JanH,
I couldn't have put it better myself: if the resources are being depleted, how come their prices are going down? My guess is that we are probably using more coal (for power generation and steelmaking) today than we were 150 years ago (even though it was the "Age of Steam"), and yet coal mine closure is a big issue in this day and age (I live in a coal mining area - hardly any mines were worth keeping open) due to the low price of coal. Environmentalists pooh-pooh the issue of lowering resource costs, yet cost is a function of scarcity. If costs of all resources across the board are getting lower over time, in real terms, then we a creating more resources, not using them up.
And what is a resource? A type of wood or mineral ore or plant extract is not a resource until we discover a use for it. People used to be frightened we'd run out of copper at the rate we were laying cables all over the place. Now we are using fibre optics (glass), and sand is a very abundant resource.
Have a look at today's Junkscience.com ; the article which inspired this thread is listed there. Listed immediately underneath it is this article in the economist; how's that for balance?
In addition, I'd like to add that this is a sore point with me. Like others here have said, I grew up hearing this sort of thing all the time. My father was an environmentalist before it became trendy, so growing up in our environmentally aware household was probably not unlike growing up in the Dubs - there was an air of gloom and doom about the future. As a kid, I honestly didn't expect to live to see adulthood. I expected to die in some kind of environmental disaster (famine, disease, pollution, etc.) or nuclear holocaust. My family are still spouting the same crap, but I've looked around, remembering the dire predictions from the early seventies about what 2000 would be like. None of those predictions came true. Pollution in most major cities is becoming less of a problem, as standards are raised, and as car engines become more efficient. There are twice as many people on this planet as when I was born, yet they are being fed from the same amount of land under cultivation. The West, contrary to the crap spouted in the article which started this thread, is reforesting at a rate of knots.
The person who said that the title is like one from a Watchtower is right; it's alarmist and basically full of bullshit. Have these wankers sat down to think just how many resources are going to be needed to colonise two new planets??
