Consider we have a global awareness of depletion of dozens of familiar resources.
We can easily visualize emptying our refrigerator, our food pantry or our fuel tank. We understand the concept of a finite resource. Where we struggle is expanding our vision to grasp the food and the energy we consume comes from the Earth's pantry. It is not infinitely large, nor has it been exploited at the rates we are experiencing now. So a rational human should be able to connect the dots on a couple of ideas...
The economic systems we have don't consider the implications of depletion just wealth creation. That's a systematic failure hardwired into our "modern" civilization. If you can dig it up, make something and sell it... no problem even though, just like Mother Hubbard's pantry the Earths pantry is running out of lots of critical stuff. Anyone who has ever lived in a mining town has experienced what this means first hand. Great economy while the ore is easy to get, bankruptcy, hardship and dire times when the ore runs out. Today we have gotten lost in a spiral of hyper exploitation. Lol, and this is not making our situation better, by the way.
All of us know we live on a planet with finite resources but yet lack a popular philosophy of life that is consistent with that reality. We let wealth generation and short term power and position convince us to sell the planets gifts for today and never think about tomorrow. One of our biggest blind spots is the failure to think over a planning horizon longer than a lifetime. A civilizational life span - generations in time - nope, that's not us. The latest rumors talk about technocracy, digital dominance, AI, cameras and social controls tied to an ever more complex matrix of constantly obsoleted operating systems and programming languages. It may have its day but it wont last for very long. Meh, ideas that do not address the fundamental problems of depletion and scarcity will eventually fail - physics wouldn't have it any other way. Sustainable living is incompatible with energy consuming complexity. These futuristic machinations just add a new twist to how helpless or hapless the population will eventually be after an inevitable collapse.
Our cheap energy legacy has allowed generation after generation to become increasingly more delusional and increasingly more irrational in our beliefs and world views. How do we fix this? Well my friends (from all over the world) I have hope that many of you are thinking and acting to align your life along ways that will help you to adapt and thrive - or just enjoy life. Nobody needs the latest cell phone, or gadget that pulls you away from immersion in the good things in life like neighbors, friends, a good book to read or a spirited and friendly debate at your local piazza. Those are things to treasure.
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