There's an interesting analogy about how we've been depleting our huge supplies of fossil fuels at an alarming rate, causing the population to spike out of cont

There's an interesting analogy about how we've been depleting our huge supplies of fossil fuels at an alarming rate, causing the population to spike out of control, with little planning ahead for when they eventually run out (the effects of which we've already started to see the effects of): "On the far end of the overshoot spectrum are situations in which a community of living things receives a surplus of energy through some accidental event that happens only once. Imagine how the lives of field mice would be transformed if a truck full of grain overturned on the nearby freeway and spilled its load in their meadow. The mice suddenly have more energy than they can use and their population soars far beyond the meadow’s carrying capacity. As the number of mice in the meadow grows, though, the rate at which the grain is consumed also rises, until the grain begins to run short. At this point nothing the mice can do will spare them from dieoff; most of the mice will starve, and the survivors’ struggle to keep themselves fed may damage the meadow badly enough to decrease its carrying capacity over the long term. Years later, the meadow may still not support as many mice as it did the day before the truck overturned." From John Michael Greer's book The Ecotechnic Future