World’s consumption of materials hits record 100bn tonnes a year
&gt; The report’s authors warn that treating the world’s resources as limitless is leading towards global disaster.<p>This is the same fallacy that lead people to fear “peak oil” every decade for the past 50 years. Nobody treats resources as if they’re limitless. The reason we don’t coat everything in gold is because it’s rare (and thus expensive), leading to producers only using it when it’s absolutely necessary. Wood is abundant (and therefore cheap), so it’s used in everything from packing materials to building houses. If these conditions changed and wood for some reason became rare and expensive, it wouldn’t be used in the same way we use it now. People would choose to build their houses out of a different material, and tree farmers would choose to plant more trees.<p>The idea that we’re “running out” of resources doesn’t make sense. Resources are and have always been scarce. When something becomes exceedingly rare, people choose to consume less of that resource.