Actually I would disagree with that. How do we know we are extracting at that scale compared to the resources available and hidden in the earth, and how exactly is extraction verses replenishment even determined? I personally think we are prohibited and red-taped from looking for resources elsewhere creating a false crisis.
Our
current resource extraction is already causing environmental devastation, NM. Any remaining resources are in increasingly difficult, dangerous, expensive and environmentally sensitive places. Consider some obvious examples:
Oil: Non renewable. Pollutes the air, generates CO2. We're drilling now hundreds of miles offshore where a single spill could be disastrous -- and we've got thousands of these expensive, high-tech wells. We're drilling in the Amazon -- We've already deforested and polluted vast regions, not to mention the displaced native populations and animal extinctions.
Now we're set to dig up Alberta and drill pristine Alaska tundra.
Coal: Non renewable. Has polluted inland waterways and the ocean itself with mercury &al. Your fish is now toxic. Generates acid rain that's deforested vast regions and 'sterilized' lakes across the Northeast US and southern Canada. Major source of air pollution throughout the world. Usually dangerous and/or environmentally damaging to mine (think mountaintop removal).
Bauxite (aluminum ore). Non renewable. Generates huge amounts of a toxic "red sludge" rarely contained safely. Mining's deforesting and polluting rainforest in the Amazon and, shortly, Vietnam.
And how about forests for timber? Potentially "manageable" but not being managed. How about the millions of acres of rain forest being felled for cattle ranches, soybean and oil palm production?
The simple fact is, our impact is increasing and it's unsustainable.
All of this has been recorded as happening before in the earths history. Some without mans help at all like climate changes invoking ice-ages and recessions, the extinction of dinosaurs all from effects of climate and topography including interstellar influences. I think ATM we do need to look at the chemistry involved by human interaction in way of handling our waste products and such, but I don't think the situation is all that dire as it is madeout to be. I just don't think we are big andcapable enough to negatively terraform the entire planet just yet.
Oh but we are.
Every natural system is in decline! I don't think you're really aware of the suddenness and magnitude of our impact.The problem is the
speed of our impact and the totality of the systems affected. Nothing remotely comparable has happened in the last 65M years and the few times there have been catastrophes of a similar magnitude
it took Nature tens of millions of years to recover.