Chris Clugston

The end of our industrial lifestyle paradigm will be dictated by Liebig’s Law, and by humanity’s response to its consequences. Unfortunately, it is impossible to know at this point which increasingly scarce nonrenewable natural resource (NNR) or NNR combination will ultimately prove to be industrialized humanity’s limiting factor.

Consequently, humanity’s global societal collapse may be triggered by scarcity associated with one or more NNRs other than those commonly considered “most critical” to the perpetuation of our industrial lifestyle paradigm—fossil fuels, or oil specifically. After all, the space shuttle Challenger disaster was caused by a faulty o-ring.

The GOM oil spew reinforces the extent to which Americans “just don’t get it” regarding
the unsustainable nature of our American way of life.

During the pre-recession years of the 21st century, we experienced wide-ranging nonrenewable natural resource (NNR) scarcity on a global scale for the first time. Supplies associated with an overwhelming majority of the global energy resources, metals, and minerals that enable our industrialized way of life failed to keep pace with increasing global demand during the 2000-2008 period, resulting in global NNR supply shortfalls.

The fundamental enabler of our industrialized American way of life is continuous access to enormous quantities of inexpensive nonrenewable natural resources (NNRs)—energy resources, metals, and minerals.

The ecological and economic prognosticators who warn of a potentially unpleasant future for the human enterprise typically portray humanity as being at a fork in the road on our evolutionary journey. They contend that we are at a pivotal decision point at which we must make an “either/or” choice between a positive future outcome and a negative future outcome.

The objectives of the following paper are to demonstrate quantitatively that America is irreparably overextended—living hopelessly beyond our means ecologically and economically; and to quantify the disastrous consequences associated with our “predicament”.