The Adequacy of Natural Resources

Abstract

This chapter begins from a stark and highly simplified form of the Pessimist position. This form is both convenient for initial exposition and also significant in the controversies in its role as paradigm and a straw-man for easy demolition by the Optimists. As criticisms are introduced, the Pessimist position will be successively refined.

Present reserves of all but a few metals will be exhausted within fifty years if consumption rates continue to grow as they are … if current trends are allowed to persist … the breakdown of society and the irreversible disruption of the life support systems on this planet are inevitable (Meadows et al., 1972).