"Thought exercise - name three resources we've ever run out of."

1 Clean air
2 Clean water
3 Clean soil

dickie,

While these things may not exist where you live that's not the same as saying the resource has been exhausted. All three exist where I live - outside the big cities. Just because we no longer mine sandstone in The Rocks doesn't mean we've run out of the stuff.

Besides, it is water that is the resource, and despite the hype we aren't running out of it

On different planets:
mhaze - yes, there is plenty of water indeed. The ocean will never run dry.
dickie - undoubtedly there is a shortage of clean fresh water available for human needs in most parts of the globe. I do confess that there is no shortage of either water or continental space for present human numbers in the Antarctic, but neither are available in the form people would find acceptable.

Mhaze,

Jared Diamond has not conceded that erosion due to deforestation didn't happen. From the paper I cited

"Deforestation also forced changes in horticultural practices (3-6). Easter's early farmers planted crops between the palms, which provided fertilizer, shade, and protection for the soil. In that first phase, erosion was negligible, and horticulture was sustainable (3). Around A.D. 1280, the islanders began felling the palms, removing the trunks (presumably for timber), and burning the debris, as shown by a radiocarbon-dated charcoal layer, burned roots and palm nuts, and burned palm stumps chopped off near the ground, but no large pieces of trunk wood at these sites (3). The loss of the palm canopy exposed soil to heating, drying, wind, and rain. The resulting sheet erosion proceeded uphill at 3 m/year, removing fertile topsoil and burying down-slope settlements and gardens (3). Palm burning and sheet erosion have been studied especially at Poike but also appear elsewhere until A.D. 1520.

Faced with lower crop yields as a result of deforestation, the islanders responded around A.D. 1400 by occupying the formerly little-used uplands, and by introducing the remarkable labor-intensive gardening method of "stone mulching" on a vast scale (3-6). That meant covering half of the island with more than a billion stones averaging 2 kg in weight (6). In experiments, stone mulching decreases soil water evaporation, protects against wind and rain erosion, and reduces daily temperature fluctuations (7). Pulverized stones may also raise soil fertility by slowly releasing nutrients (8). That function would have been valuable, because nutrient levels (especially phosphorus) often limit tropical plant growth. Phosphorus levels in most Easter soils are low today, and the islanders' extermination of former seabird colonies eliminated phosphorus input in guano (9)."

Maybe environmental vandalism does happen, but it is hard for some folk to entertain the idea.

mhaze

Reading between the lines, I think dickie is putting emphasis on *clean* air, water and soil. I know it might seem very esoteric, but she is correct. If where you live you have an abundance of the *clean* elements of life, that is great, savour and respect it – many in the world can’t and don’t.

As far as fish resources go, have you not noticed the *new* fish species in the shops, have you wondered why, and what used to be sold in abundance, is either not there or very expensive?

As far as deforestation and land management practices go. We are ‘taking out’ forests with gay abandon; this is contributing to our escalating GHG emissions. It would not be so bad if we re-plant with trees or other carbon sink resources … but worldwide, we don’t. We plant the deforested areas with corn crops … not to feed people … but to feed the biofuel industry – a ‘dirty’ inefficient fuel that without strict regulation, compounds the problem of pollution and AGW (aerosols and CO2).

And don’t get me started on what the corn/biofuel industry is doing to world grain (resource) prices and the effects that is having on national security.

Deforested areas turned into ‘biofuel silos' change the local weather patterns (exasperating integrity of water supply) and require fertilising by guess what, nitrogen stuff that further compounds our GHG emissions and the run-off nutrients all of which contaminates our water resources.

We are putting huge pressures on our natural resources, we have one planet and it’s your so called wealthy or developed societies that consume and consume … stuff. We need 5 Earths to sustain that kind of consumption. We have to find a better way, don’t you think?

mhaze

I too am from the country but perhaps you don't have pollutant industries in your area.

Presently I'm incarcerated in Perth. When one drives down Albany Highway with the window down (no A/C and the dog likes it), in bumper to bumper traffic - a sea of chaos, stopping, starting and sassin' -"Ah'm from the country, Brother", then that's what I call deprivation of "clean" air. One should resort to a wearing a gas mask.

And if anyone says that vehicular carbon emissions don't heat the atmosphere, they must surely be in La La Land?