The Mold and the Cheese: What Happens When 8 Billion People Meet Planetary Limits

A Hard Look at Resource Depletion, Competition, and the Entitlement That Blinds Us

There’s a sense of entitlement
’We’re here, we’re big, we’ve got the guns, we’ve got the technology,
we’ve got the brains, we therefore are entitled to every damn thing on this planet.’

That’s not how it works and we’re going to find out the hard way if we don’t wise up and start seeking a life that’s in balance with the natural cycles of life on earth.

James Cameron on “Avatar”

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If mold continues to multiply after eating half a piece of cheese,
what happens when demand exceeds supply?

If we’re the mold and Earth is the cheese,
how many need and/or want how much,

where is half way, who’s got what’s left, who gets cut off when,
who will compete with who for what’s left,
and how is who most likely to win?

George Hartzman

The Metaphor That Explains Everything

Imagine mold growing on cheese. It consumes voraciously, multiplying across the surface, converting cheese into more mold. Halfway through the cheese, the mold doesn’t pause to consider sustainability. It doesn’t form a committee to discuss equitable distribution. It doesn’t innovate a way to make the cheese renewable. It simply continues consuming until either the resource is exhausted or conditions become uninhabitable.

Now replace the mold with humanity. Replace the cheese with Earth.

The question isn’t whether this metaphor is flattering; it isn’t meant to be. The question is whether it’s accurate. And if so, what happens next?

The Ukraine War and Resource Competition

The conflict in Ukraine cannot be fully understood without acknowledging its resource dimensions. Ukraine itself sits on significant natural gas reserves, particularly in the Black Sea and eastern regions. More importantly, the war represents a broader struggle over who controls Russian energy resources, the largest natural gas reserves and second-largest oil reserves on Earth. Europe’s historical strategy involved economic integration with Russia, accessing cheap pipeline gas while maintaining Russian dependence on European technology and markets. This arrangement gave Europe significant leverage. The conflict has shattered this model, forcing Europe to replace Russian pipeline gas with expensive liquefied natural gas shipped from the United States, Qatar, and other distant suppliers at roughly triple the cost. Meanwhile, Russia has pivoted to Asian markets, selling oil and gas to China and India at discounted rates, while Europe faces deindustrialization as energy intensive industries relocate to regions with cheaper power. The resource competition underlying the conflict reveals a brutal truth; in a world of tightening energy supplies, control over Eurasia’s vast reserves represents geopolitical power that nations will fight and sacrifice to secure or deny to rivals. The human tragedy of war overlays a deeper struggle over who gets access to the cheese as it diminishes.

When Demand Exceeds Supply; The Iron Laws

When any population’s demand exceeds available supply, several predictable patterns emerge;

Price spikes and resource conflicts. Those with purchasing power outbid those without. Markets don’t distribute based on need, they distribute based on ability to pay.

Hoarding by those with power. Nations, corporations and individuals with resources stockpile rather than share. Scarcity breeds protectionism, not generosity.

Innovation and substitution, sometimes. Necessity drives invention, but only when alternatives exist and can scale in time. You can’t innovate your way out of fundamental physical constraints.

Population collapse or mass migration. When carrying capacity is exceeded, nature balances the equation through famine, disease or displacement.

System reorganization. Either planned and cooperative, or chaotic and violent. History suggests the latter is far more common.

The crucial difference between mold and humans; we can theoretically see the pattern coming and choose differently. But theory and practice are proving to be very different things.

The Numbers; Where We Stand

Human Population and Consumption

We currently number approximately 8.2 billion people. But raw population numbers obscure the real issue; consumption inequality.

The average American consumes roughly 16,000 kilograms of resources annually. The average Indian consumes about 4,000 kilograms. The top 10% of global consumers are responsible for approximately 50% of consumption-based emissions. If China and India consumed at American rates, we would need multiple planet Earths to supply them.

This disparity matters enormously when considering who gets cut off when resources become scarce.

What’s Being Depleted

Freshwater aquifers are draining 10-40 times faster than natural recharge rates. Major agricultural regions, California’s Central Valley, India’s Punjab, the North China Plain and the Middle East, are drawing down ancient groundwater that won’t be replaced on human timescales.

Topsoil is eroding 10-40 times faster than formation rates. Industrial agriculture treats soil like a mining resource rather than a living system. We’re losing the foundation of food production.

Marine fisheries are over-exploited. The ocean’s ability to feed humanity is in decline.

Phosphorus, essential for fertilizer with no substitute, may have only 50-100 years of economically accessible reserves remaining.

Rare earth minerals critical for renewable energy technology, electronics and modern infrastructure are geographically concentrated and energy-intensive and environmentally destructive to extract.

Forest cover and biodiversity are in decline, destabilizing ecosystems providing services we don’t even know how to value; pollination, soil formation and water cycling.

We’re arguably past “halfway” on many non-renewable resources.

The Geography of What’s Left

Resources aren’t distributed equitably, and this geographic lottery will determine much of what happens next.

Freshwater: Canada, Russia, and Brazil hold disproportionate reserves while densely populated regions face severe scarcity.

Arable land: Russia, the United States, Brazil, China and India control most remaining productive agricultural land, but topsoil loss threatens.

Energy transition metals: China dominates processing and refining capacity for rare earths, lithium and other critical materials. Chile, Australia and the Democratic Republic of Congo hold major deposits, creating new resource dependencies.

Wealth to purchase resources: The United States, European Union, China and Gulf states have the economic power to outbid poorer nations when scarcity drives prices up.

This geographic reality means that when demand exceeds supply, access will be determined not by need but by location, wealth and military power.

The Petroleum Predicament: Converting Oil Into Everything

The Official Story vs. Reality

Global proven oil reserves are officially stated at approximately 1,765 billion barrels. Daily consumption runs around 103.75 million barrels. Simple math suggests 47 years remaining at current rates.

This number is deeply misleading for multiple reasons.

First, the reserves themselves are suspect. According to Rystad Energy’s independent analysis, OPEC members hold approximately 657 billion barrels of recoverable oil—about 40% of the world’s total, well below the officially reported 1,215 billion barrels. The official numbers could be inflated by almost double.

How did this happen? During the 1980s, when OPEC imposed production quotas tied to proven reserves, member countries suddenly “discovered” massive new reserves without actually discovering new oil:

• Kuwait’s reserves jumped from 64 billion to 90 billion barrels overnight in 1985—a 40% increase

• Iraq went from 47 billion to 100 billion in 1987—a 112% increase

• UAE surged from 33 billion to 92 billion between 1986-88—a 178% increase

• Iran climbed from 49 billion to 93 billion—a 90% increase

• Venezuela leaped from 25 billion to 56 billion—a 124% increase

These inflated numbers became the baseline and have barely changed since, despite decades of extraction. Kuwait has pumped over 30 billion barrels since 1985, yet its official reserves remain essentially unchanged. The physics don’t work. Saudi Arabia has produced over 140 billion barrels since the 1980s, yet official reserves barely budge.

Independent audits aren’t allowed. State oil companies have every incentive to maintain the fiction. Higher reserves mean more borrowing capacity, greater geopolitical leverage and larger production quotas. The lie persists because it serves their interests until it doesn’t.

The Quality Problem

Even accepting optimistic reserve estimates, there’s a critical distinction between “proven reserves” and usable energy. We’ve consumed the easy oil; the cheap, accessible high-quality crude. What remains requires;

• Deep-water drilling in extreme conditions

• Hydraulic fracturing of shale (with rapid depletion rates)

• Energy-intensive extraction from tar sands

• Arctic drilling in pristine and challenging environments

This matters because of Energy Return on Investment (EROI), the ratio of energy gained to energy invested in extraction;

• 1930s: 100:1 (one hundred barrels gained per barrel invested)

• 1970s: 30:1

• 2000s: 15:1

• Shale oil today: 5:1

• Tar sands: 3:1

When EROI approaches 1:1, extraction becomes pointless; we’d be burning a barrel of oil to extract a barrel of oil. The declining EROI means we’re working much harder for much less net energy, even as official reserves suggest abundance.

What Petroleum Actually Powers

Understanding the scope of petroleum dependency is essential to grasping what happens when scarcity hits.

Direct fuel consumption;

• Transportation; 70% (gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, shipping)

• Industrial processes; 15% (manufacturing, agriculture, mining)

• Heating; 5%

• Electricity generation; 3%

But these percentages obscure petroleum’s most critical and irreplaceable role; petrochemicals.

While only 6-8% of oil goes to petrochemicals, these products include;

• Plastics (packaging, medical equipment, electronics)

• Fertilizers (feeding approximately 4 billion people)

• Pharmaceuticals (medicines, IV bags, pill coatings)

• Pesticides and herbicides

• Synthetic fabrics

• Asphalt for roads

• Lubricants for all machinery

• Cosmetics and detergents

Most critically, modern agriculture is essentially a system for converting petroleum into food. Consider the dependencies;

• Diesel fuel powers tractors, harvesters and transport

• Natural gas produces nitrogen fertilizer

• Petroleum derivatives create pesticides and herbicides

• Plastic provides mulch, irrigation systems, and greenhouses

• Packaging and refrigeration enable food distribution

Current industrial agriculture requires approximately 10 calories of fossil fuel energy to produce 1 calorie of food. Without this system, global food production would drop 40-50%. This would mean famine for 3-4 billion people.

Geographic Concentration and Geopolitical Leverage

Who controls production:

• OPEC+ nations can manipulate supply and price through production cuts

• The United States is the largest producer (roughly 13 million barrels daily) but also the largest consumer, a net position that’s fragile and Canada has substantial tar sands reserves but high extraction costs

Who controls refining; Crude oil is useless without refining capacity. The United States, China and India dominate global refining, creating bottlenecks and dependencies. Many oil-rich nations (Venezuela, Iran) lack adequate refining infrastructure.

The Russian conflict has evolved into direct attacks on energy infrastructure; Ukrainian drone strikes have knocked out approximately 38-40% of Russia’s oil refining capacity as of September-October 2025, with 21 of Russia’s 38 large refineries struck and roughly 338,000 tons of crude oil processing capacity per day taken offline. This represents Russia’s worst fuel crisis in decades, forcing the country to export crude at lower prices while importing refined products at higher costs, degrading both military logistics and economic stability.

Who controls the money: Western oil majors (ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP) compete with national oil companies (Saudi Aramco, China National Petroleum). Increasingly, Chinese state entities are buying equity stakes in foreign reserves, shifting long-term control.

Consumption Patterns and the Inequality Problem

Daily oil consumption by nation reveals stark disparities:

• United States: ~20 million barrels/day (roughly 20% of global consumption)

• China: ~15 million barrels/day (rapidly growing)

• India: ~5 million barrels/day (fastest growth trajectory)

• Japan, Russia, Saudi Arabia: 3-4 million barrels/day each

Per capita consumption shows even sharper inequality:

• Average American: ~2 gallons of gasoline equivalent per person per day

• Average European: ~1 gallon per person per day

• Average Chinese: ~0.3 gallons per person per day

• Average Indian: ~0.1 gallons per person per day

If China and India consumed at American rates, global demand would require another entire planet’s worth of production capacity. This is physically impossible, which means either American consumption must decline dramatically, or Chinese and Indian consumption must remain constrained, likely through price mechanisms that favor the few wealthy at the expense of the many poor.

The AI Resource Multiplier;

Artificial intelligence represents a massive and largely unacknowledged accelerant to resource consumption. Training a single large language model like GPT-4 requires approximately 50 gigawatt-hours of electricity, equivalent to the annual power consumption of over 5,000 American homes. But training is only the beginning: inference (actually running AI systems to answer queries) consumes vastly more energy at scale. ChatGPT alone is estimated to require over 500,000 kilowatt-hours daily, and it represents just one service among thousands.

Data centers powering AI now consume roughly 1-2% of global electricity, a figure projected to reach 3-4% by 2030. This electricity must come from somewhere: either fossil fuels (increasing emissions and resource depletion) or renewables (requiring massive material inputs for solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries; copper, lithium, rare earths, concrete, steel.

Beyond electricity, AI infrastructure demands extraordinary water resources for cooling: a single data center can consume 300,000 to 5 million gallons daily. Microsoft, Google and Meta’s water consumption has increased 30-50% since 2020, driven largely by AI expansion.

Every new AI model, every expanded capability, every additional user translates directly into more coal burned, more water consumed, more materials extracted. We’re adding a massive new category of obligate energy consumption just as the cheese runs low, another mouth to feed in a system already exceeding carrying capacity.

Who Gets Cut Off When: The Hierarchy of Access

Resource cutoffs don’t happen evenly. They follow predictable patterns based on economic power, geography and military capacity.

Poor nations that won’t be able to afford oil at higher prices should experience rolling shortages, economic contraction and migration.

The Next Wave (Relatively Sooner than Later)

Nations without domestic production or purchasing power will be first to face sustained cutoffs. No domestic reserves plus an inability to outbid wealthy nations equals systematic exclusion from markets.

Countries dependent on long supply chains become vulnerable to disruption. As energy costs rise, transportation-intensive supply chains break down.

Fiat

The mechanics of how poor nations get priced out of resource markets deserves explicit attention. When wealthy nations face economic challenges or resource scarcity, central banks respond by expanding money supplies, printing currency to stimulate economies, fund government spending and maintain financial stability. This newly created fiat currency then competes for hard assets like oil, metals, food and land. Wealthy nations with reserve currencies like the US dollar export inflation globally by using printed money to outbid others for tangible goods.

Poor and emerging market nations face an impossible trap; as developed nations print and bid up resource prices, poorer countries must print even more of their own currencies just to maintain purchasing power, but their currencies lack international acceptance and trust. This creates a death spiral; printing more devalues currency further, requiring even more printing to afford the same barrel of oil or ton of wheat, accelerating inflation and currency collapse. Venezuela, Lebanon, Argentina, Turkey and Zimbabwe provide recent examples of this dynamic.

The result is a hidden mechanism of resource allocation where monetary policy becomes a tool of competition; those who control printing presses backed by military and economic power can claim real resources, while those with weak currencies get systematically priced out of global markets regardless of their actual need.

In the mold-cheese metaphor, this represents some mold being able to create claims on cheese out of thin air, while other mold must trade real energy for access. As resource constraints tighten, this monetary asymmetry will accelerate the cutoff of poor nations from global resource flows long before physical scarcity affects the wealthy.

Economic Mechanisms of Cutoff

Price spikes are the primary mechanism. When oil reaches $150-200 per barrel, wealthy nations adjust but continue consuming. Poor nations face complete economic collapse.

Export restrictions follow. When oil-producing nations face domestic scarcity, they prioritize their own populations over export contracts.

Currency collapse eliminates purchasing power. Oil is priced in dollars and other hard currencies. Nations with collapsing currencies simply cannot participate in global markets.

Infrastructure failure creates cascading breakdowns. Refineries, pipelines, ports and distribution networks require constant maintenance and energy input. When systems deteriorate past critical thresholds, they cannot be easily restarted.

Fertilizer; The Hidden Dependency

This deserves special emphasis because it’s poorly understood outside agricultural circles: industrial fertilizer is the hidden lynchpin of modern civilization.

The Haber-Bosch process, which synthesizes nitrogen fertilizer from atmospheric nitrogen and natural gas, is arguably the most important invention of the 20th century. It enables food production for roughly half of humanity. Without industrial nitrogen fertilizer, global food production would immediately collapse by 40-50%.

Current fertilizer production depends entirely on:

• Natural gas (for nitrogen fertilizer)

• Phosphate rock mining (for phosphorus fertilizer, with no substitute)

• Potassium mining (for potassium fertilizer)

• Diesel fuel for distribution

Who controls fertilizer production:

• China: 28% of global production

• India, Russia, United States: other major producers

• Poor nations: total dependence on imports

When resource competition intensifies, fertilizer follows the same cutoff hierarchy as oil:

1. Producing nations prioritize domestic food security

2. Wealthy nations outbid poor nations for remaining supplies

3. Poor nations face immediate crop failures and famine

4. Mass migration follows harvest failures

5. Regional conflicts erupt over remaining arable land

The mathematics are brutal: approximately 4 billion people depend on food produced using industrial fertilizer. If fertilizer production dropped by 50%, roughly 2 billion people would face starvation within a single growing season.

Who Fights Whom for What?

Current and Emerging Competitions

United States vs. China (strategic competition):

This rivalry will define resource geopolitics for decades. Both compete for:

• Long-term supply contracts with oil producers

• Naval dominance over shipping lanes (80% of oil travels by sea)

• Political influence in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America

• Technological supremacy in alternatives (electric vehicles, solar, batteries)

• Control of rare earth supply chains

Neither can back down without accepting subordinate status. Both have nuclear weapons, making direct conflict catastrophic but proxy competitions inevitable.

India vs. China:

Both nations are growing rapidly and competing for the same suppliers. Both need massive energy imports. Already, they’re bidding up Russian oil after Western sanctions created availability. As scarcity intensifies, this competition will strain both economies.

Europe vs. Asia:

Europe lost pipeline access to Russian gas and oil after sanctions following the Ukraine invasion. Now European nations compete with Asian buyers for Middle Eastern crude and liquefied natural gas tankers. Europe has wealth but fewer options. Asia has proximity and in China’s case, political leverage over suppliers.

Agriculture vs. transportation:

Within nations, choices will emerge between allocating petroleum to food production versus personal vehicle use. Food will win, meaning personal vehicle use in middle-income nations will decline sharply.

Military Dimensions

Control of shipping lanes matters enormously. The US Navy currently dominates global sea routes, particularly critical chokepoints:

• Strait of Hormuz (20% of global oil supply)

• Strait of Malacca (critical for Asian energy security)

• Suez Canal (Europe-Asia trade route)

• Bab el-Mandeb (Red Sea access)

China is building blue-water naval capacity and establishing bases along trade routes (the “String of Pearls” strategy) specifically to reduce vulnerability to US naval dominance.

Iran’s ability to close the Strait of Hormuz represents asymmetric power; a relatively poor nation like Yemen via Iranian munitions can hold global energy markets hostage.

Regional powers will increasingly use military force to secure resource access. Water conflicts are already emerging: India vs. Pakistan, Egypt vs. Ethiopia and disputes throughout Central Asia.

Who’s Most Likely to “Win”?

The uncomfortable question: In a world of genuine scarcity and competition, which nations and populations have the best chance of maintaining stability and quality of life?

1. Domestic Production Plus Consumption Balance

Advantaged nations:

• Russia: Major producer of oil, gas, fertilizer and food. Lower per-capita consumption. Can weaponize exports.

• Saudi Arabia: Enormous reserves, low extraction costs, small population, strategic leverage.

• Canada: Substantial reserves, low population density, access to US market.

• United States: Produces roughly 13 million barrels daily, consumes roughly 20 million, vulnerable but has options including coal and natural gas.

2. Economic Power to Outbid Competitors

Advantaged nations:

• China: Massive financial reserves, long-term strategic planning, bilateral deals with producers.

• European Union: Wealthy but import-dependent. Scrambling for energy security.

• Japan/South Korea: Wealthy but totally import-dependent. Vulnerable but can outbid poorer nations.

3. Military Control of Supply Lines

Advantaged nations:

• United States: Dominant blue-water navy, hundreds of overseas bases, ability to project power globally.

• China: Building naval capacity rapidly, establishing strategic positions.

• Regional powers: Russia, India, Iran can disrupt but not fully control flows.

4. Diversification and Alternatives

Advantaged nations:

• Norway: Oil wealth invested in massive sovereign fund, aggressive renewable transition, near-complete EV adoption.

• China: Massive renewable energy build-out, EV manufacturing scale, still heavily coal-dependent.

• European Union: Aggressive transition policies, dense population vulnerable to disruption.

• United States: Abundant coal and natural gas as fallbacks, technological innovation capacity.

5. Geographic Fortune

Nations blessed with favorable geography have enormous advantages:

• Temperate zones with adequate freshwater

• Arable land with good topsoil

• Natural resources including both fossil fuels and renewable energy potential

• Defensive geography (islands, mountains, oceans providing security)

• Food self-sufficiency (ability to feed population domestically)

Countries combining multiple advantages: Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, potentially Russia.

Likely Losers

The competition will be hardest on:

• Import-dependent nations without alternatives: Japan, Korea, much of Europe, small island nations

• Politically unstable oil producers: Libya, Venezuela, Nigeria face civil conflict plus depletion

• Poor nations: Simply outbid in all markets

• Densely populated nations in water-stressed regions: Pakistan, Bangladesh, Egypt

Collapse Scenarios: How the Endgame Plays Out

Scenario 1: Slow Transition (Optimistic)

Key assumptions:

• Electric vehicles scale faster than expected

• Renewable energy plus battery storage costs continue falling

• International cooperation on climate intensifies

• Gradual demand reduction gives time for adaptation

Outcomes:

• Petrochemicals remain the last major use case

• Producing nations that diversified (Norway, UAE, Saudi Arabia) thrive

• Petrostates that failed to diversify (Venezuela, Nigeria) collapse

• Wealthy nations complete transitions; poor nations struggle but survive

• Global population peaks then declines

Winners: Early adopters of alternatives, nations with renewable resources, technologically advanced economies

Losers: Petrostates without diversification, nations locked into fossil infrastructure

Scenario 2: Supply Crunch (Moderate)

Key assumptions:

• Underinvestment in extraction meets stubborn demand

• Transition happens too slowly to prevent crisis

• Geopolitical tensions escalate over remaining resources

Outcomes:

• Oil prices spike to $150-200 per barrel during crises

• Severe global recession forces rapid consumption reduction

• Fertilizer shortages trigger regional famines

• Mass migration from failed states

• Violent competition for resources in some regions

• Uneven transition; wealthy nations adapt, poor nations collapse

Winners: Producers with reserves, nations with military power and alternatives ready

Losers: Import-dependent developing nations, regions already climate-stressed

Scenario 3: Conflict Disruption (Pessimistic)

Key assumptions:

• Major war disrupts critical supply routes (Middle East, Taiwan Strait, Europe/Russia)

• Multiple straits blocked or contested

• Pipeline infrastructure sabotaged

• Cascading breakdowns of global trade

• Nationalist responses prevent cooperation

Outcomes:

• Sudden collapse of global trade networks

• Desperate military competition for remaining supplies

• Fortress regions emerge, defending abundance while excluding others

• Massive refugee flows trigger border conflicts

• Nuclear threats or limited nuclear exchange

• Global population decline through famine, disease, conflict

Winners: Self-sufficient regions with military power, isolated nations with resources

Losers: Everyone, but especially those dependent on complex global systems

Scenario 4: Cascading Failure (Catastrophic)

Key assumptions:

• Multiple simultaneous system failures

• Financial system collapse (currencies tied to oil)

• No smooth transition, just breakdown

• Social order collapses in many regions

Outcomes:

• Industrial agriculture fails, 3-4 billion people face starvation

• Urban populations unsustainable without supply chains

• Reversion to local, low-energy societies

• Global population crash to 2-3 billion over decades

• Knowledge and technology loss in many regions

• Humanity survives but civilization as we know it does not

Winners: Small-scale agricultural communities, regions with water/food/energy, those who prepared

Losers: Almost everyone, especially urban populations and those dependent on complexity

The Entitlement That Blinds Us

James Cameron’s observation about Avatar cuts to the heart of why these scenarios remain probable rather than merely possible: We suffer from a profound sense of entitlement.

This entitlement manifests at every level:

Individual level: “I work hard, I deserve comfort, convenience, and consumption. Climate change is someone else’s problem.”

National level: “We built this wealth and power. We have the right to use the world’s resources. Our standard of living is non-negotiable.”

Species level: “We’re intelligent, we have technology, we’re the dominant species. The planet exists for our use.”

This entitlement isn’t just attitude, it’s institutionalized in every system:

Economic systems that require perpetual growth on a finite planet. GDP must increase quarterly. Corporations must maximize shareholder value. Steady-state economics is considered impossible despite being physically necessary.

Property rights that treat nature as inert resources to be extracted and monetized. A living forest is worth less financially than clearcut timber and cattle pasture.

Technology worship that assumes innovation will solve all physical constraints. We believe we can engineer our way out of thermodynamics. We can’t.

Military power that enforces access to others’ resources. Military spending protects resource flows. Sanctions and interventions secure supplies.

Financial systems that discount the future, literally. A forest preserved for future generations has less present value than one clearcut today. Future human lives are mathematically worth less than present ones in economic models.

Educational systems that train us to maximize individual advantage within existing structures rather than questioning the structures themselves.

“That’s Not How It Works”

Cameron’s blunt assessment ”that’s not how it works” points to an uncomfortable truth: The universe doesn’t care about our entitlement.

Physics doesn’t negotiate. You cannot:

• Print more topsoil

• Vote for more aquifer recharge

• Militarily force more photosynthesis

• Innovate around thermodynamics

• Finance your way out of resource depletion

The natural world operates on principles entirely indifferent to human desires, rights or power structures. You can have the biggest military, the most advanced technology, the largest economy; none of it changes the fact that you cannot extract resources that don’t exist or push ecosystems past tipping points without consequences.

“We’re Going to Find Out the Hard Way”

We’re already finding out, though most people in wealthy nations haven’t yet experienced the direct impacts;

Water scarcity is intensifying. Major aquifers are depleting.

Crop failures are increasing in frequency and severity. Food prices are rising. Export restrictions during shortages are becoming normal.

Mass migration has begun. Millions displaced by resource scarcity and conflict are moving toward regions that still function. Receiving nations are responding with walls, detention and violence.

Ecosystem collapse is accelerating. Insect populations have crashed by 50-70% in many regions.

Political extremism and social fracturing are intensifying. Authoritarianism is rising. Scapegoating is increasing. Cooperation is declining. The social fabric needed to address these challenges is tearing.

What “In Balance” Would Actually Require

Cameron’s prescription, ”seeking a life that’s in balance with the natural cycles of life on earth”, sounds simple but requires revolutionary change;

Economically: Abandoning growth-based economics for steady-state models. Measuring success by wellbeing rather than GDP.

Politically: Long-term thinking over electoral cycles. Future generations represented in current decisions.

Culturally: Shifting from dominion over nature to participation in nature. Valuing sufficiency over excess. Defining the good life by relationships and meaning rather than consumption.

Technologically: Using innovation to live within limits rather than exceed them. Circular systems that minimize extraction and waste.

Individually: Consuming far less in wealthy nations. Working less and living more slowly. Building local resilience and community. Accepting material simplicity in exchange for ecological stability.

None of this is happening at scale. Individual lifestyle changes, while meaningful, cannot substitute for systemic transformation. And systemic transformation requires those currently benefiting from extractive systems to voluntarily surrender advantages. History offers few examples of such voluntary surrender.

The Mold’s Dilemma

Returning to our original metaphor: The mold has consumed half the cheese and shows no sign of slowing.

Communication: We can coordinate across the entire species. We have the technical capacity for global cooperation.

Innovation: Technology exists to live within limits if we choose to use it that way.

Moral reasoning: We can consider justice, equity, and the rights of future generations.

But we also have:

Cognitive biases: We discount future threats. We normalize gradual change. We assume someone else will solve problems. We believe we’re exceptional.

Conflicting interests: What benefits one group harms another. Short-term gain conflicts with long-term survival. Individual rationality creates collective disaster.

Path dependency: Our infrastructure, institutions and entire civilization are built around assumptions of infinite growth and abundant resources.

Power structures: Those benefiting most from the current system have the most power to perpetuate it. Fossil fuel companies, petrostates, financial institutions and political leaders who depend on them will not voluntarily surrender their advantages.

The question posed at the beginning remains: Can mold choose to stop consuming before it kills the cheese, and itself?

Can 8.2 billion people, organized into nearly 200 competing nations, with vastly different levels of wealth and power, agree to fundamentally reorganize civilization before collapse forces the issue?

The Hard Way

The evidence suggests we will not make this choice collectively or in time. We will instead “find out the hard way.”

The hard way doesn’t mean Hollywood-style apocalypse with survivors rebuilding. It means:

Cascading failures that don’t reverse. Systems pushed past breaking points cannot simply restart. Ecosystem collapse is often permanent on human timescales.

Carrying capacity crash below current population. If industrial agriculture fails, the planet cannot support 8 billion people. Nature will balance the equation through mechanisms we prefer not to contemplate.

Competition between the entitled. When scarcity hits even wealthy nations, the guns and technology won’t be used to find balance, they’ll be used to secure remaining resources at others’ expense.

Chaos replacing complex systems. The intricate global networks that feed, power and connect civilization are fragile. Once broken, they cannot be easily restored.

Nature “balancing” through famine, disease, and conflict. These are not metaphors or distant possibilities. They are the mechanisms by which populations come back into balance with carrying capacity.

The pessimistic scenarios require only the continuation of current trends; competition over cooperation, short-term thinking over long-term planning, entitlement over equity, extraction over regeneration.

Wisdom or Collapse

Hundreds of millions watched the RDA Corporation destroy Pandora for profit, cheered when nature fought back, left the theater moved by the message, and drove home in their SUVs thinking “thank goodness we’re not like that.”

But we are like that. We are simultaneously the RDA Corporation and the Na’vi. We’re strip-mining our own Hometree. We’re the mold consuming our own cheese.

What we apparently lack is the collective will to choose wisdom over collapse, cooperation over competition, sufficiency over entitlement.

The mold thinks it’s entitled to the whole cheese.

The cheese doesn’t care what the mold thinks.

There’s no other planet. There’s no indigenous wisdom to guide us home because we are the indigenous species. There’s no nature separate from us that will restore balance; we are part of nature, and nature’s balancing mechanisms include mass die-offs.

The second half of the cheese is smaller, lower quality and harder to digest than we’ve been told. The competition for what remains will be brutal.

The only question now is whether enough of us will wise up before we find out just how hard the hard way gets.

And the mold, us, will live with the consequences.