WorldBuilding:Apocalypses

Resource Depletion
Resource depletion used to be something of a major concern, especially on the environmentalist left, with commentators stating that a number of key resources - especially natural gas and crude oil, a so called 'peak oil' scenario - would run out within 50 years. This was largely a foolish fear driven by the conflation of 'known reserves' and 'economical reserves' and of current production rates with maximum production rates. The former meant that likely reserves that would be economical to extract are not explored because it is only commercially necessary to know about enough reserves about 50 years ahead of time. Similarly due to the later people assume that because people in Western Europe consume - for example - 5 times the amount of resources as average, then if everyone lived like a Western European we would need 5 earths to support them. This is not true, for most resources we could just extract 5 times as much.

Failed predictions of resource depletion along with increased concerns about climate change has made the concern rather unpopular. For example the famous Limits to Growth report predicted under the model designed to account for new discoveries that we should have run out of petroleum last year (2022) and gold a few years after I was born (2001), along with a whole host of other materials. Obviously this hasn't happened.

Commentators, especially on 'peak oil' have suggested that a sudden single resource depletion would cause substantially more damage than a steady managed decline due to societal shock and resource wars.

That is not to say that all resources are infinite. Some resources, such as water, are hard to transport and as such particular areas are running out of them. In the case of water this is known as 'water stress', and is generally caused by an overuse by heavy industry or agriculture. Other resources such as helium and low-background steel are genuinely constrained and may pose issues if they are not better managed in the future.