Each person on the planet now uses an average of 12 tonnes of materials a year. The problem is, Earth can only renew about seven tonnes of that prodigious consumption in a 12-month period.

It should be clear to Blind Freddy where this is likely to end up. But not to governments, industry, economists or, indeed, the average consumer, blithely spending their way to oblivion.

Planet Earth is finite. Human appetites are not, such is the lust for endless “growth” that has engorged us.

While political buffoonery, small wars and the fiction of money still monopolise the global headlines, a vast shadow is reaching out to engulf the human enterprise, one from which there is no escape: resource scarcity.

Current human material demand adds up to around 105 billion tonnes a year. That’s up from the 28 billion tonnes computed by the Club of Rome back in 1972. Our use of “stuff” grew by 275% in just over 50 years, while our population expanded by 115%.

At present rates of increase, human demand will reach at least 160 billion tonnes a year by 2060, which is two to three times more than the Earth can renew. By this point, the colossal shortage of raw materials will affect everyone – and, based on past human behaviour, the outcome will be never-ending war.

Nations are designed to contest resources. Their sacrosanct borders enclose the soils, forests, waters, minerals, marine wealth and other necessities their people require for life. It follows that when resources become scarce, countries become prey to their more powerful neighbours. What used to be thought a good idea — the nation state — becomes a dagger aimed at the heart of human survival. An engine for violence, plunder and rapine.

The resource crisis is a sleeping giant among the catastrophic threats to the human future. Mostly, it is entirely unnecessary – because we waste so much.

To take two examples: humans have ploughed up half the world’s landmass to grow food, wiping out the forests, grasslands, seabeds and wildlife and creating new deserts. We then proceed to waste 40% of the food thus produced – enough to feed three billion people well. In the case of fossil fuels, the waste is even more stark – two thirds of all the energy mined is lost before it can be used. A total of $4.5 trillion in value goes down the drain.

Such prodigious waste is the direct result of an economic system which incentivises cheap, wasteful means of production instead of saving vital resources for the future. In a double whammy, both sectors contribute massively to a climate crisis that will further damage production. Three quarters of our greenhouse emissions result from our use of materials.

“The urgent need to rethink how we use and manage materials cannot be overstated. At the core of the challenges we face is conventional economics – which, to put it bluntly, is nature blind. It’s about transforming our approach to consumption and production,” says Anders Wijkman, president of The Club of Rome.

Yet the prospects for such a transformation are receding, driven by the religion of a heedless economic philosophy that does not care whether children live or die.

Back in 2015, about 8.6% of all the materials used by humanity were recycled so they could be used again. A decade on, re-use of materials has dwindled to 6.9%, according to the 2025 Circularity Gap Report. Driven by mindless economics, humanity is wasting 93% of all its resources and is farther than ever from a safe, sustainable society. Our wastage is increasing, the more we consume. So is the danger it poses.

The plain answer to this looming crisis is to build a “circular economy”, one in which everything is re-used and nothing wasted. This applies at the global, the national and the household level. A circular economy will not only end the waste, it will also create jobs, prosperity and greater equity. It will help end the present poisoning of our planet and our children by chemical emissions. It will help to rewild the Earth and end the 6th Extinction. Yet, self-evidently, most countries cannot be bothered. Their policy is to destroy their own future for a luxurious present.

The replacement of fossil fuels with renewable energy and the replacement of unsustainable agriculture with renewable food are equally essential parts of a circular world economy.

More vital still is the re-use of water. The world water crisis is already upon us, confronting four billion people with serious water scarcity and 25 countries with acute water stress. Many of the world’s greatest cities face possible collapse as a result of water and food scarcity, and the situation is intensifying as demand for materials ramps up. Almost no country has yet solved its water problems.

For 10,000 years, humans recycled their food waste to grow the next crop or feed livestock. That wise system has now been replaced by the mining of nutrients, in a process doomed to break down as key nutrients become scarce. Yet every city on Earth throws away enough nutrients to feed itself forever. It is a society designed to fail.

As with the climate crisis, people are asking “When will the resource crisis begin?” The answer is: it already has. The scarcities are mounting up. The substitutes are running low. Debates over the mining of the seabed and asteroids are proof that the existing planet can no longer support demands which are six to ten times greater than our grandparents.

The coming generations, not we, are the ones who will suffer the savage consequences of such an improvident civilisation. Parents claim to love their children – yet work each day to ensure they will have less to sustain them that we do now. That they will be doomed to fight over what remains.

Reusing materials — as countless human generations did before us — is such a simple, commonsense, safe and profitable solution to our plight. Yet it is one that our mania for “endless growth” debars.

It is a fresh proof that human intelligence, the thing for which we most pride ourselves as a species, is on the wane. And that alone foretells our fate.

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The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.