Meeting the world’s natural resource needs: Confrontation ahead?

In today’s conversations about oil and other natural resources, a common worry is whether the world is “running out” and will soon begin a confrontational scramble to gain access to what’s left for the picking. Before such visions become mainstream thinking, a reminder that we’ve been down this path before might provide some useful perspective. Every few decades, it seems, an event or conjunction of events creates enough anxiety to prompt these questions.