There is the question of what the existence of a resource in the absence of some specific influence might be. And we can put reasonable bounds on that far better than "it's beyond comprehension".
We're on a track which hugely constrains potential viability of human civilisation, and possibly the species itself, far beyond biological, ecological, geophysical, or astronomical constraints. Ultimately, I'd suggest a goal of at least reasonably matching such potential.
In the case of both renewable and nonrenewable resources, we can look at what ultimate limits on their utilisation and/or existence might be.
Looking at timelines of the future / far future, we see a number of limiting events:
- Heat death of the universe. 10^10^120 years
- Last brown dwarfs are exhausted. 120 trillion years
- Death of the Sun / immolation of the Earth. 7.6 billion years.
- Boiling / evaporation of all surface water on Earth through increased solar irradiance: 3.5 -- 4.5 billion years.
- Freezing of Earth's core, and collapse of Earth's magnetic field, increasing solar and cosmic radiation on Earth's surface: 3--4 billion years.
- Earth's surface temperature reach around 420 K (147 °C; 296 °F), even at the poles. 2.8 billion years.
- Prokaryotic life goes extinct (lower estimate): 1.6 billion years.
- Eukaryotic life goes extinct due to carbon dioxide extinction: 1.3 billion years.
- Plant life dies out as photosynthesis is impossible, due to CO2 starvation, high estimate. 1.2 billion years.
- C4 photosynthesis impossible due to falling CO2 levels: 800--900 million years.
- Falling CO2 levels greatly disrupt most plant and animal life. Plate tectonics slow and/or stop in this period as well with tremendous impacts on mineral cycling and weathering: 500--800 million years.
- Asteroid impacts and gamma ray bursts capable of triggering mass extinctions are likely in the 100--500 million year range.
- Fossil fuel reserves may be replenished in the 50--400 million year range.
- Coral reefs and general Anthropocene extinction recover may occur in the 2--10 million year range.
- h. sapiens may further speciate by 2 million years.
- 10% of anthropgenic CO2 will still remain in the atmosphere at > 100,000 years.
- The current interglacial period will end in about 50,000 years, with a new ice age occurring in the Northern Hemisphere.
- Planned lifespan of the several "long term" projects, including the Long Now Foundation's several ongoing projects, including a 10,000-year clock, the Rosetta Project, the Long Bet Project, of the HD-Rosetta analog disc, an ion beam-etched writing medium on nickel plate, and Norway's Svalbard Global Seed Vault: 10,000 years.
- Maximum planned life for radioactive waste storage: 10,000 years.
At the same time, we're looking at a set of largely endogenous risks --- risks humanity has created for itself, not externally imposed --- which face humans on the timescale of decades to centuries: exhaustion of known key mineral resources, overloading of critical environmental sinks (CO2 and other greenhouse gasses being only the most prominent), mass extinctions, sea-level rise, climate change, population growth, risks of nuclear war (tremendously heightened in recent months), an AI / technological singularity (foretold by Kurzweil, Vinge, Lem, von Neumann, Turing, and arguably as long ago as the 18th century with Condorcet), co-evolving global pandemics (see especially Kyle Harper and William McNeill), among them.
A technological human civilisation should have a lifespan and planning horizon of at least 10--50k years, with plausible upper bounds of 2 million (evolutionary drift) to ~500 million (viable continuation of life on Earth).
Looking to our past, life has existed on Earth for > 4 billion years, though complex multicellular life is < 500 million years old. Mammallian dominance began 67 mya, and humanity itself diverged from common ancestors of the other great apes ~2 mya, achieved modern anatomical form ~200 kya, and signs of current levels of cognitive ability about 50 kya, coinciding with the last peak glaciation. Agriculture and written history are roughly 10k - 6k years old. There are imposed astronomical limits of another 0.5 -- 1 billion years. We're not at the dawn or midpoint of life on Earth, we're somewhat distressingly near the likely end. With a future reach of 1 billion years, putting the total duration of viable life on Earth on a 24 hour clock, it's about 7:40 pm. If only 500 million years remain, closer to 9:45 pm. With lower bounds, it's even later. And yet those remaining time periods extend greatly beyond present planning or consequence horizons.
Development of modernity, which might be placed anywhere from the Renaissance to the modern steam age (roughly 1400 -- 1800) occurred in a context in which many people believed the entire universe to be ~6,000 years old, and even geological estimates suggested age in the millions of years, ranging from tens to hundreds.
The first inkling of the true age of the Earth didn't occur until the first decade of the 20th century, when analysis of radioactive decay pointed at a timeline of a billion years or more. The currently accepted figure was not obtained until the mid-1950s, and the theory of plate tectonics was formally accepted only in the late 1960s. That is: the operative models under which the present global technological and economic system developed were profoundly wrong.
We're on a track which hugely constrains potential viability of human civilisation, and possibly the species itself, far beyond biological, ecological, geophysical, or astronomical constraints. Ultimately, I'd suggest a goal of at least reasonably matching such potential.
In the case of both renewable and nonrenewable resources, we can look at what ultimate limits on their utilisation and/or existence might be.
Looking at timelines of the future / far future, we see a number of limiting events:
- Heat death of the universe. 10^10^120 years
- Last brown dwarfs are exhausted. 120 trillion years
- Death of the Sun / immolation of the Earth. 7.6 billion years.
- Boiling / evaporation of all surface water on Earth through increased solar irradiance: 3.5 -- 4.5 billion years.
- Freezing of Earth's core, and collapse of Earth's magnetic field, increasing solar and cosmic radiation on Earth's surface: 3--4 billion years.
- Earth's surface temperature reach around 420 K (147 °C; 296 °F), even at the poles. 2.8 billion years.
- Prokaryotic life goes extinct (lower estimate): 1.6 billion years.
- Eukaryotic life goes extinct due to carbon dioxide extinction: 1.3 billion years.
- Plant life dies out as photosynthesis is impossible, due to CO2 starvation, high estimate. 1.2 billion years.
- C4 photosynthesis impossible due to falling CO2 levels: 800--900 million years.
- Falling CO2 levels greatly disrupt most plant and animal life. Plate tectonics slow and/or stop in this period as well with tremendous impacts on mineral cycling and weathering: 500--800 million years.
- Asteroid impacts and gamma ray bursts capable of triggering mass extinctions are likely in the 100--500 million year range.
- Fossil fuel reserves may be replenished in the 50--400 million year range.
- Coral reefs and general Anthropocene extinction recover may occur in the 2--10 million year range.
- h. sapiens may further speciate by 2 million years.
- 10% of anthropgenic CO2 will still remain in the atmosphere at > 100,000 years.
- The current interglacial period will end in about 50,000 years, with a new ice age occurring in the Northern Hemisphere.
- Planned lifespan of the several "long term" projects, including the Long Now Foundation's several ongoing projects, including a 10,000-year clock, the Rosetta Project, the Long Bet Project, of the HD-Rosetta analog disc, an ion beam-etched writing medium on nickel plate, and Norway's Svalbard Global Seed Vault: 10,000 years.
- Maximum planned life for radioactive waste storage: 10,000 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future
At the same time, we're looking at a set of largely endogenous risks --- risks humanity has created for itself, not externally imposed --- which face humans on the timescale of decades to centuries: exhaustion of known key mineral resources, overloading of critical environmental sinks (CO2 and other greenhouse gasses being only the most prominent), mass extinctions, sea-level rise, climate change, population growth, risks of nuclear war (tremendously heightened in recent months), an AI / technological singularity (foretold by Kurzweil, Vinge, Lem, von Neumann, Turing, and arguably as long ago as the 18th century with Condorcet), co-evolving global pandemics (see especially Kyle Harper and William McNeill), among them.
A technological human civilisation should have a lifespan and planning horizon of at least 10--50k years, with plausible upper bounds of 2 million (evolutionary drift) to ~500 million (viable continuation of life on Earth).
Looking to our past, life has existed on Earth for > 4 billion years, though complex multicellular life is < 500 million years old. Mammallian dominance began 67 mya, and humanity itself diverged from common ancestors of the other great apes ~2 mya, achieved modern anatomical form ~200 kya, and signs of current levels of cognitive ability about 50 kya, coinciding with the last peak glaciation. Agriculture and written history are roughly 10k - 6k years old. There are imposed astronomical limits of another 0.5 -- 1 billion years. We're not at the dawn or midpoint of life on Earth, we're somewhat distressingly near the likely end. With a future reach of 1 billion years, putting the total duration of viable life on Earth on a 24 hour clock, it's about 7:40 pm. If only 500 million years remain, closer to 9:45 pm. With lower bounds, it's even later. And yet those remaining time periods extend greatly beyond present planning or consequence horizons.
Development of modernity, which might be placed anywhere from the Renaissance to the modern steam age (roughly 1400 -- 1800) occurred in a context in which many people believed the entire universe to be ~6,000 years old, and even geological estimates suggested age in the millions of years, ranging from tens to hundreds.
The first inkling of the true age of the Earth didn't occur until the first decade of the 20th century, when analysis of radioactive decay pointed at a timeline of a billion years or more. The currently accepted figure was not obtained until the mid-1950s, and the theory of plate tectonics was formally accepted only in the late 1960s. That is: the operative models under which the present global technological and economic system developed were profoundly wrong.