What are the impacts of resource scarcity on your daily life and community?

Scarcity is sometimes reflected in prices, and sometimes –?as it was during Covid –?in shortages. Remember when used car prices spiked because new car factories couldn't get enough computer chips? Or when there were shortages of hand sanitizer, toilet paper, and other items? That will likely happen more and more often.

Energy access isn't just about whether you can get electricity (or gas or whatever), but also about how reliable it is. Even in rich countries, grids are getting less reliable –?and this is even more true as demand increases due to longer, hotter summers. My area has way more blackouts than it used to have. And as the grid gets older and more stressed, that's going to get worse. The situation is even worse elsewhere, of course. Especially in emerging economies.

I live in South Florida, a landscape that was historically dominated by the Greater Everglades Ecosystem (GEE). Today, the GEE is less than half its original size and greatly degraded by changes to its hydrology. The future of the GEE and the marine ecosystems it is interconnected with will depend on Floridians' willingness to share freshwater with these ecosystems. While the demand for freshwater continues to increase as the population grows and temperatures rise, climate impacts, like saltwater intrusion of the aquifer, will make freshwater more scarce. The GEE and associated ecosystems are vital to Florida's economy and climate resilience. Can we find ways to use freshwater more efficiently and share it? Yes, but it will not be easy.

The effect of water scarcity go far beyond whether I personally can get as much as I want at home. There are a lot of water-stressed regions. With billions of people living there. Helping them is the right thing to do, and also a business imperative. They are the today's workers and customers of today (and tomorrow's). Also, by some estimates over a third of armed conflicts today are over water and other resources. Wars exact a terrible toll on those caught up in them. And they even affect people far away, through effects on prices, stability, etc. We should do the right thing because it's the right thing to do. But it will also benefit us, even if we don't have water restrictions at home. This aff

Florida's most scarce resources are space and land. With about 800 people moving to Florida a day, including many home buyers paying cash for homes, the increase in home prices far outpaces salaries. The average home price has more than doubled since 2018, while the average salary in Florida increased by only $10,000 in the same amount of time. In most urban areas of Florida, a homebuyer would need to earn $109,000 a year, around twice as much income as a buyer would have needed just four years ago. This means that companies in Florida need to offer higher salaries to attract and retain talent. As home ownership becomes increasingly expensive, Florida's job market is becoming less appealing.

In Florida, the fastest-growing state in 2023, land is the scarcest resource. The impact of the scale and rate of land development on the vulnerability of Florida’s residents, wildlife, and ecosystems to climate change is hard to overstate. Most of the growth has occurred in urban areas where 97 % of Floridians, some 18.9 million people, live and where average temperatures can be 10 degrees F higher than the surrounding landscape, making Floridians especially vulnerable to increasing temperatures. Land development has also greatly impacted Florida’s ecosystems. Despite these challenges, there is now an opportunity to develop resilience plans with a holistic approach that integrates both infrastructure and ecosystem resilience.