title: Macroecology Meets Macroeconomics: Resource Scarcity and Global Sustainability.
abstract: The current economic paradigm, which is based on increasing human population, economic development, and standard of living, is no longer compatible with the biophysical limits of the finite Earth. Failure to recover from the economic crash of 2008 is not due just to inadequate fiscal and monetary policies. The continuing global crisis is also due to scarcity of critical resources. Our macroecological studies highlight the role in the economy of energy and natural resources: oil, gas, water, arable land, metals, rare earths, fertilizers, fisheries, and wood. As the modern industrial technological-informational economy expanded in recent decades, it grew by consuming the Earth's natural resources at unsustainable rates. Correlations between per capita GDP and per capita consumption of energy and other resources across nations and over time demonstrate how economic growth and development depend on "nature's capital". Decades-long trends of decreasing per capita consumption of multiple important commodities indicate that overexploitation has created an unsustainable bubble of population and economy.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131, United States ; Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States.
authors.forename: James H
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Brown
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131, United States.
authors.forename: Joseph R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Burger
authors.affiliation: National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, Annapolis, Maryland, United States.
authors.forename: William R
authors.initials: WR
authors.lastname: Burnside
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131, United States.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Chang
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology & Evolution, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York, United States.
authors.forename: Ana D
authors.initials: AD
authors.lastname: Davidson
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131, United States.
authors.forename: Trevor S
authors.initials: TS
authors.lastname: Fristoe
authors.affiliation: Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States.
authors.forename: Marcus J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Hamilton
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131, United States.
authors.forename: Sean T
authors.initials: ST
authors.lastname: Hammond
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131, United States.
authors.forename: Astrid
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kodric-Brown
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131, United States ; School of Natural Resources and the Environment, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, United States.
authors.forename: Norman
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Mercado-Silva
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131, United States.
authors.forename: Jeffrey C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Nekola
authors.affiliation: School of Earth and Space Exploration, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, United States.
authors.forename: Jordan G
authors.initials: JG
authors.lastname: Okie
keywords: Ecological economics; Economic growth; Global sustainability; Human ecology; Macroecology; Resource scarcity