In addition to the many thoughts offered up about natural resources by Jeremy Grantham in his Q1 2011 letter in which he argues that this time might really be different -

Time to Wake Up: Days of Abundant Resources
and Falling Prices Are Over Forever (.pdf)

comes this observation about  humans in general that provides a brief diversion from what is otherwise a rather grim outlook for our collective future, price-wise.

As a product of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years of trial and error, it is perhaps not surprising that our species is excellent at many things. Bred to survive on the open savannah, we can run quite fast, throw quite accurately, and climb well enough. Above all, we have excellent spatial awareness and hand eye coordination. We are often flexible and occasionally inventive.

For dealing with the modern world, we are not, however, particularly well-equipped. We don’t seem to deal well with  long horizon issues and deferring gratification. Because we could not store food for over 99% of our species’ career and were totally concerned with staying alive this year and this week, this is not surprising. We are also innumerate. Our typical math skills seem quite undeveloped relative to our nuanced language skills. Again, communication was life and death, math was not. Have you not admired, as I have, the incredible average skill and, perhaps more importantly, the high minimum skill shown by our species in driving through heavy traffic? At what other activity does almost everyone perform so well? Just imagine what driving would be like if those driving skills, which reflect the requirements of our distant past, were replaced by our average math skills!

We also became an optimistic and overconfident species, which early on were characteristics that may have helped us to survive and today are reaffirmed consistently by the new breed of research behaviorists. And some branches of our culture today are more optimistic and overconfident than others. At the top of my list would be the U.S. and Australia. In a well-known recent international test, U.S. students came a rather sad 28/40 in math and a very mediocre eighteenth in language skills, but when asked at the end of the test how well they had done in math, they were right at the top of the confidence list. Conversely, the Hong Kongers, in the #1 spot for actual math skills, were averagely humble in their expectations.

Obviously, there was a huge opportunity lost here when Grantham failed to comment on the skills of Asian drivers, perhaps drawing some broader conclusion that, while likely being politically incorrect, would possibly set some expectations for answering the question of  U.S. vs. China  dominance later in this century.