbers game, and it will get worse at some point.

I can adapt because I am a survivalist (it is snowing outside and I don't have the heat on in my house... The gas company came by and asked if I was living in my house today...), but I doubt many people would be able to survive when they can't get food at the store. If we ran out of diesel for truck drivers, how fast could we adapt to something else? And it's not that it can't be done, its if everyone had to do it at once, and you had to wait until the last truck was off the road to not run over your horse & buggy on the turnpike to make the switch.

I would love to see some high tech battery, thorium generator, or cold fusion fix a lot of problems in a good way for society. That is the kind of adaptation we should push for. The problem is that we are wasting so much money that we could have built a few space elevators* or put solar panels on every flat roof in the country, or done something about fixing the problems.

(*With space elevators, getting rid of stuff, or putting solar panels in orbit becomes easier.)

 

I foresee the end of gasoline to be gradual. Price goes up, alternate fuel cars spark more interest. The last gas price spike gave a bit of encouragement already to that industry. It's not like we're going to wake up one morning and be completely dry.

With household electricity, we're really open to anything there... that's the wonder of the grid. Can't quite shove enough coal into that old plant? Build a nuclear plant right next to it. No changes are needed for the end user.

 

There are people thinking about these issues, I just haven't been interested in the discussions until recently. Just few days ago, some expert said on tv, we need to cut down fishing, so that fish would suffice for future generations. One always thinks, there's plenty of fish in the sea, but the scenarios are much worse, when it comes to the conditions of oceans and I've thought there's a lot of arable land still to be cultivated, when you think of the entire globe. I've seen people packed in cities being the biggest problem.

Are we really too many? Could we spread the population more reasonably? Is that even possible? I've read, that if the total world population would live as densely as people in New York, we would fill the state of Texas. And this would leave rest of the globe unhabited. Surely we should be able to feed the world population, if these are the numbers.

(source)

Truth is though, in some parts of world there is hunger, and in other parts we throw away food, we even import it with high costs from far places only to get thrown away.

 

I would like nothing more than to have the opportunity and space to live in a self-sustaining fashion. Unfortunately, at this point in time it is next to impossible while living in a major city. Whenever I hear about improvements in farming technology I get really excited. Vertical high tech indoor farmscrapers producing high yield produce right in the city rather than having it shipped from elsewhere, etc. It gives me hope, anyway.

As for the fish issue, it's a bit of a hot button issue for me living where I do. Our salmon fisheries on the west coast of BC are all in steep decline for a variety of reasons... Overfishing, improper fish farming (sea lice), other diseases, and whatever is happening to them once they leave and head into the ocean for most of their adult lives never to return. Like everything, it's a complex, multifaceted issue with no clear solution... Certainly not one that can be solved unilaterally by one country.

Sustainability has become a core consumption philosophy for myself, and it shapes my buying habits as a consumer. It's all I feel I have the power to do at this point, vote with my dollar.