The Moral of the Story...
Since the inception of our industrial revolution over 200 years ago, we in the industrialized and industrializing world have been able to live increasingly beyond our means ecologically through our ever-increasing utilization of NNRs—the fossil fuels, metals, and nonmetallic minerals that serve as:
- The raw material inputs to our industrialized economies;
- The building blocks that comprise our industrialized infrastructure and support systems, and
- The primary energy sources that power our industrialized societies.
Moreover, during the past several generations, we in the industrialized West have been able to live even further beyond our means ecologically by living beyond our means economically as well, through our ever-increasing reliance on pseudo purchasing power.
Pseudo purchasing power—fiscal profligacy—enables us to increase our procurement of NNRs and derived goods and services, thereby increasing our "current" material living standards, by:
- Liquidating our previously accumulated economic wealth reserves—e.g., depleting our savings, "cashing out" our home equity, and selling our physical assets;
- Exchanging ever-increasing quantities of fiat currency—"printed money" that has no intrinsic value—for real wealth;
- Incurring ever-increasing levels of unrepayable debt—at the personal, corporate, and government levels; and
- Underfunding investments critical to our future wellbeing—e.g., "social entitlements", pensions, retirement accounts, and infrastructure upgrades and maintenance.
Unfortunately, our ecological behavior and economic behavior, which have been "successful" since the inception of our industrial revolution, are unsustainable—as is our resulting industrial lifestyle paradigm—because they are enabled by enormous quantities of finite, non-replenishing, and increasingly scarce NNRs.
More unfortunately, our industrial lifestyle paradigm is in the process of unraveling NOW, because NNR scarcity, which was historically a national phenomenon, has become a global phenomenon. There are not enough globally available, economically viable NNRs to completely address our global NNR requirements going forward.
We must broaden our perspectives...
When viewed from the broader ecological perspective, our economic and political policies and initiatives are irrelevant because none of the economic and political expedients that we employ can create additional economically viable NNRs—the "affordable" fossil fuels, metals, and nonmetallic minerals upon which our industrialized existence depends.
Like the townspeople in the far away land, we are squandering our remaining time and resources in futile and misguided attempts to address the symptoms associated with our predicament. Unlike the townspeople however, who, had they possessed a broader ecological perspective, might have resolved their predicament by drilling a new well, no such recourse is available to industrialized humanity. There are no "untapped" sources from which we can obtain sufficient economically viable NNRs to perpetuate our industrial lifestyle paradigm; there is only one earth.
The material living standards associated with increasingly large segments of most industrialized Western nations are declining not because our national economies are "broken", but because our national economies are "dying of slow starvation" for lack of sufficient economically viable NNR inputs.
Our Unhappy Ending...
Absent an "intelligent response" to our predicament, our economic circumstances will continue to deteriorate and our material living standards will continue to decline going forward, culminating in global societal collapse—almost certainly by the year 2050—despite our incessant barrage of misguided and inconsequential economic and political "fixes".
And nobody will live happily ever after...
Chris Clugston says, "I have sought to quantify from a combined ecological and economic perspective the extent to which America and humanity are living unsustainably beyond our means, and to articulate the causes, magnitude, implications, and consequences associated with our "predicament". My research culminated in the publication of Scarcity—Humanity's Final Chapter?
"My previous work experience includes thirty years in the high technology electronics industry, primarily with information technology sector companies. I held management level positions in marketing, sales, finance, and M&A, prior to becoming a corporate chief executive and later a management consultant.
"I received an AB/Political Science, Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Penn State University, and an MBA/Finance with High Distinction from Temple University."
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