There is a growing body of evidence that the 2024–2030 period will present us with a critical juncture, upending a centuries long era of economic growth. No, it will have nothing to do with climate change or novel viruses: those two will come somewhat later. Missing entirely from mainstream discourse there is a greatly overlooked side of our predicament, which will set a nice little ‘game of musical chairs’ in motion most probably around 2025. Fasten your seat belts, while you can.

The main message here is that it looks increasingly certain that we will run out of resources sooner than the coming deterioration of the climate could put an end to our lifestyle. (And that’s quite a feat, knowing how a growing Earth energy imbalance has accelerated warming recently…) The model also assigns a not so distant timeframe when the whole economic model we thought to be relevant for centuries to come might go badly wrong.

As to the reason why this might indeed be the case, and as an independent corroboration to the study above, I suggest to take a look on the state of the petroleum industry. Why? Well, energy is still the economy, as the basket case of Germany can testify, and despite all the handwaving oil is still the master resource, making all other energy and mineral resources available. Mining, agriculture, construction, long distance transport, plastics, all hopelessly depend on petroleum. Hydro, nuclear and “renewables” are also made possible by using diesel and gasoline burning vehicles to bring people, raw materials and equipment on site. Should the availability of oil decline, it would eventually bring all other resources and energy production down with it.