Here's the latest in the Deep Green column from Rex Weyler - author, journalist, ecologist and long-time Greenpeace trouble-maker. The opinions here are his own.
In the 1980s, fishermen caught the last wild Beluga sturgeon from the Sea of Azov, source of prized caviar, and wild sturgeon in the Caspian Sea failed to reproduce. The sturgeon catch plunged by 95 percent, and the cost of caviar soared. Such extraordinary price growth is known as "hyperinflation," or as economist Eric Sprott says, "the caviar syndrome."
This may sound trivial regarding caviar, but hyperinflation turns critical with commodities such as oil, gas, copper, zinc, water, or fine hardwood, all now growing rare on a global scale. Industrial civilization has already depleted the best and most accessible of these resources. Sturgeons might recover if we leave them alone, but copper and oil do not reproduce themselves.
