Book excerpt: Scarcity is a book about humanity's "predicament" Our persistent utilization of enormous and continuously increasing quantities of finite, non-replenishing, and increasingly scarce nonrenewable natural resources (NNRs) - i.e., the fossil fuels, metals, and nonmetallic minerals that enable our modern industrialized way of life, and that are essential to perpetuating our modern industrialized way of life - is undermining our very existence as a species. Scarcity explores the causes, implications, and imminent consequences associated with humanity's predicament.