Wine and Malthusian Catastrophe
I came across this excellent piece of (long but beautifully explained) article explaining how Wine making is essentially due to a Malthusian Catastrophe of the Yeast population.
The article starts off with explaining the Malthusian Catastrophe by citing examples of how living things tend to overpopulate in the absence of population control and ( Read more... )
(a) We, as a species, have proven far more adaptive than fungi (or reindeer) when it comes to shortages of resources. We're masters at rationing, finding alternatives, and prudence. I find it hard to believe that we will consume resources without the least bit forethought, until we're tumbling down the descent predicted by the Malthusian Catastrophe model. As the time to zero looms closer, we end up 'discovering' alternates, or finding our way around those 'needs'.
(b) We're reasonably adept at converting energy to resources (or equivalently, using energy to extract/artificially-produce resources). When we didn't find water by digging wells, we didn't just give up. We invested massive amounts of energy to build borewells, and lived happily ever after. Until, as you point out, that promises to die out too. I predict however, that given enough energy, we're certain to find a way to around this - desalinate the water from the oceans perhaps; or, eventually, go the entire way and coerce hydrogen and oxygen to combine like we want them to.
(c) The above assumption is contingent on the fact that we have enough energy in the first place, of course. My opinion ('wild speculation based on absolutely no facts' is perhaps more appropriate) is that we're on the brink of the 'green revolution' for energy. As we deplete oil, the necessity to come up with better solar-energy based generators will increase manifold. We have no dearth of energy incident on the Earth - the Sun still spills ~1,000 watts per square meter (which apparently is equivalent to more than 15,000 times the world's annual use of fossil fuels, hydro power and nuclear fuels combined). So the issue is not one of not having enough energy, but of building a practical unit to efficiently capture it. I think we're ingenious enough, especially if threatened with dramatic changes in population/life-style, to work out just such a unit.
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In short, the future, does not need a youtube or a google.com. The shift will be from rewarding consumers to producers.
By 'fall' I mean, fall of this civilization - not the fall of the species. I'm damn confident we rock at adapting without being helplessly dependent on random mutations to take us forward. However, we still aren't in a position to directly use abundant sources of energy such as the sun or wind for all our needs. We have been harvesting sequestered energy (btw, this link is a must read article if you are an evolution enthusiast) that has been accumulated over billions of years right here on this planet.
A must read is the Hirsch Report that says, to this effect: to transition to a new energy source without impacting the economy, we gotta do it 20 years in advance of oil peaking production. 10 years will have significant impact to economy and post-peak-production, severe consequences.
If we fail to do this (since oil seems to have peaked productivity already - and given most of what is left is the 'difficult to get' oil) it doesn't seem very unlikely that the sudden rise in prices due to sudden realization of our dependence on oil can Shock the markets.
There is this guy called Dmitry Orlov on energybulletin who has presented his analyses. Here are two good reads (each needs about 20 minutes of your time):
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