Resources Shape Politics
Social polarisation and extremism often emerge not from abstract ideology, but from the hard reality of declining energy and resource flows.
There is some uncomfortable arithmetic that political analysts don’t like to mention, not even in the tearoom. When energy flows dwindle or become expensive and when resources get scarce, societies fragment along predictable tribal lines.
People double down and retreat into the safety of people they trust most, people like them. Instantly, democracy becomes a luxury item, discarded when survival feels urgent.
The pattern repeats across centuries and continents. Weimar Germany collapsed after an economic catastrophe. Venezuela’s democracy withered as oil revenues faltered. The Arab Spring erupted in countries facing food price spikes and youth unemployment.
Yet mainstream political analysis continues to frame these crises through the lens of ideology, leadership failures, or institutional design. They were crises of process not psychology.
This is comforting but wrong.
It assumes human political behaviour operates independently of biological constraints, as if we are exempt from the same resource pressures that drive every other species toward competition when abundance ends.
Counterpoint
Political stability rests on energy surplus. Democracies require leisure time for civic engagement, surplus wealth for compromise, and enough resources to make negotiation preferable to violence.
Strip these away, and the careful architecture of liberal institutions becomes irrelevant.
Countries like Australia owe their political calm not to superior democratic values but to geological luck. Coal, iron ore, natural gas, and vast arable lands create the material foundation that makes civil discourse possible.
Remove the resource base, and Australian political stability would prove as fragile as any other system facing scarcity.
This reality exposes the conceit underlying most political commentary. When analysts debate policy platforms or leadership styles, they are examining symptoms rather than causes. The deeper drivers of political behaviour lie in energy flows, resource availability, and population pressures.
And we know where this reality comes from.
Humans evolved in small groups competing for limited resources. Because an isolated human was an easy target, our ancestors were biologically vetted for their ability to bond within a small tribe, creating a brain that is hyper-attuned to social status and in-group loyalty. We needed a group to survive. However, because calories and safety were historically finite, this internal cohesion was balanced by a deep-seated suspicion of outsiders.
When abundance declines, these ancient patterns reassert themselves. Tribal identity hardens and any out-group becomes a threat. Compromise with them and it feels like a betrayal. This is not a moral failure. People are not leaping to the dark side, they are following their evolutionary programming.
The political manifestations are predictable. Economic stress drives support for authoritarian leaders who promise to protect the in-group. Immigration becomes a flashpoint because newcomers represent competition for scarce resources. Environmental concerns vanish when immediate survival feels threatened.
Mainstream thinking treats these responses as aberrations that can be corrected through education, better messaging, or institutional reform. But this misunderstands the problem. Extremism is not a bug in the political system but a feature that emerges when resource constraints trigger ancestral survival algorithms.
Thought Challenges
Map resource flows to political shifts in a specific country... Choose a nation that experienced significant political change in the past decade. Identify the energy, food, or economic pressures that preceded the political transformation. Ask how mainstream analysis would explain the change versus how resource constraints might account for the shift.
Examine current conflicts through a resource lens… Select an ongoing political crisis typically explained through cultural, ethnic, or ideological factors. Research the underlying resource competition, economic stress, or environmental degradation that might be driving the conflict. Notice what this perspective reveals that conventional analysis misses.
Consider how political expectations would change during energy descent scenarios... Reflect on current assumptions about democratic participation, social cooperation, and institutional stability. Map how these expectations might shift if energy costs doubled, food prices tripled, or climate change disrupted regional agriculture.
The Biophysical Reality of Politics
Being a mindful sceptic means recognising that political behaviour follows biological rules, not abstract principles. Human societies are energy-processing systems that respond to resource availability according to evolutionary patterns millions of years old.
This does not excuse extremism or justify authoritarianism. It simply acknowledges the deeper forces shaping political outcomes. Resource scarcity breeds extremism because evolution programmed us to prioritise survival over civility when abundance ends.
Understanding this reality is the first step toward managing it.
The mindful sceptic sees through the comfortable illusion that politics operates independently of ecology. Stability depends on energy flows, not noble intentions.
Evidence Support
Hsiang, S. M., Burke, M., & Miguel, E. (2013). Quantifying the Influence of Climate on Human Conflict. Science, 341(6151), 1235367.
TL;DR… This meta-analysis examines decades of empirical research and finds that deviations in climate—such as increased temperature or extreme rainfall—are causally linked to increases in interpersonal violence and civil conflict. Specifically, each standard deviation shift in climate variables raises the likelihood of intergroup conflict by 14 percent.
Relevance to insight… robust relationship between environmental resource fluctuations (climate as a proxy for productivity and food security) and the emergence of violent extremism and instability in societies. It provides quantitative, cross-disciplinary evidence that biophysical constraints can override political institutions, fuelling violence and unrest in line with the evolutionary patterns described in the insight.
Homer-Dixon, T. F. (1999). Environment, Scarcity, and Violence. Princeton University Press.
TL;DR… landmark book synthesises case studies and cross-national data to show that shortages of renewable resources (cropland, water, forests) are significant drivers of political violence, especially in vulnerable states. The research pinpoints how resource decline leads to economic marginalisation and group grievances, fuelling societal fragmentation and extremism.
Relevance to insight… foundational for understanding how environmental scarcity undercuts social cohesion and fosters the conditions for extremism and institutional breakdown, directly supporting the claim that resource abundance is a hidden pillar of political moderation and stability.
Kahl, C. H. (2006). States, Scarcity, and Civil Strife in the Developing World. Princeton University Press.
TL;DR… explores how demographic and environmental stress—specifically, population growth and resource shortages—triggers nationalist and exclusionary politics, leading to state collapse and internal conflict in the developing world. Using detailed case studies, she argues that ecological stress is often the proximate cause of political extremism masquerading as ideological or ethnic struggle.
Relevance to insight… demonstrates empirically that scarcity routinely provokes defensive, tribal politics that destabilise even apparently robust polities, echoing the insight’s core contrarian argument.
Dal Bó, E., Dal Bó, P., & Eyster, E. (2018). The Demand for Bad Policy when Voters Underappreciate Equilibrium Effects. The Review of Economic Studies, 85(1), 356–381.
TL;DR… in scenarios of resource scarcity or economic decline, even rational actors become prone to supporting extremist or suboptimal policies when collective action problems are not fully recognised. Experimental and theoretical results show increased polarisation, willingness to punish out-groups, and demands for policies that would be damaging under normal, abundant conditions.
Relevance to insight… scarcity disrupts both social and cognitive equilibria, in line with the evolutionary and biophysical emphasis of the insight.
Kevane, M., & Gray, L. C. (2008). Darfur: Rainfall and Conflict. Environmental Research Letters, 3(3), 034006.
TL;DR… episodes of low rainfall and poor harvests are strongly associated with the outbreaks of violence in the region. The timeline and data analysis suggest that resource scarcity—specifically, competition over dwindling arable land—is a major contributing factor to both the escalation and perpetuation of conflict.
Relevance to insight… environmental constraints, such as climate-induced scarcity, are root causes of social breakdown and extremism, illustrating the broader evolutionary and systemic patterns highlighted in the insight.
Each study illuminates how political polarisation and extremism often emerge not from abstract ideology, but from the hard reality of declining energy and resource flows. This body of science refutes the mainstream story that politics is mainly an ideological contest, instead confirming the insight’s contention that when abundance fails, the evolutionary drive toward tribal extremism returns.