Resource Scarcity - The Acquisition Strategy

Sometimes, a strategy of acquisition is touted as a means to deal with resource scarcity. This might be rebuilding resources on earth or acquiring them elsewhere.

Insofar as climate change is a manifestation of resource scarcity (due to de-forestation restricting the carbon sinks) re-forestation can help. Growing your own food can also help replenish soils (if it is done in a permacultural way). But acquisition is not a permanent strategy, since we live on a finite planet. The only way acquisiton makes sense, as a long term strategy, is if resources are imported from other worlds. Since we don't know for certain whether that will ever be possible, then acquisition should not be a primary strategy for sustainability. If sustainability cannot be achieved by living within the resource budget of the earth, then it may never be achieved. I hope it can be achieved and that should be the primary strategy. Indeed, since there is no way of knowing whether an acquisition strategy can be successful (long term), I would suggest that such a strategy be put on the back burner until we find that living within the resource budget of the planet is just not possible. If it is, then we can use that stable base to examine other strategies, knowing that we always have a fallback position.

Global cooling?

There is no trend that shows cooling since 1998. In fact, the NASA dataset that includes the Arctic, shows 2005 as the warmest year. See realclimate.org for more info on this.