Sustained economic development is impossible within an effectively closed system like Planet Earth. It is therefore more than a little surprising how much attention today is being focused on climate change and yet how little is being directed toward the potentially far more pressing issue of resource depletion. Fortunately these two challenges are inter-linked to the extent that most measures intended to combat climate change do involve using less resources and/or recycling precious materials. However, the fact that nobody has won mass public or political attention to the cause of using less resources because they will run out -- as opposed to using less resources because doing so may help us to combat climate change -- remains more than a little bizarre.

It cannot now reasonably be denied that the Earth's natural resources are currently being consumed at an increasing and totally unsustainable level. As a result, within a generation oil and many precious metals are likely to be scare and far more expensive. In 1972, an influential study called The Limits to Growth warned that humanity would start to exceed the carrying capacity of the Earth if we did not change our ways. Unfortunately, capitalism continued unabated, and 40 years later humanity's ecological footprint is at least 20 per cent beyond what the Earth can sustain.

In 2011 the United Nations Environment Programme reported that, if nothing changes, humanity will demand 140 billion tons of minerals, ores, fossil fuels and biomass every year by 2050. This is three times our current rate of resource consumption, and far beyond what the Earth can supply. We therefore need to fairly rapidly learn to decouple natural resource use and environmental impacts from economic growth.

Coping most successfully with resource depletion requires a broad range of strategies. These include improved recycling, the end of our disposable culture, and a return to taking care of things and repairing them when they go wrong(!), and making investments in renewable and alternative energy sources, including wind farms and nuclear power. The latter may include the development of "clean" nuclear fusion power plants using off-world fuels such as helium-3, and as explained on the Helium-3 Power page. Indeed more broadly, developments in space travel are likely to constitute the only long-term solution for sourcing those future natural resources required if the human race is to continue to expand, evolve and thrive.

Some excellent sources of information on resource depletion and its implications include Alternative-Energy-News and this great New Scientist Article auditing the Earth's "natural wealth".

Resource depletion is also a major theme in my Challenging Reality TV Series, and in particular to the fore in Programme Two and Programme Four.

More information on resource depletion can also be found in my book 25 Things You Need to Know About the Future. A list of resource depletion web references can be found here.