> Are all fertilizers and material used renewable or are they coming out of finite earth resources? Nitrogen is about 75% of the earth's atmosphere and potassi

> Are all fertilizers and material used renewable or are they coming out of finite earth resources? Nitrogen is about 75% of the earth's atmosphere and potassium and phosphorus make up 2.6 and 0.1% of the Earth's crust, so we have plenty of all of them. To turn them into most of the common fertilizers, we need energy (and water, which is plentiful for this purpose). And atoms don't go away (with the exception of atoms used for nuclear power). All we do is to recombine them. Some of these recombinations release energy (burning fuels) while some require energy as input. Some elements may be very rare and difficult to extract (from sea water, for instance) except when found in deposits of high consentration. But first of all, N, P and K are not among those, and for those who are, extracting them from other sources simply means more energy is needed. >> > If we're able to produce enough energy, > That's a big if yes? There is enough uranium on earth to cover our energy needs for a very long time. Way before that happens, we should be able to use Thorium or fusion. In addition, there are massive amounts of solar energy that goes untapped. The main limitation, even now, is human labor, and the fact that other sources of energy require less effort to leverage. > It's not like the energy/resource crunch is a totally separate problem to war. Not completely separate, but it is also not the case that war is a deterministic result of problems surrounding energy and resources. Even if we never expierience severe problems with energy and resoures, war is still possible, simply because some old man wants to be seen as a "great man" before he dies. Conversely, it is quite possible to navigate challenges with resources without war, by learning to co-exist peacefully. Also, there is a third element, namely human and cultural capital. One indicator of this is the "workforce participation rate". One challenge of long lasting prosperity, is that an increasing percentage of the population stop contributing to the economy. Partly because of increased life spans, partly because they have personal savings that allow them to retire and partly because the system may collect inefficiencies and forms of corruption over time. (Just to list a few). Some fraction of the population has the ability to be immensly productive, due to factors such as education, talent, opportunity, motivation, dedication and luck. Others are only marginally productive, while some will produce a lot less than they consume. Generally, the relative frequencies of these groups is a much bigger influence on the affluence of a society than the availability of natural resources. This is linked to the fact that the production and optimal utilization of energy is primarily limited by (qualified) human labor, as stated above.