What do you think would happen in the situation of major shortages of resources?

Anarchy. I would have to think more about which countries will survive and which will not. I suspect most major Western economies would struggle. We don’t have the survival skills we would need to manage in such circumstances. Great question.

There will continue to be pockets of people, especially around lakes and rivers, who would be able to survive. I doubt large governments will survive, but smaller units will form, just as they did in the early days of human life.

Some of the countries in Europe already get a majority of the electricity from solar and wind power, which are obviously completely renewable. I doubt our future is so bleak on that front.

We will, however, face some serious problems with crops failing due to drought as the climate changes. The world’s oceans are being rapidly depleted of their fish. Our diets are going to have to change to meet the new realities of climate change and population growth.

There will be a time of great tension, which I believe will give way to a recognition that we have but one planet, and we will begin to work closer. Instead of dystopian fragmentation, I perceive more harmony.

I’ve had this discussion with others recently.

There’s a lot of misunderstanding about “resource shortage”. Resources are always in a shortage situation. That’s why they’re considered “resources” and not (as a rule) “givens”, such as air and water. (And yes, air and especially “clean water” certainly are scarce resources in some parts of the world.)

But the thing is that in the relatively free markets in which most resources are traded, price is an indicator of scarcity. That needs to be repeated: price indicates scarcity. “Price” is vital information to consumers that they need to conserve the resource or look for alternative technology that doesn’t use so much of “that”, or can recover the resource after use, etc. It also sends a signal to producers that “it’s now more worth your time and effort to capture the dregs of the resource that you had given up on earlier.”

What that means is that as prices for non-renewable resources rise, then it becomes more economically viable to search for alternatives (such as alternative fuels and other energy supplies, for example) or alternative sources for the existing resources. So in that way “used-up” energy fields such as previously tapped-out oil fields, for example, are made economically viable again to exploit for “the final 10%” of the resource that was not going to be recovered under previous modes of drilling and pumping. It wasn’t worth the effort before; as prices rise, then it’s worth the effort, as long as there’s a return on the investment that it takes to recover it.

So the thing is, we don’t run along fat, dumb and happy… and all of a sudden run off a cliff as we use the last drop of oil, or the last hundred cubic feet of natural gas, coal or nearly anything else that can be privately owned and controlled. The signals of pending shortage are sent by and to producers (and received by consumers) for a long time before the thing runs out.

Resources held in “commons”, where no one has to pay for the development of a mine, for example, and can control access, can also be used up. That’s why overfishing of pelagic fishes is a real problem. We can fish some desirable species of fish to extinction, or to a point where the species is no longer economically viable. That could happen to bluefin tuna, for example, as it has happened to many other species. Since no one “owns” tuna, the cost to obtain one is just the cost of a boat and crew to go out on the ocean, hunt it down and capture it. Once it’s captured, then its value is… whatever one can get for it. That makes the last few tuna as precious as diamonds to whoever can capture it, and makes it more certain that it will be captured.

Supermarkets aren’t going to close, in other words. Electricity won’t run out; we’ll just produce it in new ways (some of which we already know, such as hydro, solar and wind, some which are currently under-utilized in most of the world, such as geothermal, and coal for perhaps another hundred years or so, though there will still be mountains full of the stuff, and gas because there’s a lot more of that available than you imagine – more than the current producers even imagine, in fact).

There could be sudden dislocations in supply that have a rather more dramatic effect than @CWOTUS describes. If there were a war in the middle east, it could take out the supply in Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Arabian peninsula at the same time.

There could be hurricanes in the Gulf, followed by incredibly bad winter weather in Siberia, together with, perhaps, another giant meteor strike that takes out half the forests up there, and all of a sudden, we could be facing a sudden 50% cut in oil supply.

That would be temporary—lasting only a few years at most. During that time we’d probably see recession, and a lot of people would be heading off to war.

But a long term depletion of resources would be offset by an increase in alternative sources of supply for oil and electricity. To repeat, the supermarkets would not close—ever.

Yes, that’s true. There can always be sudden disruptions in normal supply, and war in the Persian Gulf region could do that… again. Since the US only receives less than 30% of its current oil supply from there (I think that’s right; I haven’t done the math. I’m relying on a percentage figure that I heard some time ago.), the effects here on availability would not be catastrophic, but the price would increase a great deal, since the rest of the world would also be paying premium prices to obtain oil from our main suppliers: Canada, Russia, Norway and Venezuela, for several examples, and Brazil’s exploratory drilling program would suddenly become world-class valuable.

Yeah, I tried to knock out Russian (Siberia) and the Gulf region at the same time, or a closely following times, because the middle east is just part of our oil story. But like I said, the impact will be temporary. Just a few years at most.

One effect will almost certainly will be huge movements of population from areas of scarcity to areas of (relative) plenty. In fact, it has already begun. Look at the problems that developed (and some developing) countries are having with immigration.