'fake wealth' of gold bullion stacked outside to form machine gun bunkers to protect the 'real wealth' of seeds & I-NPK hoarded inside.

That's called 'having your priorities straight.'

totoneila,
60years ago famine was wide-spread in the Indian sub-continent and China. Food was rationed in Europe. Today because of the green revolution and declining birth rates, the US and EU pay farmers not to grow food, famine is now confined to isolated regions experiencing civil wars or failed states. Even in the US, today some people are hungry, and some people are homeless but its not because the US doesn't grow enough food, or has a housing shortage, its because of poor allocation of resources.

Its telling that your link and photo's were dated 1994.

Okay, this is what we have. A two horse race.

In Lane One is a horse representing looming resource shortfalls.

In Lane Two is another horse representing an existing surplus of stuff and a lot of flat broke people who have too much stuff already.

If Gail's horse wins, we humans have big, big problems. Humans don't do shortages. We don't have to. We've never had to except here and there, for reasons of disaster, flood, earthquage, war or some other short- termed incident. When confronted with a shortage we alleviate it. We don't even have to tools to understand how shortages work. I'm not kidding. All our economics is designed to manage surpluses or to try to resurrect dead businesses after a deflation. The last time there was a long- term shortage was during the last ice age. Large areas of planet Earth were uninhabitable. The closest economic reasoning attempting to deal with shortage management is from Herman Daly. He calls for zero- economic growth. I don't know. I can't even see supply- demand working without some level of surplus ... forget about credit. I don't like Gail's horse. It's too scary.

If my horse wins, we have a prolonged depression. The structural surpluses are too persistent. 'Selling' them simply transfers them to someone else. Managing the surpluses is costly, Eventually that cost will be ruinous. Even at this future point the economic costs or potential costs of the surpluses will weigh on markets. Yes, markets. We have enough stuff to last generations. That stuff will be pressed into markets with fervent hope that it can be sold and 'consumed'. There will be credit, but no one will want it because nobody will have any money.

So ... which horse will win? I'm pulling for my horse because the silver lining of a prolonged depression would be a reduction of pressure on the resource base. Not all enterprises will be bankrupt. Some thinking will allow new ways of organizing our stuff. If Gail's horse wins, we will be in the desperate position of having to invent a new kind of social structure in an instant. I don't think this can be done, frankly.

I think the biggest problem is industrialization. It's been around for three hundred or so years and it has never lived up to any of its promises. It was supposed to employ the (then) thousands of unemployed and unskilled and provide inexpensive products so that all might have use of them. Industrialization has failed at both. It has been modified, adjusted, improved upon, re- invented, shifted in locale from England/Europe to America to China and the rest of the world and it has still failed ... and fouled the Earth in the bargain.

It's time to declare the end to the industrialization, mass production experiment. Consider Adam Smith's eighteenth century pin factory:

Smith observed that some number of specialized workers, each performing a single step in the manufacture of a pin, could make far more pins in a day than the same number of generalists, each engaged in making whole pins.

"One man draws out the wire, another straightens it ... a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it on the the top for receiving the head; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on is a peculiar business, to whiten the pins is another; it is even a trade by itself to put them into the paper."

http://books.google.com/books?id=F27TuE8ChwUC&pg=PA13&dq=wealth+of+natio...

Adam Smith was a man of his time; so little concern did he have for the conditions of the workers that this is given no mention. It was here where that one man would labor at his task in stupifying monotony for ten or twelve hours a day, sixty or more hours a week, for as long as he could endure the work or the abuse of his master, that he could not change his task, that he could be discharged for any or no reason and be replaced by another, even a child, that if he was injured he would be turned out to starve or survive by any means if he could.

Also consider that the making of pins prior was the first task of silversmiths' apprentices. That a lively apprentice would soon learn other arts and some would become master silversmiths. A constant influx of apprentices meant a constant flow of pins. The pins made by silversmiths were heirlooms and carefully kept, not junk swept into cracks in the floors to skewer some person's foot.

Now, we have dull and infinite numbers of cheap goods, that depress our markets ... as they did exactly the same in Adam Smith's day ... and people with no skill who cannot accomplish anything. There are no apprentices and no masters, either.

There is a shortage ... of interesting and useful things for all the people to do.

The opportunity is coming to cast off the machines and abandon mass production. Returning to an artisanal system will take time but the production of goods by hand will give our markets less quantity and better quality. There will be pride in accomplishment. Art will increase overall. Our useful skills - doctoring, science, math, economics will continue, the useless skills will disappear; marketing, advertising, money management. More skill in the workforce will translate into more wealth in the pockets of the skilled. This and the end of manufacturing surpluses will end the money market deflation.

I don't put this as 'the' answer but is is a possible approach. Keep in mind, helicopters and Ferraris are made by artisan methods. It's the sweatshops and industrial meat 'factories' we need to get rid of.

Otherwise, Gail's horse will win.

Gail,
"We have already hit the wall on growth, and it is growth that is needed to pay back debt with interest"

Your graph of "per Capita US energy consumption " doesn't show hitting wall on growth, not even growth of energy.
The US population has been growing and so has the growth of energy and GDP/BOE( about 1%per year over 50 years). California has had no energy growth and both population and GDP growth. It's GDP growth and real interest rates that's relevant to pay back debt.

"If we should start reducing our coal use, we will really see a quick decline in total energy availability, because renewables are very small, and unable to ramp up on the scale needed to replace the coal lost."

That would be true, if nuclear and renewables had to replace the BTU's of FF but they only have to replace the electricity produced by coal lost or the work performed by oil. Old coal plants due to be retired are only about 35% efficient. Nuclear, hydro, wind and solar have have grown quickly in last 50 years, and the US and Canada have very large undeveloped resources of hydro, wind and solar. It will probably take 40 years to replace most coal, that's about 5-6GWa per year. Last years wind additions give half of that(allowing for a 30% capacity factor). One net new nuclear plant and one new hydro dam per year would give the balance.

Interest just might possibly be paid back without growth, but only with sacrifice - doing without something to come up with the money to pay the interest and principal. In no way is it possible to continually pile debts on top of debts and to service them in the absence of growth.