**7. Collective behavior prospects**

As mankind increasingly encounters depleted stocks of essential non-renewable resources required to support modern lifestyles, what changes in human relationships must be expected? A dramatic increase in the potential for conflict, seemed likely to Peachey and Lerner (1981: 454). They expected there would be "heightened distrust and suspicion." They expected we would also see "the complete justification of what would otherwise be considered selfish and immoral behavior." Competition would be "perceived in 'zero-sum' terms" with "derogation of the perceived competitor." Many events of the past three decades seem to confirm their expectations. They foresaw acceptance and even admiration for successful use of extra-legal means in competitive pursuit of goals.

In a context of resource scarcity, individuals will anticipate competitive encounters and this anticipation will stimulate cognitive changes as a means of adapting. Contesting nationstates will tend to vilify each other, increasingly portraying the competitor "enemy" as

continues to impede foresight. Like other species evolved by natural selection, we adapt to

In the 1980s, global economic recession appreciably reduced effective demand for various resources (despite continuing growth of world population and continuing aspirations for modernization among "underdeveloped" countries). A so-called "oil glut," following soon after the OPEC-embargo-induced shortages, tempted many to resume old illusions that scarcity is not inherently the destiny of industrialism. To avoid self-deception in this matter, it was important to recognize that filled storage tanks and falling oil prices in no way reflected any increase in the stock of crude oil contained in Earth's crust. People (apparently including even the majority of sociologists) too easily forgot the nonrenewable nature of petroleum and many other resources still required by conventional human activities. Demand for various non-renewable natural resources was only slightly (and temporarily) abated then or by subsequent economic recessions. We allowed ourselves too often to disregard the interdependent ecological limits upon a populous Earth's capacity to serve human needs in three ways―as home, supply depot, and disposal site (Dunlap and Catton

Oil depletion may hit soonest and hardest (Deffeyes 2005), but as a political science PhD and former Foreign Service officer William Ophuls (1977: 9) tried to tell the world some years ago, scarcity is no longer merely a problem with incidental short supply of some isolated commodity. It takes "a new and more daunting form" that he called "ecological scarcity." The modern world must address not just "simple Malthusian overpopulation and famine," he wrote, "we must now also worry about shortages of the vast array of energy and mineral resources necessary to keep the engines of industrial production running . . ." In this changed world, he said, we must also be concerned "about pollution and other limits of tolerance in natural systems, about such physical constraints as the laws of thermodynamics. . . ." (Greer, 2011; Heinberg, 2003, 2011). Unless sociologists take such "non-sociological" constraints into account, the sociology discipline is likely to cause its adherents to misconstrue future events and draw erroneous conclusions about social changes observed in decades ahead. Advice they might offer to policy-makers could thus be

As mankind increasingly encounters depleted stocks of essential non-renewable resources required to support modern lifestyles, what changes in human relationships must be expected? A dramatic increase in the potential for conflict, seemed likely to Peachey and Lerner (1981: 454). They expected there would be "heightened distrust and suspicion." They expected we would also see "the complete justification of what would otherwise be considered selfish and immoral behavior." Competition would be "perceived in 'zero-sum' terms" with "derogation of the perceived competitor." Many events of the past three decades seem to confirm their expectations. They foresaw acceptance and even admiration

In a context of resource scarcity, individuals will anticipate competitive encounters and this anticipation will stimulate cognitive changes as a means of adapting. Contesting nationstates will tend to vilify each other, increasingly portraying the competitor "enemy" as

for successful use of extra-legal means in competitive pursuit of goals.

*existing* circumstances, not to future conditions our adaptations may be creating.

2002).

seriously counterproductive (Catton, 2009).

**7. Collective behavior prospects** 

untrustworthy―and perhaps so malevolent that eventually "any action" in opposition to the enemy "is justified, including 'pre-emptive' aggression" (Peachey and Lerner, 1981: 453-454; cf. Klapp, 1972: 158). These expectations appear to have been born out in the conduct of recent U.S. wars.

Ecological knowledge is fundamental to understanding the lives, the opportunities, and the limitations of humans (and of human societies) in a world shaped by and comprising geological and meteorological features and billions of non-human organisms—i.e. the real world. The environment we inhabit, with all its given biological, chemical, and physical characteristics, often tremendously influential, has changed enormously in recent times. Human societal actions have wrought much of the change.

To anticipate and explain the catastrophic changes set in motion by twentieth-century progress, and its division of the human world into "overdeveloped" and "underdeveloped" societies, sociologists must begin at last to see sociology itself as an excessively circumscribed treatment of processes requiring a fundamentally ecological worldview. If sociological thought becomes less anthropocentric it will be better prepared to understand future reality.
